Subject: (urth) Green Man

From: Timothy Reilly <treilly at ozemail.com.au>
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 05:30:31 +0000

Why does the Green Man tell Severian that Agia can be found "above ground"?

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 15:51:19 +0000

Hello Timothy Reilly!

>Why does the Green Man tell Severian that Agia can be found  "above ground"?

Since the Green Man can supposedly see into the future, and we have
Severian's future in hand, the Green Man's phrase may relate to the mine at
Saltus (which is the next place Severian will see her--"above ground" on
the surface rather than "under ground" in the mine shaft), or, since this
seems rather weak, it may refer to the widow's cabin in the mountains,
where Agia comes down the stairs from the attic where she was
hiding--definitely "above ground."

Still later, she comes down from the sky on a winged thing and plucks him
up from behind enemy lines--come to think of it, that was "above ground,"
too.

Or maybe the Green Man is just bluffing.

=mantis=

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Peter Stephenson <pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 09:14:01 +0000

Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:
> Since the Green Man can supposedly see into the future...
> 

(late again, holiday trip to Ravenna, Urbino, life's hard. sigh.)

I haven't gone back to check, but reading the Book before my impression was
very strong (in fact, I was quite certain) that the Green Man was simply
giving out standard platitudes like any fortune teller in a fairground.  I
saw this as an example of Wolfe's brilliance with paradox --- he really
does come from the future and so can `predict' it, but of course he doesn't
know all the details about everyone's lives, so he has to make them up.
Then Severian's first guess, `he simply meant that she was alive', is the
right one; the entirely intentional oracular quality of the utterance has
allowed him to reinterpret it some other way.

corncrake