Abel

The readership should be interested to learn of the birth of my son, Abel, just over a week ago.  (That was where the north wind went – to get the sun - as the song has it.*)  Naming a boy Abel has some simple benefits (short, pronouncable) which are great strengths in conjunction with a fairly irregular surname.  There are some social complications (the popularity of the name Kane, the many rhymes).  There is a big social implication in the homonym, Able.  This works out as either a terrible burden of expectation, or a ludicrously hopeful piece of nominative determinism.  I will resist both of those.

I will however, read him ‘The Wizard-Knight’ by Gene Wolfe, which has a hero called Able who becomes a great Knight when he is old enough.  This is a story of the great virtue of courage, the virtue without which you can’t stick to your other virtues should you have any.  Able carries a magical item, a thread of the lives of others gifted him when he gained his majority in the middle world, below Sky and above Aelfrice. He is a changeling from our world, and the lives in the thread are our lives strained to breaking and never breaking.

I feel that Gene Wolfe has named his Able in an act of prophetic naming (as when one of the prophets names a son ‘Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz’ meaning ‘the spoil flies, the prey hastens’, a boy who was a living sign of danger only getting larger).  He created his Able for an age in which courage is not honoured, because it has spent itself again and again tilting at windmills and other follies.  He is there in the imagination to help us carry our loads when we feel we aren’t able.  This is the meaning of his bad sleep, and exhaustion when the bowstring is nearby – we have drawn on him and he is drained.  (The whole book seems like it could be a letter for the man who lost his kid brother when he was young, some elaboration of the ‘He’s watching down on us’ way of being able to digest death.)

The second association is the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis 3.  Abel is a herdsman, while Cain is an agriculturalist.  Abel sacrifices blood to God, which is acceptable, while Cain’s fruit platter does not cut it.  Cain is resentful, and God warns him, but he fights with Abel and kills him.  Abel’s blood ‘cries out to God from the earth’, and God asks Cain: ‘Where is your brother?’  Cain answers ‘Am I my brothers keeper?’

Abel is a good shepherd.  Cain, after declining to sacrifice blood to God, ends up killing his brother. The irony of his answer ‘Am I my brothers’ keeper?’ amplifies that he is no shepherd.

These are associations, but all proper names are just pointers.  The boy himself is the thing.

* 5 points for anyone who can identify the referent here.  As no points have been issued on this blog, you will rocket to the top of the readership leagues.

PS.  Still no progress on the Tristrapedia.  It will be improvised from here.