[the_old_crowd] Re: Dumbledore's Unspeakable Word (going OT)

[Mike & Susan Gray]

Kneasy sneezed: 

> Now those of a religious bent will tend to assume things like
> love of fellow man and all that tripe. Not so. 

Not to be judgmental or anything, old boy, but I'd like to think you're
being a little naïve about us religious types. I belong to the species
(though I suffer from a touch of congenital agnosticism) - but I'm very
proud about being as cynical as the next guy when it comes to the love
of my (or anybody else's) fellow man. (Though I can't hold a candle to
plenty of other religious sorts. A nice, stern calvanist take on the
natural human capacity for love is enough to make a gorilla blush.)

Anyway, that was exactly my point about the postmodern bowlderization.
It's very reasonable to guess that Jo, feeling a bit squeamish about
having Dumbledore do an Oprah, elided the word love. Love *is* such an
ambiguous, overused word, so why not leave it sort of hovering on the
edges of the text, making you think about what you use it for before you
fill it into the blanks?

BTW, that dovetails nicely with what Pippin said about verbal presence
and absence. The Jewish taboo about - or reverence for - the
tetragrammaton gets directly to the point. (I had the point in mind when
I was writing last time, but I got side tracked with all those bad words
and dirty jokes.) I wonder whether any word - besides love - has been in
vain (stupidly, for all the wrong reasons) more often than "God." (And
as the Gold 'ol book say, "God is love.") In both cases, the longer the
philanderers, preachers and politicians drone, the less the words mean.
Sometimes, the only way to make them audible above the roar of verbiage
is to voice them in silence.

At any rate, in a passage that gets to the essence of Jo's religious
thinking in the HP series, that elision seems very interesting. 

* * * * 

Oh yeah - speaking of reticence, one other thing: you guys ever noticed
how the most religiously affirmative fantasy writers (like Tolkien or
Lewis) seem to have the fewest religious elements in their fiction? If
you want religion galore, read Pullman.

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray) 
_______________________

"Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, 
so that may not have been bravery...."