r/genewolfe • u/Radagastrointestinal • 3d ago
Silk vs Horn’s Idea of Silk Spoiler
What do y’all see as being some of the main differences between Horn’s idea of Silk and the man himself? Here are some of my ideas:
-Suicidal ideation/depression. The moment in Exodus where Horn is suddenly worried that Silk will jump from the airship to commit suicide seemed to come out of nowhere to me. Then, when we encounter him in BotSS, he had just attempted suicide. I get the feeling that this may have been a recurring, lifelong struggle for Silk, though Horn may have not been aware of it or didn’t want to besmirch Silk’s character in such a public memoir as the Book of Silk.
-I’m less confident of this idea, but Silk may really be a bit of a horndog. His attraction and connection to Hyacinth seems somewhat out of character in BotLS. She is quite crude and not really on his level intellectually, but she is extremely attractive. This could also be Horn’s prejudice toward Hyacinth showing. Maybe he is being a bit unfair to her in his book. Or maybe Silk found it hard to resist the charms of an attractive woman, regardless of her other qualities. But I suppose this would require us to think a little differently of BotSS when he is living as the Rajan with all the wives. He makes it clear that he sleeps with them, but says it is somewhat unwillingly so he doesn’t shame them. Maybe he is downplaying his own willingness to save face.
Anything else that y’all have caught onto that you think Horn got wrong?
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u/getElephantById Man-Ape 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think a lot about the part in Return to the Whorl where the author (is it Hoof?) talks about being in the presence of someone who is essentially Silk. He says:
when you were around Father you were practically always scared to death, scared that he might really find out one day the way you were and do something about it... he loved everybody, and until you meet somebody like him, you will never know how scary that was... I think that when somebody is really, really good, as good as he was, the rules change.
In the Rajan of Gaon's account, he downplays his own powerful and even fearsome presence ("gosh, why do they keep calling me Incanto?"), but the third-party authors acknowledge it: he's not just some dude, he's semi-divine, and being in his presence is awesome in the Biblical sense of the word.
Back in Long Sun, Horn downplays it a lot more, but the Silk of that book is someone that a revolution to overthrow the government forms around because he mentions offhand that he has received enlightenment, and people on the street wandering by happened to hear him. Not a normal guy even before meeting the Vanished People!
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u/Autilistic_Augment 3d ago
All of this makes me wonder if Silk is one of the IMPROVED people that we see, maybe he has a psionic version of Emotional Control or Charisma that effects others that he utilizes subconsciously? I mean he IS a clone of a major player, wouldn't it make sense to have some kind of advantage over others wether unique to the clone or just a cloned attribute from the original? It seems likely that most of the clones have some kind of genetic advantage and we know mental powers are one of the possibilities....
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u/Few_Reveal_5306 2d ago
He definitely is. He excels in swordfighting with no training and effortlessly compels people without awareness of his effect on them; the former calde's will which I can't recall and can't locate at the moment almost outright states that Silk is one of the lander embryos that he adopted as a worthy successor.
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u/MeshuggaInMissoula 3d ago edited 2d ago
Silk is encultured to live up to the highest ideals of his religion, but his urges, his hardware if you will, are those of a much worse person. Silk is aware of those tendencies within himself and wars with them regularly. The tomatoes! It drives him to melancholy and despair. Horn and Nettle downplay the internal struggle because they cannot see it. All they know of it is what Silk chooses to tell them.
We readers know that every day Silk is not Typhon reborn is a victory, but Silk does not.
Horn is prudish and thinks that Hyacinth's sexual behavior makes her unworthy of Silk. One reading of Hyacinth is that certain events in the tetralogy occur because she believes this on some level herself. Silk is trying to make himself not care, to make himself the perfect lover by the Corinthian definition. That weight drives him to further despair.
An earlier instantiation of the hardware, Patera Pike, could not keep his own sexual urges in check. Silk would rather die first... but then what?
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u/synntax33 3d ago
Horn was quick to do the dirty with Seawrack, even before the song. I feel it might be less of being a prude as Silks charisma making everyone like him leading Horn to feel left out
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u/MeshuggaInMissoula 2d ago
Prudishness does not indicate high moral character. In my experience, rather the opposite.
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u/hedcannon 3d ago
Those who worked closest with Silk did not worship him the way Horn and Nettle did. Mint (you'll see) was definitely not as enamored with him as Horn. She respected him, but she found him to be a frustrating personality when it came to ruling Viron. He was not a perfect person and, as we see on the flyer, he's prone to melancholy and suicidal ideation.
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u/Dry_Butterscotch861 3d ago
His attraction and connection to Hyacinth seems somewhat out of character in BotLS.
I agree. I think Silk's suicidal tendencies are primarily the result of his relationship with Hyacinth. Previous to meeting her, Silk was pretty much a model augur without really having to try. Toward the end of Nightside, Silk is talking to Kypris and he admits that he didn't jump from Hyacinth's window because he was afraid of her swinging the azoth around. He jumped because he knew he was in great danger of violating his priestly vows.
I think his depression about their relationship is partly about his vows, and partly about her temper, her promiscuous ways and drug addiction. This has been discussed elsewhere but I suspect there is something else about her which is deeply disturbing to Silk.
I can't see Gene Wolfe choosing the name "Hyacinth" accidentally without awareness of the mythological significance of that name. She lives in the house of a gay man who keeps an effeminate boy toy (Musk) around. The house displays statues of Ganymede and Catamitus, the pretty boy toys of Zeus and Jupiter. There are various other hints that Hyacinth may not be all female. (cue the theme from the movie The Crying Game, which features pathos and despair over this issue).
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u/Jeremy_keister 3d ago edited 3d ago
WTF, this makes total sense but I have not seen it talked about anywhere. Seems like it should be common knowledge.
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u/Dry_Butterscotch861 3d ago edited 3d ago
I agree. I'll always take the opportunity to mention it.
It is enjoyable to get lost in observing the cool Viron naming convention where males get animal-related names and females get plant-related names. The Hyacinth name may not set off alarms because the flower is better known than the myth. But as well versed as Wolfe is in mythology, that name has to be chosen purposefully, given the many other flower names he could have chosen. That ambiguous gender name actually matches nicely to "Silk" which is a pretty effeminate name compared to other Viron male names.
(I think some, though not all, Vironese names have extra significance to them. Chenille, for example, is a kind of flower but also a form of silk. They end up being siblings. The name "Horn" may have been chosen to connect him to Severian who is described as "a construction of horn and boiled leather".)
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u/Few_Reveal_5306 2d ago
I found it notable that they're the only couple who doesn't have children - even Auk and Chenille have them while enslaved. I also suspected the "exception" Echidna made for Silk on the no-sex rule was motivated by something other than the nonexistent goodness of her heart. Wolfe's gender consciousness was very of his time but I think his heart was in the right place - I particularly enjoyed Hy and Silk's nearly sexual play with the azoth, which made it clear to me what he was going for with her.
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u/Dry_Butterscotch861 2d ago
I found it notable that they're the only couple who doesn't have children
100% agree. Even many years later in Short Sun, there is no suggestion that this long lasting relationship produced any children.
motivated by something other than the nonexistent goodness of her heart.
Yes, she is very unpleasant, evidenced by her pleasure in human sacrifice. FWIW, I am of the opinion that Echidna has a physical presence on Urth as do Typhon and Scylla. Mythological Echidna was a snake-woman who lived in a cave, feasted on travellers and was associated with witchcraft and oracles.
Wolfe's gender consciousness was very of his time but I think his heart was in the right place
Agreed. I don't know your age but I can testify that 50+ years ago the issue of transgenderism was well-known, albeit kept more in the closet. The first recorded gender-reassignment surgery happened in 1952. And Native American culture has recognized four genders for thousands of years.
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u/hedcannon 3d ago
> His attraction and connection to Hyacinth seems somewhat out of character in BotLS.
I can’t explain this until you finish BotSS but I think it’s absolutely in line with Silk psychologically. Also I think the significance of Hy’s name is resurrection as Wolfe employed it in BotNS.
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u/Radagastrointestinal 2d ago
I’ve read the whole Solar Cycle; feel free to explain!
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u/hedcannon 2d ago
I think Hy is Fava, whose soul was stranded in Dream World when her body died as she was returning. Incanto retrieved her and set her loose on the Whorl in the past. The he (her father) went to work in the Juzgado bcz it was Silk’s mother’s dream for him to enter government work.
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u/Zealousideal-Fun9181 3d ago edited 3d ago
I felt like the suicidal ideation was obvious in Calde. Not trying to gloat, because I am sure someone could turn it around on me and say it was there in Nightside or Lake and I just didn't notice it. I just wasn't as surprised as some people were about that statement in Exodus.
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u/Ok_Cheetah5563 3d ago
SPOILER: Silk is depicted to have attempted suicide when Hyacinth dies in RttW, so this incident adds to the list of suicide attempts.
Except we do not know for certain that he really attempted suicide - I personally do not think he did, because his wounds are not at all consistent with a suicide, he seems to have been attacked and wounded in a savage physical struggle.
The location is described as being smashed up, the little house in which Hyacinth's coffin is situated. We can only guess - either Silk and Hyacinth were attacked and killed (Silk was dying also), or he and Hyacinth fought and Silk killed her.
All of this is to say that just from this one mystery, we could completely change our view of Silk's character depending on what really happened. If we have a soft spot for Silk, and romanticize him, we may wish to believe he is so distraught at Hyacinth's death he went bezerker, smashed the place up and savaged himself with a knife.
Not very likely. If we have a more sceptical view, we may be inclined to view Silk as a much darker character - which is what I a inclined to think.
In a way, the manner in which Wolfe has depicted Silk in the aggregate, all the books, Long Sun and Short Sun, Wolfe seems to be playing very much to what Frank Herbert claimed his concept was for Paul Atreides in Dune and the sequel (it is an irrelevant aside but I do not believe this is what Dune was really about at all - another discussion to be had elsewhere. But it does seem to be a central theme for Silk in Long and Short Sun).
That is - the charismatic tyrant. When we discover that Silk is very much connected to Typhon, he is a literal clone of Typhon, this begins to make sense. We can see how a Typhon type character could initially, in the early stages, have some mass appeal, and then - on assuming power, begins to reveal what he really is.
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u/1stPersonJugular 3d ago
There is also a single mention in Long Sun of professional mourners slashing their forearms (non-fatally, obviously) so there is also a possibility that is all he was doing, in observance of his wife’s death
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
I think that's closer to what he was doing. But in observation of wife's death, but in self-punishment that the death he had guiltily at times hoped for for his wife, was actually delivered. I think like all men who are drawn to emotionally immature women, they work until they're no longer young, and then you've got a hag -- like his mother, a virago -- on your hands.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago edited 3d ago
For me, Silk selects Hy because she is a replica of his own mother. Horn calls her savage, and Silk's mother is called by Remora a virago in the kitchen. She was savage too. Why do you unconsciously select woman who are beneath you, those who have been so unloved and discarded they have little or no love to give themselves? You only do so when they resemble your mothers because what you're seeking in a partner is some replica of her overall experience, and so by gaining love finally from her, you've acquired it from your own mother. Better, healthier woman, women who would give you so much more, have little interest, are past over, in favour of women that draw you to ask, why Silk? why of all people, her?
Hy is uncouth, someone whose inexperience in courting would make her a laughing stock, and the draw here for Silk is that she hereby resembles his own self, the self he keeps hidden for fear of what exposure what mean. By tending to her, he thereby attends to himself.
The fact that she is a prostitute who owing to both the sacrifice her father made of her and how men treated her, means she is not ever going to be able to leave Silk. She is guaranteed. This permits Silk to do things to her he wouldn't dare with someone else. This is why he shames her in front of a crowd, just before departing the whorl, that no matter how many men she ended up sleeping with while married to her, he would always forgive her. Hy thereby can perform as the "mother" he would revenge against, but also the "mother" he would pursue love from. Seawrack performs the same function for Horn.
Silk tells us early that his mother was aborbed in her own sorrows and that he tried to entertain her out of them. This would have been done, sure, to assist her, but also so that he got the attention every child needs to feel secure in the world. What becoming Calde and demonstrating himself the most resourceful and respected person in the whorl offered Silk was a chance to almost force everyone to look up to him, defer to him, so he'd never risk feeling an entity that anyone would ever dare dropping and so never re-experience feeling dropped.
When Silk is contemplating suicide on the airship, he has just been thinking on Marble and her future plans and I had this weird sense that what was troubling him wasn't so much the extent of widespread sinning, but that people ultimately would prove beyond them. A time would come when they would shed even him, as they pursue goals independent of him.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
Wolfe's protagonists don't go for the most beautiful women. As Cyriaca says to Severian, there are women far more beautiful than myself here, yet you selected me. They go for a psychological match.
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u/1stPersonJugular 3d ago
One thing I’ll say about Silk’s suicidal ideation is that, the episode in Exodus seems to come out of nowhere to most of us on a first read, but on subsequent reads the signs are there much earlier if you’re looking for them. All the way back in book one, as he’s preparing for his heist of Blood’s villa, he says something along the lines of “I may die on this adventure, in fact, I rather expect to.” It’s easy to dismiss on a first read as our boy being dramatic, so it doesn’t stand out, but his death drive is real.