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Very very quick additional on this - so sorry I can't be on list more
often, there's lots of stuff I would have liked to respond to but so
much! Really don't mean to start hares and not then follow up but
sometimes that's what happens. Apologies if I've irritated anyone. <br>
<br>
Anyway ... <br>
<br>
On 02/12/10 20:38, James Wynn wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4CF803BA.7010406@gmail.com" type="cite"><br>
<blockquote type="cite">Gerry Quinn-
<br>
As for the rest, though, I'm not terribly convinced. If the Neighbours
can resurrect bodies, why not just fix Horn? </blockquote>
<br>
Perhaps it is because I'm old-fashioned that I don't have a problem
imagining the soul in the body as a person inside a suit. In fact,
Wolfe almost never presents the soul in purely classical terms. He
always presents it as a "wave" of memories and identity--EXCEPT for
Mani in the Wizard Knight, and...significantly...in the Book of the
Short Sun. <i>The Neighbors could not just heal Horn because the
spirit had left. </i>(my emphasis). </blockquote>
<br>
Some evidence in support of this POV - toward the end of RTTW
Silk/Horn, Jahlee and others go on a 'spirit travel' jaunt with the
idea that they might get to see what is happening on Green. Silk/Horn
and the other participants in this experiment know that they might go
anywhere as long as it is a place where one of their company has been
before. <br>
<br>
Silk/Horn has assumed that save for himself, none of them save Duko
Rigoglio (who Silk/Horn knows was a Sleeper, and thus was on Long Sun
Whorl in a state of suspended animation) has been anywhere but Blue;
since Rigoglio <i>was</i> a Sleeper, he probably won't influence
things all that much since he was, well, asleep prior to the Landings. <br>
<br>
Unfortunately no-one has taken into account the idea that Sleepers used
to be people, with lives, before Typhon 'volunteered' them for his
starship cargo. Rigoglio 'hijacks' the spirit travel, and the entire
party ends up in his home location, which just happens to be Nessus
itself. <br>
<br>
Rigoglio just about has time to realise that this isn't quite the
Nessus he used to know, when he is wounded by an Omophagist. The party
escort/drag/carry him to the Citadel in search of medical attention,
but the best they can find proves to be inadequate, and Rigoglio dies. <br>
<br>
Two things of relevance occur during this little jaunt. Firstly, Jahlee
(I think it is) proposes that they all go home and that Rigoglio seek
conventional medical attention back on Blue. Silk/Horn vetoes this; he
knows that Rigoglio will have no wound that any Blue-ese physician will
be able to help; he'll be returned 'with his spirit bleeding to death
inside him', beyond the ability of medicine to intervene. The party
presses on, only to find that the healers of Nessus give Rigoglio
'herbs, when they should have given blood' and thus really fail to help
him at all. <br>
<br>
Secondly, after Nessus-Rigoglio dies, the party returns to Blue - and
we are told that when Rigoglio awoke on Blue, he was a 'spiritless
thing', his spirit-self having died on the Red Sun Whorl. 'Spiritless'
is afair specifically distinguished from 'soulless'. No more details
are given, but the reader is left in no doubt that in all respects
that matter as far as human life is concerned, Rigoglio is actually
dead, even though his physical body was not harmed in any way during
the expedition.<br>
<br>
In the light of this I think it possible that when Horn is dying on
Green, the Neighbour can't prevent it, because his spirit has already
separated itself from the body. All she can do is transfer this spirit
into another body in pretty much the same state, ie whose spirit is in
the process of departing; a process analogous to the 'spirit travel'
which, although mediated by inhumi, appears in fact to be made possible
at some level by the Neighbours. <br>
<br>
Silk kills himself in despair at Hyacinth's death. Horn, by
happenstance or providence, dies at that very moment on Green. The
Neighbour is able somehow to transfer Horn's spirit into Silk's
only-just-dead body. It feels to Horn as though he has passed out for a
moment, to regain consciousness beside the coffin of a woman he does
not recognise (Horn didn't see much of Hyacinth back in the day, and
it's now 25+ years on). His body is streaming blood from various parts
due to Silk's suicidal self-mutilation. <br>
<br>
Why the face thing by the way? I suspect a mourning ritual gotten
slightly out of hand. Silk may have intended only to make shallow cuts
in his skin, including the face, neck and arms, which would be very
Greco-Roman in fact; but he either made a resolution or became too
focussed on the moment, and made one or several of those neck or
arm/wrist cuts a little deeper, then deeper still, with the intention
of bleeding to death. <br>
<br>
All of which begs the question of where Silk's spirit has really gone.
'To join Pas' is a possibility - the name 'Passilk' seems to be
current, and there was that moment in BoTLS where Silk had a vision of
Pas with two heads, one of them his, ie. Silk's, own (naturally Silk
has no idea at any point that Typhon's second head is that of a slave).
One may hope not; it's much more encouraging to think that he has gone
to live with and in the Outsider. <br>
<br>
jd<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4CF803BA.7010406@gmail.com" type="cite">The Rajan
has an extensive discussion about the distinctness of the human spirit
and the body's life, and I think it speaks directly to your question:
<br>
<br>
---------------------------------
<br>
RTTW (HB) pg 66
<br>
"Let me illustrate my point. A man has a house where he lives for some
years with his wife. They are very happy, this man and his wife. They
love each other, and whatever else may go amiss, they have each other.
Then the man's wife dies, and he leaves the house in which he has had
so much happiness. It has become abhorrent to him. Unless the Outsider,
the God of gods, restores her to life, he has no wish to see that house
ever again. Am I making myself clear?[snip] I am speaking of the spirit
departing the body at death. The body is the house I mentioned, and
life was the wife who made it a place of warmth and comfort.[snip]
Perhaps her husband goes to the gods[snip] perhaps only into darkness.
For the moment it doesn't matter. My point is that he leaves the home
she made for him, never to return.[snip]
<br>
"Zwaar, who had been silent until then, said, "When the spirit goes a
man dies, I think."
<br>
I shook my head. "He dies because you shot him through the heart. Or
because he suffered some disease or was kicked by a horse [snip] But
you bring up an important point--that the spirit is not life, nor is
the life spirit. And another, that the two are one. A husband is not
the wife, no more than a wife is her husband; but the two in
combination are one. What I was going to say was that though the man in
my little story left his house once and for all when his wife died, he
had left it many times previously. He had gone out to weed their
garden, perhaps, or gone to the market to buy shoes. In these cases he
left it to return."
<br>
<br>
------------------------------
<br>
<br>
Also there is in this discussion, a more direct allusion to the fact
that Silk killed himself in grief over the death of Hyacinth:
<br>
<br>
"If you mean you wish to die when I do, Oreb, I sincerly hope you
don't. [snip] ...under the Long Sun their rulers went so far as to have
their favorite wives burned alive on their funeral pyres. When I die, I
sincerely hope no friend or relative of mine will succumb to any such
cruel foolishness."
<br>
<br>
u+16b9
<br>
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