{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1439",
    "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": 1439,
    "subject": "More Robert and Marie musing",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-03-18T14:50:28+00:00",
    "last": "1999-03-18T14:50:28+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0024-0073@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1999-03-18T14:50:28+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) More Robert and Marie musing",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "corncrake wrote:\nIt's not even quite Deuteronomy.  The original biblical quotation is about\nMoses, who isn't mentioned by name in what they're reading --- I forget the\nterm used, it's some generic SF grand-sounding title."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "(Just to pedantically set the record straight, Moses is only referred to\nas he\\him. The title you're remembering, \"the Compassionating\", referred\nto God.)\n\nI used to think that the differences were just a consequence of what\nSeverian wrote being translated back into English, but in fact there are\nsome big chunks from the original that are just plain missing. It reads\nmore like one of the stories from Wonders of Urth and Sky that has been\nretold so many times almost all the original sense has gone."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "This brings up the question of language.  Severian can understand them, and\ndoesn't speak English, French or Zulu; it seems the language used by the\nthree is the local one, with the added touch that the bible comes out a bit\nweird."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Yes, I'm leaning more and more towards Explanation Two, that the people\nin the hut are actually from Severian's time, but \"chant-caught\".\nPerhaps Marie reads Deuteronomy the way she does because that's the way\nher Urthian mind perceives the text, or perhaps she's reading verbatim,\nand it's the book itself that is at fault."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}