<div>After the incident with the man-apes Jonas tells Sev that mankind has changed over the course of many long years.</div>
<div>Is it possible that those described as monkey like are people from our time (or the equivalent of our time)? This would explain a shared trait without requiring them all to be the same person.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><br><br> </div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 5:43 AM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:urth-request@lists.urth.net">urth-request@lists.urth.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<br>When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br>than "Re: Contents of Urth digest..."<br><br><br>Today's Topics:<br><br> 1. Re: The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned<br>
byRudesind (Jeff Wilson)<br> 2. Tzadkiel/Melek Taus (Mr Thalassocrat)<br> 3. Re: Tzadkiel/Melek Taus (John Watkins)<br> 4. Re: Tzadkiel/Melek Taus (Mr Thalassocrat)<br> 5. Re: The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned<br>
byRudesind (Adam Thornton)<br> 6. Monkey business (Roy C. Lackey)<br> 7. Re: Monkey business (Mr Thalassocrat)<br><br><br>----------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>Message: 1<br>
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 18:50:27 -0500 (CDT)<br>From: "Jeff Wilson" <<a href="mailto:jwilson@io.com">jwilson@io.com</a>><br>To: "The Urth Mailing List" <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>
Subject: Re: (urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned<br> byRudesind<br>Message-ID:<br> <<a href="mailto:2aacbeb9c2e6573f0a1d94897f59491e.squirrel@webmail.prismnet.com">2aacbeb9c2e6573f0a1d94897f59491e.squirrel@webmail.prismnet.com</a>><br>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1<br><br>> Well, yes indeed Judge Holden is reminiscent of Baldanders.<br>><br>> But the creepier thing is that the Judge, well, he's not really a<br>> fictional<br>
> character. Or if he is, he's Chamberlain's fictional character. The<br>> height, the albinism, the baldness, and the terrifying and lethal<br>> appetites<br>> towards children are all there in Chamberlain.<br>
<br>Albinism and baldness? Doesn't Baldanders have grey hair?<br><br><br><br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 2<br>Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 10:05:10 +0930<br>From: Mr Thalassocrat <<a href="mailto:thalassocrat08@gmail.com">thalassocrat08@gmail.com</a>><br>
To: The Urth Mailing List <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>Subject: (urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus<br>Message-ID:<br> <<a href="mailto:AANLkTiksy2xSZYAhIYNFOHZxQ8JNWq9nVnximiT_zHB_@mail.gmail.com">AANLkTiksy2xSZYAhIYNFOHZxQ8JNWq9nVnximiT_zHB_@mail.gmail.com</a>><br>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br><br>Finally got around to tracking something down which had been nagging me.<br>When I first came to the conclusion that Tzadkiel was a liar and a no-good,<br>it put me vaguly in mind of a satanic peacock-angel that I'd read of (in a<br>
Patrick O'Brien novel?) in connection with some middle-Eastern sect.<br>Tzadkiel's eye-wings always struck me as peacock-ish.<br><br>Anyway, here he is, the Peacock Angel of the Yazidis:<br><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melek_Taus" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melek_Taus</a> The Peacock Angel of the<br>
Yazidis. He has much the same story as Satan/Iblis ("the liar"), except for<br>the Yazidis, it's a *good* thing that he didn't accept the favored status of<br>Man.<br><br>Wouldn't surprise me at all if Wolfe had this bird and the Yazidi's in mind.<br>
<br><br>No, I don't think that BOTNS is intended as a Yazidi gospel :)<br>-------------- next part --------------<br>An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br>URL: <<a href="http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20100709/82b1503f/attachment-0001.htm" target="_blank">http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20100709/82b1503f/attachment-0001.htm</a>><br>
<br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 3<br>Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 20:52:16 -0400<br>From: John Watkins <<a href="mailto:john.watkins04@gmail.com">john.watkins04@gmail.com</a>><br>To: The Urth Mailing List <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>
Subject: Re: (urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus<br>Message-ID:<br> <<a href="mailto:AANLkTinL0Au5EU73SiBRhmZXv7CZrIVNbqqDW8oKgtvQ@mail.gmail.com">AANLkTinL0Au5EU73SiBRhmZXv7CZrIVNbqqDW8oKgtvQ@mail.gmail.com</a>><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br>
<br>Ooh, this is excellent stuff. Thank you for this.<br><br>Someone like me (but smarter) should take this insight and run with it into<br>a full-on application of Melek Taus to other Wolfean demons. If Wolfe used<br>the figure once, did he use it again? If not, why not?<br>
<br>On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Mr Thalassocrat <<a href="mailto:thalassocrat08@gmail.com">thalassocrat08@gmail.com</a>>wrote:<br><br>> Finally got around to tracking something down which had been nagging me.<br>
> When I first came to the conclusion that Tzadkiel was a liar and a no-good,<br>> it put me vaguly in mind of a satanic peacock-angel that I'd read of (in a<br>> Patrick O'Brien novel?) in connection with some middle-Eastern sect.<br>
> Tzadkiel's eye-wings always struck me as peacock-ish.<br>><br>> Anyway, here he is, the Peacock Angel of the Yazidis:<br>> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melek_Taus" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melek_Taus</a> The Peacock Angel of the<br>
> Yazidis. He has much the same story as Satan/Iblis ("the liar"), except for<br>> the Yazidis, it's a *good* thing that he didn't accept the favored status of<br>> Man.<br>><br>> Wouldn't surprise me at all if Wolfe had this bird and the Yazidi's in<br>
> mind.<br>><br>> No, I don't think that BOTNS is intended as a Yazidi gospel :)<br>><br>><br>> _______________________________________________<br>> Urth Mailing List<br>> To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net">urth@urth.net</a><br>
> Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net/" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br>><br>-------------- next part --------------<br>An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br>URL: <<a href="http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20100708/bd5ab90a/attachment-0001.htm" target="_blank">http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20100708/bd5ab90a/attachment-0001.htm</a>><br>
<br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 4<br>Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 11:54:49 +0930<br>From: Mr Thalassocrat <<a href="mailto:thalassocrat08@gmail.com">thalassocrat08@gmail.com</a>><br>To: The Urth Mailing List <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>
Subject: Re: (urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus<br>Message-ID:<br> <<a href="mailto:AANLkTilEW8QQYfHkf9vmhFpu36lZB8zLEO4EIC0VQTA8@mail.gmail.com">AANLkTilEW8QQYfHkf9vmhFpu36lZB8zLEO4EIC0VQTA8@mail.gmail.com</a>><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br>
<br>On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 10:22 AM, John Watkins <<a href="mailto:john.watkins04@gmail.com">john.watkins04@gmail.com</a>>wrote:<br><br>> Ooh, this is excellent stuff. Thank you for this.<br>><br>> Someone like me (but smarter) should take this insight and run with it into<br>
> a full-on application of Melek Taus to other Wolfean demons. If Wolfe used<br>> the figure once, did he use it again? If not, why not?<br>><br><br>This is the way I see it: In the BOTNS, Wolfe shows how a young man, by no<br>
means inherently evil, is induced to do the will of (call it) Lucifer,<br>working on the young man's inclination to obey and disinclination to think<br>clearly when afflicted by religiosity, with these propensities assisted by a<br>
cloud of meretricious gnostic-ish mumbo-jumbo which takes the place of "true<br>religion". The Lucifer figure is particularly evil in that he causes the<br>young man himself to be responsible for the mumbo-jumbo, unwittingly.<br>
<br>Wolfe takes the reader on the same kind of journey as Sev. He sets up the<br>form of the story to make it look like a tale about enlightenment and the<br>progression of a soul from lowest to highest, and what BOTNS/UOTNS shows is<br>
how powerful such forms are. By the the end of UOTNS there is overwhelming<br>evidence to make the enlightenment reading completely untenable on any<br>"objective" grounds, but nevertheless for most readers it persists.<br>
"Tzadkiel" remains somehow the agent of some greater good, Sev has somehow<br>earned his role of minor god to the remnants of destroyed Urth humanity, a<br>grand (unknown) plan progresses to a sanctified (but unkown) end.<br>
<br>On this view, BOTNS/UOTNS is a kind of demonstration of how people can<br>become "yazidis" (to the extent that the term can be used to denote those<br>who beleive bad is good - no offence to actual Yazidis!).<br>
<br>Anyway, if Wolfe was thinking along those lines & did make use of aspects of<br>the Melek Taus figure, I guess that use was pretty specific to the concerns<br>of BOTNS/UOTNS. The closest figure I can think of in other works is The<br>
Lowest God from W-K, but even though he may well be a de-winged angel, he<br>fits a different "error" (ie "lowest = highest", rather than "wrong<br>highest").<br>-------------- next part --------------<br>
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<br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 5<br>Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:15:21 -0500<br>From: Adam Thornton <<a href="mailto:adam@io.com">adam@io.com</a>><br>To: The Urth Mailing List <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>
Subject: Re: (urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned<br> byRudesind<br>Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:4C369449.5000102@io.com">4C369449.5000102@io.com</a>><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed<br>
<br>On 07/08/2010 06:50 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:<br>>> Well, yes indeed Judge Holden is reminiscent of Baldanders.<br>>><br>>> But the creepier thing is that the Judge, well, he's not really a<br>>> fictional<br>
>> character. Or if he is, he's Chamberlain's fictional character. The<br>>> height, the albinism, the baldness, and the terrifying and lethal<br>>> appetites<br>>> towards children are all there in Chamberlain.<br>
>><br>> Albinism and baldness? Doesn't Baldanders have grey hair?<br>><br><br>Oh, crossed wires:<br><br>Those are among the characteristics of Judge Holden in _Blood Meridian_<br>which are not invented by McCarthy but narrated or invented by Chamberlain.<br>
<br>Adam<br><br><br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 6<br>Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 23:07:58 -0500<br>From: "Roy C. Lackey" <<a href="mailto:rclackey@stic.net">rclackey@stic.net</a>><br>To: "urth" <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>
Subject: (urth) Monkey business<br>Message-ID: <002a01cb1f1c$5485eec0$abce4a0c@rclackey><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br><br>Okay, let's see if we can find some middle ground in all this monkey<br>
business.<br><br>That some characters in the Urth Cycle are compared, in some way, with<br>monkeys is beyond dispute. Since Wolfe wrote it, I think almost everyone<br>will agree that the simian markers signify *something*. What seems to be at<br>
issue is what that something is.<br><br>There are also some appearances of monkey-like creatures, including the<br>dog-ape hybrid figure who looked in on Severian in the lazaret. Inire,<br>Rudesind and Fechin are each likened (by Sev or report of another character)<br>
to a monkey, but in different ways.<br><br>Inire is rumored to look like a monkey and said to be the oldest man in the<br>world, so he must look like a very old man. He is said to be a little man,<br>with a wry neck and bow legs.<br>
<br>Rudesind has a wrinkled neck, long arms and legs, long feet, crooked fingers<br>and moves up and down his ladder like an aged monkey. His height is<br>undetermined, but when he led Sev to the Old Autarch in the House Absolute<br>
(in CLAW) he was leaning on Sev's arm and had to cock his head up to look<br>Sev in the face. That implies that he is not very tall. He has brown eyes<br>that are "rheumy" and the hairs on his face are white with age.<br>
<br>Fechin is said by the old man at Casdoe's cabin (hereafter I will call him<br>"Old Man", since his name is not given**) to be tall and have red hair on<br>his hands and arms. His arms, but for their size, are said to have looked<br>
like a monkey's. His face, however, was unlike a monkey's; it was handsome.<br><br>(** That his name is not given may or may not be important.)<br><br>Old Man and Rudesind both knew or met Fechin when they were boys, and the<br>
old men were thought by Sev to be about the same age. Each had their picture<br>drawn or painted by Fechin when they were boys.<br><br>I don't think there is much to argue about in the above. Maybe having all<br>these basic facts in one place will suggest a theory other than Inire<br>
somehow being some or all of these characters.<br><br>It should also be remembered that Sev's first manuscript was written ten<br>years after he became autarch, and that he had full access to the Old<br>Autarch's memories. The significance of that is that he had decades of<br>
familiarity with Inire, which means most of the normal human lifespans of<br>the above men except, of course, Inire. If Rudesind, an acknowledged agent<br>of the Old Autarch (and of Inire), had not aged like a normal human being<br>
during the Old Autarch's tenure, then Sev should have and would have known<br>it.<br><br>-Roy<br><br><br><br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 7<br>Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 14:01:04 +0930<br>From: Mr Thalassocrat <<a href="mailto:thalassocrat08@gmail.com">thalassocrat08@gmail.com</a>><br>
To: The Urth Mailing List <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>Subject: Re: (urth) Monkey business<br>Message-ID:<br> <<a href="mailto:AANLkTingHEs7gyytu9OY8L-EYzXDxCE4Uj5wRs7CGMHm@mail.gmail.com">AANLkTingHEs7gyytu9OY8L-EYzXDxCE4Uj5wRs7CGMHm@mail.gmail.com</a>><br>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br><br>On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 1:37 PM, Roy C. Lackey <<a href="mailto:rclackey@stic.net">rclackey@stic.net</a>> wrote:<br><br>> Okay, let's see if we can find some middle ground in all this monkey<br>
> business.<br>><br>> That some characters in the Urth Cycle are compared, in some way, with<br>> monkeys is beyond dispute. Since Wolfe wrote it, I think almost everyone<br>> will agree that the simian markers signify *something*. What seems to be at<br>
> issue is what that something is.<br>><br>> There are also some appearances of monkey-like creatures, including the<br>> dog-ape hybrid figure who looked in on Severian in the lazaret.<br><br><br>** Not very important, but I don't think a dog/ape hybrid is<br>
intended. "Cynecephalus" (dog-headed) is a term which seems to get applied<br>to baboons - eg *Papio cynocephalus **<br><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Baboon*" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Baboon*</a><<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Baboon" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Baboon</a>><br>
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<br>End of Urth Digest, Vol 71, Issue 87<br>************************************<br></blockquote></div><br>