From: "Alice Turner" <pei047@attglobal.net>
Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v030.n118
Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 20:34:41 


I swore I wasn't going to get into this one, but...sigh.

> "Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie
with
> her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. 'Why must
I lie
> beneath you?' she asked 'I also was made from dust, and am therefore
your
> equal.' Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, Lilith,
in a
> rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him."
>
> We know that Wolfe is familiar with Graves, and I think that Jane
Doe's
> "Vhas a groose." and "Aw zay, 'ou vhill nawt neffer grawnt offer mee
agan."
> almost certainly refers to Adam in this Lilith myth.

Roy is right. "I say, you will not never grunt over me again." Double
negative being part of GW's accent-addiction. And I guess she's going
"Yuck!" in the first part, though that's not the tradition, which was
that she got bored always doing it one way, not that she disliked it
altogether.

> On another tack, has anyone else wondered exactly what Wolfe intended
with
> the last six words of the story: "a mountain ram winded its horns."?
Even if
> Wolfe hadn't been raised in Texas, much less been a former Aggie, he
has to
> know that no animal blows a horn, much less its own.

This is why I'm outta this. (Or should be.)

> Further perusal of HEBREW MYTHS yields the following wrt the
fratricide of
> Cain and Abel: Wolfe has a tendency to
> conflate and otherwise rearrange mythological elements to suit
himself,
> which is what he seems to me to have done in "Copperhead". Thus "Dhoss
> bhoyes, de vhun keels de odder", I still maintain refers to Cain and
Abel,
> whether or not it also refers to the murdered man and Boone.

Yup.

But (defiantly) it's still a dumb story.

-alga




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