Inire

In his Lexicon Urthus, mantis translates "Inire" plausibly enough by reference to the Latin for "to begin, to enter". I'd like to suggest that a different, more literal reading might also be helpful: that of Father Inire as "Father In Ire". By striving to make the New Sun a reality, Inire helps bring a new Deluge to Urth, ultimately exterminating the people of the Commonwealth; would it to be fair to regard him as an instrument of Divine justice, of God in His Ire punishing the human race for the excesses of the past (the First Empire, Typhon, or civilization in general)? Needless to say, I don't see the birth of Ushas as an unalloyed blessing; Severian writes of "what I have done to Urth", and he has always seemed to me a dupe of the Increate, the carrier of a merciless judgement. //-------------------------------------- Nicholas Gevers potto at webmail.co.za

Potto, Re: Father Inire as "Father In Ire". Several years ago now, Jennifer K. Stevenon (who btw had an essay on John Crowley's work in NYRSF last summer) took a similar approach to an opposite reading: she parsed it as "Daddy Isn't Angry (Anymore)." (I =think= she meant this in the sense of a transition from the God of the Old Testament to the God of the New Testament; and, in the Urth sense, that if the Powers were still angry they would just let Urth continue crawling toward the icey eternal grave.) I'm quite fond of JKS's interpretation, and yours as well. Certainly either can be used: it all depends upon the application in question. We might think that the discovery of a mythological/saintly/kabbalistic "Inire" would erase all other Inires as mere shadows, but until such discovery is announced I still doubt that other readings would be invalidated. So is Inire "Yaweh," the big sky-daddy himself? No, of course not. But he is an agent of Yesod, and he may represent Yaweh in the same crude sense (on the small stage; at the lower level) that the Autarch's anpiels represent "angels." And Tzadkiel is even more "angelic," which is what causes us to downgrade our rating of anpiels, yet they don't seem to think they are closer (or even as close?) to the Increate than Humanity (but then again, =that= is also a trait of angels!). Yesod is engaged in a technological program that Briah has no words for; like explaining even an encyclopedia entry on atomic fission to a stone age tribe--you are going to get something closer to RIDDLEY WALKER. =mantis=