Subject: (urth) Antechamber, Jonas, navigator

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 11:47:00 +0000

one of the solid clues we have is that one of the "original" ceilings has a
painting of clouds and birds on it--while such a room could exist in a
bunker or anywhere else (the pleasure dome of Dr. Strangelove), still, it
isn't an icon of "bunker" in the way that, for example, radiation warning
signs (I thought Severian saw these in the tunnels of the Citadel, =not= in
the House Absolute) and rows of stopped clocks are.

Clouds and birds would be a fine decoration for a spaceport.

Thematically, the "garden above and palace below" arrangement at first
echoes the Eloi/Morlock scenario of THE TIME MACHINE, furthered by the
similar situation on worldship Yesod.

A different tack: the name itself, "Antechamber," implies that there is
some room that is bigger or more important adjacent or nearby.  Again, this
is "the waiting room."  Waiting for justice--that is what the prisoners are
doing, that is certain.  We don't know much about the surrounding area, so
there might not be a "chamber" nearby.  But the odd thing is, we do know
that there is direct secret access from the Antechamber to the Presence
Chamber . . . could the antechamber have previously been a waiting room for
a teleportation station?

The Navigator.  New tack: let's take the lore as literal truth, there was
only one guy, and his name was Kim Lee Soong.  Not a whole crew, not a
fragment of a crew, just the one guy.  (This tack puts even more weight
upon Kim Lee Soong.)  From the physical evidence, the generations in the
antechamber look to be twenty years apart, so KLS was imprisoned for
trespassing or whatever it was at least 160 years ago (seven generations at
20 years plus one more generation).  If there was only one guy from a
starship, then it seems somewhat more likely that he himself was the
navigator.  And he was the first prisoner, or at least, the first lifelong
prisoner, of the antechamber.

My longtime sense of the navigator's funeral: the navigator was a prisoner
in the antechamber, and because he was considered something of a nobleman
(by virtue of his own personality or his title as navigator, which is a
high position indeed) even by his unwitting captors (because at this early
stage the antechamber wasn't the dumping ground it had degenerated to by
Severian's time), he was given a fitting and proper ceremony.  The other
prisoners saw the ceremony and it was burned into their lore because it was
the last glimpse they had of the outside world and/or the navigator was
very important to them.  (Previously I had assumed that there were more
crewmembers as prisoners, and for them the death of their highest ranking
member was really like the death of a king or president.)

(Still begs the question: what did the navigator do to become arrested?
The answer is that whatever it was, it was trivial, because we are told
major cases are/were dispatched quickly.  And yet for some reason it was
not a simple situation whereby he could be released--in a sense, every time
he came up for parole, there was some reason to keep him in custody.)

Putting these two things together for my first time: Kim Lee Soong was the
navigator, the only crewmember from some unnamed ship, and he became the
"culture hero" (and perhaps blood ancestor as well) for generations of
prisoners because he brought big knowledge of the starry heavens to people
who were trapped in a big cave.  (Note the Platonic imagery.)  Almost an
Oannes to them.

Another tack on Jonas' agitation: maybe there is a hint of "resurrection
shock" when he says that he feels that he is finally waking up.  If Jonas
personally knew a man named Kim Lee Soong, a specific man with a very
common name who he has learned was trapped in this prison and lived and
died, then Jonas would have two avenues for shock: the loss of another
personal link to his lost homeland; the concrete passage of biological time
compared to his mindnumbed and timeless robotic wandering.

The Navigator as JFK.  I wouldn't deny the cultural impact of JFK's funeral
on the 20th century USA and how this is reflected in what the girl says.
It also bundles nicely with the Apollo astronaut on Lune--but it is an
association a step removed.  (The Man on Moon picture is direct.)  JFK is
linked to Apollo as its visionary father, but one who didn't live to see it
achieve its goal . . . like Caesar, JFK died, and Nixon is the one who was
in the office.  So maybe a stronger case could be made that "the navigator"
is a wholly legendary figure, a composite of two historical figures--JFK
(visionary of Apollo Project) and, say, Henry the Navigator (visionary who
also died before the goal was achieved).

As always, it all depends upon the greater application.

=mantis=

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

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From: Mitchell A. Bailey <mab at lindau.net>
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 16:46:36 +0000

Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:
> 
> Antechamber-as-missile-base: it is possible, and in some ways likely. But
> signs ...

My take has been that the House Absolute was reclaimed as a
residence/command center rather early in the Monarch's Empire, several
millenia earlier; the painted ceiling could date from a time when that
part of the antechamber had been an apartment for the monarch or his
family or an important minister or staffer; the text clearly states that
several rooms were consolidated as the antechamber grew. Wouldn't you
think the monarch's retinue would include a good few Doctor
Strangeloves?

...(I thought Severian saw these in the tunnels of the Citadel, =not= in
> the House Absolute) and rows of stopped clocks are.

I saw that too. This was after he returned as Autarch. One of the perks
of office is that you get a decent flashlight to take with you down into
the Citadel tunnels. Apprentice Sev was in utter darkness and couldn't
see the signs or anything else. 

It was at the door to Inire's specula chamber in the Second House that
the "crimson teratoid sign" Sev surmised to be of extraterrestrial
origin appeared. That seems to be what we're interpreting as radioactive
or biohazard warning symbols.

> Clouds and birds would be a fine decoration for a spaceport.

Sounds sorta baroque for me, but fashions change. That's really what I
thought of reading that passage: one of those roccoco lavishly
ornamented European drawing rooms of say the eighteenth century, or the
frescoes of ancient Rome. You're assigned a suite in an ancient concrete
bunker, you've got money and slaves, what do you do to make it more
cheerful?

Why is this 'spaceport' underground? Protection against the backblast of
more primitive chemical thrusters? War or military application? (which
leads us back to...)
The spaceport which became the Citadel wasn't essentially underground;
the tunnels beneath it had gone out of use and memory by Sev's time,
probably long before Typhon's reign.

>...we do know

Uh, I get the impression that this type teleportation is the exclusive
province of Father Inire and a few of his peers, and was installed by
and for him.

> 
> The Navigator.  ... so KLS was imprisoned for
> navigator.  And he was the first prisoner, ...

Can't be; the antechamber/holding cell used as such, by your own
chronology in Lexicon Urthus, has to be over a millenium old since it
seems to predate the autarchs.

>...or at least, the first lifelong
>...

I rather have the idea that the crowded magistrates-court docket and
neglect go back much farther than 160 years.

The pettiest cases are ignored and forgotten, and so the accused wind up
in effect serving a life sentence by default. 
Sort of makes me think of the "Kafkaesque" criminal justice system of
St. Croix in "V.R.T.", where they eventually decide, pretty much by
default, to hold Victor Trenchard alias John Marsch Phd. indefinitely.
Release, over such a petty technicality as innocence of the crime for
which "Marsch" presumably was originally being investigated (the murder
of Maitre, for which Number Five already had been convicted and
sentenced), would constitute an unthinkable admission of error and
fallibility on the part of the Croix secret police.

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 00:34:44 +0000

compared to his mindnumbed and timeless robotic wandering.<<

    I think the all-too-human tendency to anthropomorphize is evident both
in Wolfe's writing about Jonas and our speculations about him. Ascribing
human emotions such as "shock", "agitation", loyalty, love, friendship,
loss, etc. to an android are misplaced. Jonas is not a man: he is a machine.
Any simulacra of human emotive states that Jonas manifests are just that. He
does not have a human brain, therefore is not subject to or capable of the
electro-chemical processes therein which are responsible for producing such
human sentiments. Wolfe invites such humanization of Jonas with Sev's
portrayal of "him": even the question of gender is an arbitrary one, one
determined by programming, not biology. If the spacecraft had killed a woman
instead of a man, would the android have become Joann rather than Jonas? Or
would "he" have just gone around in "drag" costume? <g>

    Earlier I speculated about Jonas's "age", or, more to the point, the age
of the human face he is wearing. No need to speculate: in chapter X of
_Claw_ Sev supposes him to be "about ten years my elder". He later ups that
estimate somewhat, but only on account of the knowledge Jonas possesses,
which Sev believes could only accrue to a man of middle age. Sev can be no
older than his early twenties, which means Jonas can appear to look not much
more than 33 years old. There is no evidence in the text to lead us to
believe that normal human beings have the means to extend life or youth, and
even if they did, there is no evidence that Jonas had access to such wonders
of medical technology. In fact, at least for the masses, most technology on
Urth is more primitive than our own.

    Even if the man killed when Jonas's ship crashed was a young man -- say
18 -- that would seem to indicate that the crash could not have happened
much more than 15 years before Sev met him. However old Jonas may be -- and
he does seem to come from an era much nearer ours than Sev's -- he cannot
have been wandering Urth for nearly so long as is commonly assumed.

Roy

---

From: Peter Stephenson <pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 11:29:21 +0000

"Roy C. Lackey" wrote:
> loss, etc. to an android are misplaced.

I don't think it can be that simple.  As someone was saying just earlier in
the week, Wolfe writes about non-humans as if they have `souls' in some
sense.  They're not completely human --- but they're not completely inhuman
either, just like Jonas himself.  There is no such stark distinction in
Wolfe's writing.  (And androids *are* anthropomorphic; another of those
cases of the literal and metaphoric being mixed which makes Wolfe so rich.)

corncrake

---

From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 11:47:14 +0000

On Jun 12, 12:34am, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> Subject: (urth) Re: Antechamber, Jonas, navigator
> mantis wrote:
> 

I think this is missing the point--I'd be surprised if Wolfe believes that
human emotions are purely a matter of particular electro-chemical processes of
the brain--just as many proponents of strong AI suppose the brain to be one of
the many "computers" capable of "running intelligence," human emotions might
have analogues produced by other physical systems.  This is only improper
anthropomorphizing if you take a rather provincial view of the applicability of
human emotions.  From Wolfe's complex theology, I'd say that he'd view (and I'd
tend to agree here) most human emotions as the images of Divine ones, analogous
if in no way the same.  And Wolfe's universe seems to not limit "the image of
God" to man, or at least to our garden-variety of man.  In one sense, Jonas IS
a man.B

> Urth is more primitive than our own.

But since we don't know anything about the process by which the dead man was
incorporated into Jonas, it very well could extend the tissue life a great
deal.  Suggestive, maybe, but certainly not conclusive about Jonas' age.

-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce