{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1843",
    "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": 1843,
    "subject": "Juturna",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-22T23:48:19+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-22T23:48:19+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0216@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-22T23:48:19+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Juturna",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: \"Greene, Carlton\" <CGreene2 at hunton.com>\nSubject: The Conation of Catodon; Severian's skull (long)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Thanks for a really thoughtful message, most of which I'm not addressing.\nBut\nI do want to offer this, in a conjectural way."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "One last, odd wrinkle: Sev's conversation with Juturna in the audience\nchamber of the House Absolute.  Sev says of Juturna: \"She saved me once\nwhen\nI was a boy\" and then to her \"Do you remember that?\"  Juturna replies \"No.\nIt hasn't yet occurred.  It will, because you spoke.\"\n\nWhat does this say about Juturna's actions throughout the novels?   We now\nhave reason to think that they were motivated in part by her encounter\nwith\nSev before the Flood.  Why does she help him knowing the New Sun will come\n(and Abaia be destroyed) if she does?  And earlier, what help does she\nthink\nshe can bring to humans about to be drowned in the HA? (see 305-06).  Why\nisn't Juturna concerned about Abaia's demise both just before and after\nthe\nflood?  Was she somehow bound to go back and save Sev because of his words\nabout it, but still hoped to manipulate him in Abaia's favor in the past?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Perhaps the immediate conclusion, given the odd powers of the undines, is to\nassume that they too are living backward like the cacogens. But, maybe\nbecause I've been thinking about Matthew's gospel, I'd like to suggest a\nmore \"literary\" answer: This incident will be taken as truth because it has\nnow been \"spoken\" or written about, just as Christian fundamentalists take\nthe biblical nativity myths (the more far-fetched ones) as \"occurring.\" In\nshort, it will become part of the legend of Severian simply because he has\ntold of it, not necessarily because it \"really\" happened.\n\nOnly a suggestion, but at least as likely as living backward.\n\nAs for Juturna's motives, who can say? She seems a great Niobe figure\nweeping for Urth's children just at the onset of the flood. The \"real\"\nJuturna (or Diuturna, yes, exactly the same as the lake) was a Roman\nfountain and water goddess and I believe that under Lake Diuturna is Rome\nitself (I am not of the South American school). So Juturna is a sort of\nsymbol of past greatness and--who knows?--maybe a hope for future greatness\ntoo. That marvelous image of the joyous leap from wave into sunshine at the\nend of NS#5 makes me hope so.\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}