{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1187",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1187,
    "subject": "Cumaean's divinations",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-10-15T14:30:46+00:00",
    "last": "1998-10-15T14:30:46+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0020-0026@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Parmenter",
        "address": "dan at lec.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-15T14:30:46+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Cumaean's divinations",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: \"Robert Borski\" <rborski at coredcs.com>\nWhen Severian as a very young boy runs his first errand to the Witches\nTower, he tells us \"I was ushered into the presence of an old woman who sat\nin the only chair I had yet seen there, staring through a glass tabletop at\nwhat appeared to be an artificial landscape inhabited by hairless, crippled\nanimals.\" \n\nBut what might these hairless, crippled animals be?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "At one point we somewhat jokingly discussed the idea that this was a\nPac-Man game (or another video game)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Of course, Severian at this age may not fully appreciate what he's seeing,\nbut it does seem the Cumaean may be attempting some sort of clairvoyance,\nlooking at something a good deal away in time or space."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I tend to favor the view of the Witches as intelligence gatherers.\nIt's not difficult to imagine that they'd have various surveillance\ndevices available to them."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "If there were only one hairless, crippled animal, I'd suggest it was the\nbottled mandragora Severian finds in the long-abandoned autarch's quarters\nin the Citadel. But there's more than one."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Don't you think he'd have said \"crippled men\"?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On the other hand, what I find interesting is how many people are soon\nclaiming they know Severian once he's become Autarch. Rudeskind, oddly\nenough of all people, is the first to point this out, observing, in a long,\nlong series of examples,  \"Been a while now since I met a woman didn't kiss\nyou and sew up a hole in your pants...You're every boy that's ever been\nhere, and I've heard stories put on you that belong to men that was old\nwhen I was just a boy, and I've heard about things I did myself, seventy\nyears ago.\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think of this as one of the most straightforwardly stated things in\nthe book.  This is simply a statement that something akin to the \"folk\nprocess\" is happening: every little anecdote about mischievous boys\n(and others) is now associated with Severian.  But there's a literal\ntwist as well, since Severian now contains hundreds (thousands?) of\nother personalities, he is in a sense a true \"everyman\" and this\npassage reflects that.  He literally and figuratively embodies his\npeople.\n\nRemember also that Rudesind's \"role\" is to teach Severian that there\nwere others before him, in all possible senses.  Other torturers,\nother autarchs, other writers, etc.\n\nD"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}