(urth) barrington interview

Fri Oct 10 02:54:04 PDT 2014

That should be "the Christian and pagan references show what is happening"
and later its rather than it's, of course.  Sorry.

On Friday, October 10, 2014, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:

> He may not be referring to new sun specifically.  In short sun the
> Eucharist with Silk is observed (he is in a clearing surrounded only by
> trees).  It represents the transformation of grapes into a mystical blood
> during an act of consumption.  The final imagery of short sun involves the
> story of Hyacinthus, whose blood is spilled and transforms into a flower
> and lives on.  This pagan and Christian reference show is what is happening
> with Silk's unacknowledged congregation: vegetable matter becomes blood
> through consumption and death, and the vanished gods (the cannibal trees of
> green) create the vanished people by consuming the flesh of sentient
> organic matter and combining with it in a Eucharistic transfomation of
> "fruit" to blood.
>
> It's symbolism is a huge plot clue.  There are other uses in new sun, but
> it is more important to show an alien mechanism of hybridization and
> transubstantiation (presaged in the play eschatology and genesis, when the
> winter killed stalks of man are mixed with new seed, and in the second
> chapter of shadow of the torturer, when the new sun engenders life in a
> brush, which opens it's eyes and runs up a tree, and in the story of
> quetzal in long sun in which man goes up a tree but has not yet come down)
>
> On Thursday, October 9, 2014, Richard Simon <gallebuck at yahoo.co.uk
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','gallebuck at yahoo.co.uk');>> wrote:
>
>> All right, I'll bite. If it is 'far from merely ornamental' what is its
>> purpose in the books?
>>
>> Is Gene Wolfe preaching a sermon? Clearly not when he leaves the
>> interpretation so ambiguous that it could be taken in two completely
>> opposite ways. No, he's writing a novel, and his manner of writing novels
>> is to make puzzles of them. So — what purpose, besides the ornamental, does
>> all this 'theological' imagery serve? Aside from helping us to the
>> conclusion that Severian is a Christ-like figure in some sense, what is its
>> functional end?
>>
>>
>>   On Thursday, 9 October 2014, 20:44, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <
>> danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The Eucharistic (and other theological) imagery is far from merely
>> ornamental.
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 3:15 PM, Richard Simon <gallebuck at yahoo.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Re. 'nothing more': I'm not quibbling about 'Eucharistic elements' *et
>> al.* Obviously  there will be cultural references — I mean to our
>> culture, not Urth's fictional one — in any work of fiction, and their
>> presentation will be informed by the author's views, beliefs, intent, sense
>> of humour, etc. I also mentioned subtext earlier. But all this stuff is
>> pretty much on the surface, even when you get to relatively dubious
>> constructions like *Terminus Est* = cross symbol. They aren't hidden
>> deep within the text.
>>
>> I recall a discussion on the Urth List long ago about the 'language' of
>> flowers, initiated by someone who was trying to parse the appearance of a
>> flower on the thwarts of the boat Sev was using to make his way up Gyoll
>> while he paused to survey some downstream ruins. In my modest opinion (and
>> at the risk of upsetting anyone here who might have been a participant in
>> that discussion), I would suggest that hiding a serious, significant datum
>> relating to the story in the (only partly codified) language of flowers
>> seems a bit too obscure even for Gene Wolfe. If there's any meaning there,
>> it's likely to be ornamental rather than essential. 'Ornamental' covers a
>> lot of ground; do we really need to know who Severian's mother was?
>>
>>
>>   On Tuesday, 7 October 2014, 21:27, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I'm with Daniel here. "Nothing more" applies only in the sense it would
>> apply to Shakespeare or Dickens, who also wrote popular entertainments for
>> the ages. The primary distinction to be made here, I suppose, is with
>> someone like Joyce or Woolf who writes for a "select" audience.
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 3:49 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <
>> danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I agree with you up to the 'nothing more', Andrew.  For it is, of course,
>> possible for the technical quality you describe to be central and yet also
>> for Wolfe's many evocations of philosophical inquiry to be central as
>> well.  Like the poetic conceits, he weaves philosophical and theological
>> exploration (even exposition I would contend) into the narratives in a way
>> consistent with them (always the craftsman, yes), but not merely for
>> allusive code-cracking.  Repeated Eucharistic images and instances in Short
>> Sun, for example, are not their only to tie up some technical aspect of the
>> narrative, but also to evoke something Wolfe takes to be a recalcitrant
>> fact of fictional and real worlds:  people are spiritual and they have
>> spiritual experiences.  That may not develop or tighten plot, but it
>> deepens worldbuilding and 'literary' quality ('literary' in the sense of
>> intentionally and centrally exploring, through the writing of fiction,
>> longstanding human cultural and philosophical concerns, and not being
>> content to merely entertain).  Wolfe is simply not content to merely
>> entertain.  He never aims to do less than that, but he does often aim to do
>> more.  Whether and to what degree he succeeds is a separate question.
>>
>> -DOJP
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:29 AM, Andrew Bollen <jurisper at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 1:42 PM, Richard Simon <gallebuck at yahoo.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> My own view on this is as follows: most of Wolfe's 'puzzles' have a
>> direct bearing on the story; that is to say, they conceal information that
>> could help the reader understand something more about the plot, the
>> characters, the subtext, etc. They are functional, part of the mechanics
>> of the story itself.
>>
>> Occasionally, when he thinks it is possible for him to do so without
>> endangering the sense or misleading the reader , Wolfe will add a poetic
>> conceit, usually a classical allusion. Decyphering it will add something to
>> the reader's enjoyment but little to his understanding.
>>
>> I do not believe that symbolism in the work of Gene Wolfe has any
>> relevance outside the frame of the story. I often see his interpreters
>> present some example of the use of symbols that they have found (or think
>> they have found) as a full and sufficient explanation of Wolfe is up to at
>> that point in the narrative. They read it as an attempt to convey some
>> extra-literary meaning. They are mistaken. Gene Wolfe is a creator of
>> popular entertainments, nothing more. He is certainly a great author —
>> 'great' as in 'for the ages' — but he is not a preacher or a philosophical
>> huckster. He is a technician, a craftsman above all.
>>
>>
>> Wholehearted agreement!
>>
>> Also: I think the most fruitful approach to Wolfe is via considerations
>> of character and ethics. Why did this character do this or that; and did he
>> or she act well or badly in the circumstances?
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Urth Mailing List
>> To post, write urth at urth.net
>> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Urth Mailing List
>> To post, write urth at urth.net
>> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Urth Mailing List
>> To post, write urth at urth.net
>> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Urth Mailing List
>> To post, write urth at urth.net
>> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
>>
>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20141010/3b3e5c62/attachment-0002.htm>