Blicero/Weissman q - GR spoilers

[David Morris]

My non-response is to be more zen and less analytical during a first GR
read.  At the end of my first time I knew I had enjoyed it greatly, but
didn't "understand" it.  But I knew it was like a big tapestry, with
infinite threads connecting into some big thing.

Your text quotes are a thread I'd not seen before.  My thought would be to
understand Blicero as a mythic figure in these quotes,not the real person.
His real person has become an archetype.

David Morris

On Wed, Jun 7, 2017 at 12:26 PM Shane Jones <shanerdjones at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> Long time reader, first time uh, writer.
>
> Finished my first read through of GR not a week ago. Something's been on
> my mind I wanted second, third, etc, opinions on. I got the impression from
> bits of pt 4 that Thanatz and Blicero were the same person. Choice quotes
> that lead me to this conclusion:
>
> Pg. 683 - "Could it be Blicero's eyes, in which Greta Erdmann saw maps of
> his Kingdom, are for Thanatz reflecting the past? That would be strange. .
> ."
>
> Pg. 684 - "Blicero's own reflection in the oval mirror, an old face. . .
> two faces looking back now, and Thanatz, are you going to judge this man?
> Thanatz, haven't you loved the whip? Haven't you longed for the brush and
> sigh of ladies' clothes? Haven't you wanted to murder a child you loved,
> joyfully kill something so helpless and innocent. . . The cry that breaks
> in your chest then, the sudden, solid arrival of loss, loss forever, the
> irreversible end of love, of hope. . . no denying what you finally are. . ."
>
> Pg. 685 - "He lost Gottfried, he lost Bianca, and he is only beginning,
> this late into it, to see they are the same loss, to the same winner. . .
> the two children, Gottfried and Bianca, are the same. . . He's lost
> Blicero, but it wasn't quite as real. . ."
>
> Where I'm getting tripped up is whether or not we're meant to believe
> these two are literally the same person, two aspects sharing a body, with
> Thanatz having "disposed" of his inner Blicero.
>
> It seems just as likely to me, as their names suggest, these two represent
> the same force, the same concept (death). The similarities in their
> character - chiefly their ultimately fatal obsession with their respective
> "children" - might speak more to their mutual devotion to their namesake.
>
> Could also be that Thanatz, having fallen off the Anubis (pg. 680 - "Back
> here, in [the Anubis'] wake, are the Preterite. . . blundering across one
> another's flotsam, the scrapings, the dreary junking of memories."), has
> found himself among the Preterite, stubbornly unable, or unwilling, to
> accept it. Given this "junking of memories," it might be easy to fall into
> delusions of identity.
>
> Could also be I'm a bit off the mark. If anybody cares to weigh in, I'd
> appreciate it.
>
>
>
>
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