{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1559",
    "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": 1559,
    "subject": "You Are What You Remember",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-21T14:45:28+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-21T14:45:28+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0025-0115@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mitchell A. Bailey",
        "address": "mab at lindau.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-21T14:45:28+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) You Are What You Remember",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In the vein of this ongoing \"Death & Memory\" discussion, I had noticed\nthere seems to be a motif or idea running throught B/UNS and some other\nWolfe works as well relating memory and resurrection or immortality. It\ncould be expressed roughly as follows:\n\nPerfect Transference of the memories = Transference/resurrection of the\nSelf.\n\nApparently Mr. Wolfe is exploring the idea that if all the memories of\nsentient entity A are transferred perfectly and in toto to entity B, \nEntity A for all intents and purposes lives in B. If B had no mind or\nmemories to begin with, then B = A.\n\nThe best New Sun example might be Severian himself in UNS. Not just\nonce, but twice (at least), Sev describes dying and then opening his\neyes and sitting up in a new aquastor body, which subsequently\n'solidifies'. The Sev who fell down the Ship's air shaft or was clubbed\nto death by his adoring Inca worshippers would be \"A\" in the memory/self\ntransfer, and the new aquastor-body which awakens would be \"B\". \nNarrating in the first person, the Sev who eventually retires to the\nbower by the beach on Ushas (perhaps prevailing upon Odilo's descendant\nto keep bringing him libations of margarita with little paper umbrellas?\n<g>) and writes the memoir we received as UNS is, at most, someone who\nreceived the memories of someone who received the memories of Severian\nthe torturer-who-became-Autarch. Yet from this Sev's point of view there\nwas no real change or significant discontinuity.\n\nAnd this seems to properly happen only when A is dead and B comes or is\nrestored to life. Recall the Hierodules' admonition in UNS as Sev is\nrevived in Apu-Punchau's tomb: \"Our eidolons are always of the dead [or\nthe not-yet-born, as on the planet of Yesod]. Have you not wondered why?\nBe warned!\". Or Chatelaine Thea \" It is said that memories thus held\ntogether may amaze the mind\". Right. One of the consequences of course\nis a thorny plot/theme complication.\n\nOther examples of this idea in B/UNS:\n\nThecla living again in Severian (induced by Vodalus' alzabo, but\nhallowed by the Claw), BNS\n\nThe predecessors' memories installed in a reigning Autarch, BNS\n\nOther aquastors (Malrubius in BNS, the others in the Hall of Testing in\nUNS), who seem to have been constructed from the memories Sev had of\nthem.\n\nthe rite of alzabo as practiced by Vodalus' party, BNS\n\nthe memories subsumed and exploited by the living alzabo of its prey,\nBNS. Becan and Severa \"haunted the dim thicket of the beast's brain, and\nbelieved they lived\".\n\ncould the near-drowning with which Sev commences the narrative have been\nan actual drowning followed by an eidolonic substitution of the same\nsort? (by whom? Abaia? Why?) I don't particularly believe in that idea,\nbut it raises interesting questions. B/UNS keeps referring to that\nincident and the idea that someone died in Severian's place in some\nsense or other. \nAlso, if one is hunting Christ-parallels, I would propose that incident\nas the analogue of Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist. Baptism is said\nto symbolize death, particularly the 'death ' of the 'old man of sin' as\none is 'born again'.\n\nThere are other examples of this idea to be found outside the \"New Sun\"\nmilieu:\n\nthose pitiful techno-revenants of \"The Packerhaus Method\" (ugh! Better\nDamnation Through\nChemistry! ) \n\nmaybe, the Mainframe \"Gods\" of LS. Presumably Typhon and his brood still\nlived when the\nWhorl was launched, but from the viewpoint of its inhabitants he was\ndead and gone.\n\nand, of course, good ol' Mr. Million in 5HC\n\n\n(on the other hand poor old Latro of \"Soldier of the Mist\" seems almost\nto be a nonperson at times as his stuggle with his crippled memory keeps\nhim in a permanent identity crisis, as it were)\n\nI'm sure other examples might exist in those Wolfe works I haven't read\nyet."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}