{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1557", "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": 1557, "subject": "Death, Memory, Ghosts, Resurrection", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "1999-04-21T09:23:41+00:00", "last": "1999-04-22T12:37:14+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "1999-04-21T09:23:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Death, Memory, Ghosts, Resurrection", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In several essays and countless conversations, people have wondered \"Why\nSeverian? What qualifies him?\" And often, after listing his various\nstrengths and weaknesses, his first known special talent is hit upon as\nbeing somehow the most significant: \"It must be his Memory.\"\n\nIt may be, but I haven't seen anyone pursue that thread--it is usually a\nstepping stone to someplace else, or a side attraction. (Or maybe I'm just\nforgetting something.)\n\nSo here's a thumbnail sketch:\n\nLet's pretend, for the sake of this experiment, that his memory is the\n=only= thing that qualifies Severian. (I.e., it is not that he is a\ntorturer; nor that he is the person on throne when the timer runs out; nor\nanything else.)\n\nNow then...\n\nThroughout the Urth Cycle we see many funeral customs and the way that\nmemory plays a part in them: from the hut where Hallvard's people maintain\na memorial shield until nobody can remember that person anymore, to the\nAntechamber's memory of the navigator's funeral.\n\nWe also see how ghosts are raised--Malrubius and Triskele from Severian's\nmemories; the Vivimancer from the memories of an ancient being living on or\nnear Fomalhaut; the legions drawn from Severian to fight on Yesod.\n\nThe same rules for raising ghosts =seem= to apply to resurrecting corpses\n(which makes sense, of course, since in resurrection one is raising the\nghost and reuniting it with the body). But the various resurrections are\noften complicated by other things: who remembered Typhon for his\nresurrection (well, I would say the Claw); the Jonas ghost riding in the\nMiles body (actually this finds a possible solution in the outline above);\nwho remembered Dorcas (well, \"Charon,\" obviously); etc.\n\nSo Severian's memory is the same sort of lifeboat as we see in Ellison's\n\"Demon with a Glass Hand\" (where the question \"Where are all the people?\"\nis answered \"All on a wire in your robotic chest,\" iirc). Not only all the\nautarchs, however dimly, but also all the other people he has written\nabout--the text itself (writ by Severian, remember) is the final proof for\nYesod that he has the ability to recreate the world.\n\nNow, does this mean that Severian resurrects everybody from his narrative\nimmediately after transmitting the last chapter of URTH? No. But he is a\nliving momento mori, a breathing tombstone, for lost Urth: he is, himself,\nlike a shield of the dead in the hut of Hallvard's people.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Westlake", "address": "peter at harlequin.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-04-21T17:39:21+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Death, Memory, Ghosts, Resurrection", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "At 09:23 1999-04-21 -0800, you wrote:\n(interesting bit snipped ;-)\n..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "who remembered Typhon for his\nresurrection (well, I would say the Claw); " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think anyone did; I think Typhon's suspended animation\nmachinery restored him exactly as it was meant to, when Severian\nand Severian were fiddling with it trying to make it feed them.\n\nRe. the interesing bit snipped above: interesting!\nSome questions about Severian as living monument:\n\n1. Who is going to see/read his memories? Perhaps he will pass\n stories on to the survivors. But he has already passed on\n his manuscripts.\n\n2. Can't the Hierodules and their machines remember things?\n\n3. With all that time travel going on, why bother?\n\nI'm much more convinced by Severian's own explanation, that\nthe torturers are the only people who can be relied upon to\nDo What Needs To Be Done.\n\nSBear." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Stephenson", "address": "pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it" }, "date": "1999-04-22T09:49:38+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Death, Memory, Ghosts, Resurrection", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nIn several essays and countless conversations, people have wondered \"Why\nSeverian? What qualifies him?\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Surely, at least to some extent, Severian is Everyman? That may seem hard\nto accept of a rather dour torturer with a perfect memory, but I think\nWolfe wants us to make the imaginative attempt. It seems to me to make the\nreligious resonances stronger if Severian has no a priori claim to being\nchosen. Quite what `a priori' means in this chronological mess is another\nmatter, and this maybe a major spanner in the works of this theory: he\ncan't be Everyman because he's inextricably bound in right from the start\nwith a very complex and particular web of causality. So that carefully\ncancels out this posting.\n\nYours in nullity,\ncorncrake" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-04-22T12:37:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) re: Death, Memory, Ghosts, Resurrection", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mantis wrote:\nIn several essays and countless conversations, people have wondered \"Why\nSeverian? What qualifies him?\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Am I the only person who feels that we don't need to ask this one? :-)\nFor me, any explanation begins and ends with the words of Master\nMalrubius, when he tells Severian \"In you all the divergent tendencies\nof our race may have achieved synthesis.\" [Citadel, XXXI]. A peculiarly\neloquent, concise, classically Wolfean sentence, and one that has popped\ninto my mind at the oddest moments over the years.\n\nThat being said, I still found mantis's musing on Memory\nthought-provoking. I've been waiting for someone to suggest that\nSeverian's memory qualifies him to bring the New Sun because it was what\ntipped the balance in the battle on Yesod, that his superior\nrecollection led to the creation of superior - or more numerous -\nallies, and thus victory. Or has this already been suggested?" } ] } ] }