Subject: (urth) I Don't Get the Picture on Inire

From: Mitchell A. Bailey <mab at lindau.net>
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 10:59:25 +0000

Some additional thoughts on Inire:

Here is a puzzle I haven't been able to crack. Does any other Urthling
get the idea that there is some kind of connection between Father Inire
and the late artist Fechin? I get the feeling some kind of message is in
here.

Consider:
Rundesind's fondest childhood memory is of sitting for Fechin. As an
adult Curator, he works for Father Inire and seems to forever search for
that portrait of himself.

Casdoe's daddy remembers his childhood friend Fechin as physically
resembling a reddish, spindly monkey, which of course has been a
description attached to Inire.

I don't for one moment think that Fechin was an alias of Inire, but
there seems to be something encoded by author's-artifact into this
narrative. I'm just too dense to decode it.

An Inire sighting:

This is a rather painfully obvious one, but I spent a long time trying
to find it again. As Severian journeys alone from the House Absolute,
the day before he rejoined Dorcas and the players, Wolfe is careful to
describe a monkey "who might have been a wizened, red-bearded man in
fur"  watching Sev from a treetop. As Sev has already been identified as
the chosen one by this point, it only makes perfect sense that Inire
would keep an eye on him.

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