Your very right about numbers! 12 is another big one (Wallenstein preparation time for the forgery, time Strongbow went unheard from, and the poker game). Your point about Whittemore's birthday is particularly interesting. 1933 kind of marks the end of a generation for the Quartet. After 1933,no longer are these heroic and mythical characters like Strongbow, Wallenstein, Joe, Munk, and Cairo at the forefront of the novels. With Nile Shadows, the books become specifically espionage novels (they do maintain a mythic air though), while the first two are specifically mystical and fantastical. To me, there's a clear shift at the midpoint of the Quartet. It is interesting that this shift is marked in 1933; the world becomes more of what Whittemore knows rather than what he imagines in the year of his birth.

As always, thanks for the insights, Anne. Take care.

Joe

--Previous Message--
: Who knows what Whittemore read - widely I
: suspect.
:
: I have been re-reading the quartet for the
: last week or so. It's amazing, you notice
: new things every time you read the books.
: This time I was struck by the fact that 33
: seems to be a significant number, eg the 33
: volumes of Strongbow's Levantine Sex, and
: other incidences are cited with 33 as the
: significant number. Has this number
: something to do with Whittemore's birth
: year? Or is it something to do with Christ's
: age at his death? Or does it have some
: esoteric meaning in the Koran or in Hebrew
: or Christian texts?
:
: Sorry that doesn't address your query
: Joseph, but probably Whittemore had read the
: Decameron, no way of knowing really.
:
:
:
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: Is anyone familiar with Gotthold Lessing's
: poem Nathan the Wise? In the poem, the main
: character, Nathan, who is a Jew, avoids
: claiming that a Moslem, Christian, or Jew is
: truest and best by telling a parable of
: three rings, in which three brothers, after
: much struggle, end living harmoniously,
: rather than at war b/c they don't know which
: was the true and original ring.
: The parable is taken from the Decameron, and
: appears in several other works, but I'm not
: sure if any contemporary writers use this
: theme...besides Whittemore of course. The
: notion of religious tolerance looms largely
: in the Quartet. The Sinai Bible sort of
: serves as the true and original ring. I love
: too that the authors were a blind man and a
: scribe, which gives EW a kind of Homeric
: quality. I wonder if at any point EW
: himself had studied or read for pleasure
: these works. Any thoughts?
:
:
: