V.V.(9) Vheissu

[Michael Perez]

jbor wrote:
"It *is* 'life' -- animate -- isn't it? What is absent is *soul*. Life
and soul are two separate things, surely? Isn't this the horror which
haunts Godolphin: the intimation that 'life' might in fact fall on the
*inanimate* side of the binary, that the 'animate' soul is a mere
illusion?"

This is an interesting point.  However, I think what Godolphin was
trying to relate was that the *skin*, both literal epidermis of
Vheissu's inhabitants and figurative cultural ambience (or whatever) of
Vheissu itself, was inanimate and once it was stripped away the animate
being might be revealed.  When he relates his desire to “flay that
tattooing to a heap of red, purple and green debris, leave the veins
and ligaments raw and quivering and open at last to your eyes and your
touch” [171.17-20], he still leaves some doubt, I believe that an
animate being, hence one with what could be called soul, will be below
the skin.  Life and soul are not the same, but I think we can assume if
an animate being can be said to have a soul (leaving aside for a moment
an agreeable definition of "soul"), life was prerequisite and the raw
and quivering being would at least be evidence of life.  This might
relate in some way to the Qlippoth idea, too.  Even when life is
evident, the soul is still an arguable issue and one about which Hugh
is quite uncertain.  Perhaps one of the reasons he opens up so much to
his "mother confessor" was that she might, perhaps, illuminate the
nature of "soul."

Michael

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