Fawkes: His Age, His Name and the Timing of Ollivander's Wand Production

[Martin]

No: HPFGUIDX 54317

Steve (bboy_mn) and I had an interesting exchange which ended with:

Me:
>> JKRs comment implies the phoenix lives to "an immense 
>> age" *because of* it's ability to regenerate, not that it has 
>> immense individual life spans.
> 

Steve wrote:
> While JKR's mythology of the Phoenix many not match history 
perfectly,
> it is still based on the standard mythology of the common Phoenix. 
How
> can the most common age of a Phoenix lifecycle of 500 years be
> considered an 'immense age' when wizards themselves appear capable 
of
> living to over 200 years old? On that scale to qualify as 'immense',
> it would have to live many thousands of years.

Me again:
Can I just clarify that when I say 'lifespan' I mean from first birth 
to final death, not 'lifecycle' which I intend to mean from burning 
and rebirth to next burning.

Can I also then add that I think it is worth looking at JKR's magical 
creatures as she writes about them and put aside much of our real-
world folklore? Her unicorn foals have attributes (coloured gold 
until aged 2 then silver until aged about 7) that I have not come 
across in other folklore. I don't have my books to hand but I expect 
it is possible to find other examples of where JKR has taken magical 
creatures from real-world folklore and given then different or 
modified attributes to suit her stories.

Moving on now, nothing I said limited a JKR phoenix (for want of a 
better phrase since that's what we are discussing) to a 500 year 
lifespan. They may live much much longer than this, and indeed 
to "immense" ages. We do not know what JKR is comparing 
that "immense" with. She does not say she is comparing that with a 
150 year old wizard headmaster and I take it to mean she is comparing 
it to an ordinary human lifespan. If I die aged 75 then a 500 year 
old phoenix lifespan of 500 years is "immense" to me (a horribly 
subjective word and one I think it's hard to measure, don't you 
agree) ;)

I wrote:
>> Dumbeldore's comment to Harry that he was sorry Harry had to see 
him
>> on a burning day strongly implies that Dumbledore has seen him on 
a 
>> burning day. 

Steve responded:
> You say 'stongly implies'; I say vaguely implies. Dumbledore could
> just as easily have been basing that statement on general knowledge 
of
>  Phoenixes, or on the experience of having seen another Phoenix 
burn,
> or more likely based on the fact that before Fawkes burned he was
> molting and generally looking pretty ragged. He wouldn't have had to
> see Fawkes burn before because he could see on that very day, that
> Fawkes looked bad. So the comparison could have been Fawkes'
> appearance on a normal day vs appearance that day just before he 
burned.

I understand your point, but generally when a person says something 
like "I'm sorry you had to visit my garden after a long dry spell 
since my South American Spagbolingias look so wilted in this heat" it 
usually implies direct personal experience of how the Spagbolingias 
look when they are this dried up, not a comment based on the general 
appearance of Spagbolingias in dry hot weather or the next door 
neighbours Spagbolingias. I still take Dumbledore's comment to be one 
spoken from personal experience of Fawkes previous burning days (note 
not previous ragged looking days, but *burning* days). I think we 
will have to agree to disagree on this one. My impression is still 
that Dumbledore has seen Fawkes experience this before, and in fact 
reasonably frequently since he is quite blase about it. If I owned a 
phoenix that burnt only once every 500 years I would consider myself 
very privelidged to experience a burning day in my lifetime and would 
not merely have a 5 minute passing conversation about it with a 
friend. If this *were* Fawkes' once-in-500-years burning then I think 
such a wise and sensitive man as Dumbledore would be much more 
expressive over the incident.

Again if phoenixes do burn in the WW only about once every 500 years, 
then Dumbledore is indeed a lucky man to have seen any other phoenix 
burn and be reborn, if we consider that he's talking about them 
generally and not Fawkes specifically.

I went on:
>> From the interview it seems JKR named him Fawkes as a link to Guy 
>> Fawkes. Guy Fawkes died in 1606.
 
Steve commented:
> The name Fawkes is a lot older than Guy Fawkes

Me:
I agree.

Steve again:
> Also, the name Fawkes is
> another bit of JKR naming irony, just as she named a dog animagus
> after the dog star Sirius, and Remus after a boy raised by wolves.
> This is something in the real world between JKR and her readers. 
There
> is no indication in the fictional world of the book, that Fawkes was
> named after Guy Fawkes.

Me:
That is a valid argument. However I argue with equal validity that 
the names are more than just a play on words between JKR and her 
readers. I argue that the names are real in the WW and are based on 
actual historical (our-world) characters. JKRs world draws so much 
from our-world mythology that the two must be the same world for 
the "jokes" to work. If Fawkes the phoenix isn't named after Fawkes 
the gunpowder-plotter there *is* no play on words and no point in 
naming him thus in the book.

[rest snipped]
Steve:
> Just some thoughts.

I'm enjoying reading them. Can't say I agree but I'm having fun 
discussing the issues ;)

Martin