And so we begin. There is a lot of important symbolism and allusions in Chapter 1, so it gets its own, very long post. As I said earlier, there are spoilers in every post. A lot will be given away here. I would recommend reading the WK first before you go any further.
Chapter One: Dear Ben
Chapter Summary
Able/Art Ormsby is writing letters to his brother Ben explaining what happened to him all those years ago. Art is an American teenager living somewhere in the contemporary USA (I think Minnesota, which I will explain in a later post). We know this as he later references having a Macintosh computer, and being from America.
He lives with his older brother Ben. We later learn that his father is dead, and that he owned a hardware store. Art never directly says what happened to his and Ben’s mother, only that she “went away”, and Michael says his mother never knew him. It appears she is deceased as well, perhaps dying shortly after Art was born, or at the time of birth.
We know from a later comment their grandmother was involved in raising them. We also later learn from Art/Able that his grandparents were farmers. His father may be named Ben too, since his brother Ben’s twin in Celidon is Berthold, and his father was a Berthold too.
It is fall, and the leaves are changing. Ben and Art have driven out to their cabin on a weekend. Ben drives back to see his girlfriend Geri after she calls him. Perhaps he was deliberately ditching his brother to hang out with his girlfriend. Art goes for a hike in the woods, and gets lost.
During his hike he crosses over into Mythgarthr, though its never expressly stated when this happens. He cuts a walking stick from an unusual tree with white bark and shiny leaves. This is Spiny Orange. He then sees cloud shapes that look like a castle, the Valfather, a unicorn, a black dragon, and a beautiful lady (probably the Valfather’s daughter, The Lady). He chases after the cloud castle. It gets dark, and he talks about walking down a slope “without a bottom.” He has entered Aelfrice without realizing it, and is then seized by the Mossmen.
He awakens in a sea cave. Parka of Kleos is there. She names him “Able of the High Heart.” He disputes this, and she sort of curses him, saying “The lower your lady the higher your love.” She then says “You will sink before you rise, and rise before you sink.” Art, now Able, begins to experience his first memories from the original Able. Parka then says “Each time you gain your heart’s desire, your heart shall reach for something higher.” Parka gives him a bowstring from the thread she is spinning for the Spiny Orange branch that will become his bow.
An Epistolary Novel
Like many of GW’s books, the WK is an epistolary novel. Art/Able is writing a series of letters to his brother Ben after the events of the WK, from somewhere in Aelfrice. He says that Michael will get the letters to Ben. I did wonder how Art was able to remember the details of the story with such specificity. He never complains about his memory on any point. His perfect memory may be a residual benefit of his transformation into an Overcyn. He says in The Wizard that others described events to him that he was not personally present for.
GW does take reader skepticism seriously, and usually tries to give a plausible explanation for the detail of these epistolary works. At the end of The Book of the Long Sun, he lets Horn and Nettle admit that they have had to recreate conversations, take certain liberties, etc., in writing the Book of Silk. Severian is gifted with an eidetic memory in order to explain the detail in The Book of The New Sun, and The Urth of the New Sun.
If you are wondering whether Able was a runaway who just made it all up (a pure invention theory was proposed in discussions re The Sorcerer’s House), I considered and rejected that. If you wanted to write a letter to your long lost brother, it would be much easier to write something shorter and simpler. Art never really complains about his brother or life in America anyway.
The Faerie Gate is Down
The fairy world of Aelfrice is below Mythgarthr, and entered by a downward direction, here Art walking down a slope “without a bottom.”
A Tale of Lancelot
You can read the WK as GW’s version of Lancelot’s story. Lancelot was the son of King Ban (here Ben) of Benoic in the most popular Lancelot story. His father is defeated and killed, and Lancelot is taken at a young age to live with the Lady of the Lake (here Queen Disiri) in her magical world. The Lady of the Lake was a fairy like creature associated with the Arthurian legend.
Depending on the story, she gave Arthur Excalibur, was the ruler of Avalon, and had a relationship with Merlin. She was sometimes given the name Vivian, Nimue or Elaine. The Real Able and Art/Able going to Aelfrice at a young age matches Lancelot being taken away by the Lady of the Lake. In some tales Lancelot even dies, and has to be brought back to life by the Lady. GW alludes to the legend in having Art Ormsby replace the original Able, who is dead by this point.
There is an echo here of Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott. In that poem, a lady sits in a tower on an island while weaving, like Parka weaving on Bluestone Island. When Lancelot comes by, the Lady leaves her island.
Parka and The Beginning of the Christian Allegory
Michael Andre-Driussi identifies her in his WKC as one of the Roman goddesses of fate, the Parcae (Parca singular). Able is an unreliable narrator, in that his letters are written by an American teenager based on things he is hearing from others. So the spelling is going to be off. Celidon is a British/Norse fusion, so we need to consider the legends of northwest Europe when reviewing the names.
Parka is, in part, GW’s version of the goddess Perchta. She was a Germanic goddess who oversaw spinning and weaving. Able described her as having a mouth full of teeth, and this is consistent with some of the scary images at the linked Wikipedia entry. If you scroll to the bottom of the Wikipedia entry, you will see that Perchta was associated in Italy with La Befana. Hey, isn’t that that GW short story you wrote about earlier? The one he wrote way back in 1973. Yes.
Parka also seems to be a version of the Volva of Norse mythology.
But Parka is not just Perchta. Like most names in the WK, GW is alluding to multiple figures from mythology, literature, or the Bible. Parka is also the WK’s version of the Paraclete. This is a Greek word, and it can mean “helper.” Parka is a helper to Able. In Christianity, the Paraclete is a representation of the Holy Spirit. When Able looks back one last time, Parka looks like a group of fluttering “white birds.” White doves are the most common artistic representation of the Holy Spirit, as shown at the Wikipedia entry.
This is the Feast of the Epiphany for the WK. Able comes into this world through a cave, not unlike Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. In some historic analysis, the stable of Christ’s birth was actually a cave. La Befana is associated with the Feast of the Epiphany. In GW’s short story La Befana, she makes an appearance on another planet as Christ is born into that alien world. Able is thus a Christ like figure being born into Mythgarthr. He is not the Christ, but an agent sent to a broken and endangered world by The Most High God.
Oh, remember that Able’s real name is Arthur Ormsby? His initials are A and O, or the Alpha and the Omega.
If you missed all this symbolism don’t feel bad, I had eight years of parochial schooling and it went right over my head on the first reading.
Parka’s statement about “the lower his lady the higher is love” is a reference to Disiri. She lives on a lower plane (Aelfrice). His love for her is stronger than that for any human woman, or woman of Skai (like Alvit the Valkyrie). The reference to rising and sinking/sinking rising is a reference to his travels between Aelfrice and Mythgarthr and Skai. He goes to Aelfrice before he can rise to the castle in Skai. He sinks back down to Aelfrice at the end of the WK.
What is the “High Heart”?
This stumped me for a long time. In one way, it may just mean Able’s high mindedness. But I think this is another GW trick, or an example of an unreliable narrator. Able heard “Heart” but his name is really “Able of the High Hart.” A Hart is an archaic word for a stag (male deer), and was usually used in the medieval period to describe a red deer stag. So its a good fit for the world of Celidon, which has a Scottish/Norse culture and atmosphere. According to the Wikipedia entry on Red Deer, Red Deer are depicted on Pictish stones from early Medieval Scotland. The Red Hart is also apparently a common English pub name.
So what does this mean? Red Deer were hunted by nobles. However a Hart isn’t always red. The White Hart or Stag, a rare albino or mythological version, was the badge of King Richard II and other nobles. A White Stag appears at the end of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The children’s pursuit of it takes them back to Earth from Narnia. Some C.S. Lewis scholars believe the White Stag was Aslan (Christ) in disguise.
Its not clear if Able’s symbol is a Red or White Hart. In Celtic tradition, a white stag was a messenger from the “otherworld.” A white stag briefly appears in The Knight in Chapter 13. Able refrains from shooting it, and Old Toug calls it a “cloud buck” (Able later names his unicorn Cloud). In the Arthurian tradition, pursuit of the White Stag was apparently symbolic of man’s spiritual quest. Able does undergo a process of theosis, or divinization, during the story of the WK. Given the color symbolism I’ve discussed earlier, I think the Hart was likely white, and may be a reference to the Holy Trinity. There is some confirmation of this when he fights Sir Loth, which I will explain in a future post.
Finally, I note that in Norse mythology the stag Eikpyrnir stands atop Valhalla, and is the source of various rivers of Norse legend. And the Bible sometimes refers to Jesus/God as the source of “living waters.” John 7:38. The High Hart?
What is Spiny Orange?
Able’s bow and lance are made from Spiny Orange. This significantly empowers these weapons. They are seemingly unbreakable, though the lance is later destroyed. This is where the Kabbalah comes into play. For the longest time I thought that orange was the color of the bark or the leaves. I wasn’t reading closely enough. The bark is described as white in Chapter One, and the leaves are described as green later in The Knight. Orange is not a color that anyone perceives when they look at a Spiny Orange tree.
In the earlier post on color symbolism, I included the colors associated with the Kabbalah’s Sephirot. GW used Kabbalah symbolism/imagery in The Urth of the New Sun. He does it again in the WK. Kabbalah, according to Wikipedia, is an esoteric method or discipline originating in Judaism. It is the most esoteric way of studying the Torah, after direct interpretation, allegory, and imagination. In the Kabbalah is the concept of the Sephirot, which are ten emanations God uses to sustain the universe. The Sephirot is depicted in the form of a tree of ten parts, or Tree of Life. Apparently each part may be associated with a color. Yesod’s color appears to be orange (see Table 17-6 at the linked document) in the traditional Jewish representations that I’ve read. Yesod is the power of connection, or that which translates spirituality into actions that unite one with God.
Does Yesod sound familiar? Its the name of the parallel universe/dimension Severian visited in The Urth of the New Sun.
version 1.0
The Duchy of Cumberbatch 