{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1974", "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": 1974, "subject": "Stuff, Temptation", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "1999-11-22T16:10:32+00:00", "last": "1999-11-23T11:02:08+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "1999-11-22T17:46:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Stuff, Temptation", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Rostrum wrote:\nDoes Urth have rainbows? Did the Increate forget his promise to Noah? Or\nmight this be a clue that Urth is not our world, but perhaps another\n(earlier?) iteration of the universe in which God did not promise there\nwould be no more universal floods? Or maybe it's our universe, but the\nstory of God's promise to Noah is false." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "(Did we already discuss this question? It seems familiar, but I can't\nfind it in the archives.)<<\n\nYes, we (I) did. V25, Sun, 18 Apr 1999, \"Inire & the Flood\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Tony Ellis wrote:\nWhen he writes that he lies to himself, the reader is given\nwarning that all that he relates cannot be trusted to be true..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This is true, but I think it's just about as true of David Copperfield,\nIshmael, the nameless narrator of THE BROTHER KARAMAZOV, the old\n\"authorial\npersona as narrator,\" and Huckleberry Finn as it is of Severian.>" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "And Pip, and Holden Caulfield, and Graves' Claudius, and..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. We take it as read, surely, that whatever a\nfirst-person narrator tells us is filtered through his own\nperceptions and predjudices. It's a game the author plays with the reader.\n\nIf this is all you mean by Severian \"lying to us\", then I\nsay again, I'm on your side, Roy. But that's not what I\npersonally would call it, and I don't understand why you're\nsingling-out Severian for something every first-person narrator does.<<\n----------------------\n\nNone of those other narrators claimed to have a perfect memory. Both of his\nmanuscripts are reconstructed from memory, in each case years after the\nevents they relate. As others have pointed out recently, memory is dynamic,\nnot static, and he has to \"reconstitute\" his memories when he writes of\nthem. Even if we concede him an extraordinary ability to recall events, that\nrecall is subject to the same malleability as any other human. Therefore,\nwhat he writes from memory is necessarily prone to unconscious editing,\nespecially when it touches upon events which are invested with subjective\nimport, and that's assuming no conscious deceptions regarding those things\nabout which he lies to himself. It is his repeated insistence that his\nversion of events, based on his memories, is the true and correct one which\ncauses me to doubt him. Whether you call it lying, self-deception, wishful\nthinking, creative license or something else, his account strays from the\ntruth.\n\nSev's memory has been cited as the primary--perhaps only--qualification he\nhas to assume the mantle of Urth's Conciliator. He is supposed to have\nassumed the memories of his autarchal predecessors, those memories\ndiminishing in viability as they become more remote from Appian. Because\nneither Appian nor his predecessors had an eidetic memory, the memories he\npassed to Sev were subject to the normal degradations of time and the\nfailings of the flesh. Thus, memories much beyond Appian's were, for the\nmost part, so remote as to be inaccessible to Sev, possessing little more\nthan dream-like substance. That is why he writes so little of them and has\nlittle ghosts of memory that he cannot flesh out. So, the notion that Sev\nwas the legitimate Epitome of Urth because he was a walking memorial, a\ncurator of the past like Rudesind and Ultan, Providentially endowed with a\nmemoriousness stretching \"backward, perhaps, to Ymar, and behind Ymar to the\nAge of Myth\" is inherently flawed. If the Powers That Be choose to regard\nSev as emblematic of his species on Urth, that choice is largely arbitrary\nif founded on Sev's memory.\n\nThe more emotionally involved he is (or wishes to appear; I see no evidence\nthat he has any deep regard for *anyone* but himself; not even Thecla,\nbecause when he writes of her he *is* Thecla), the less reliable he becomes.\nAnother example of his lying/faulty memory: When he saw Thecla in the\nExamination room Zak told him not to cry. He denied he was crying, then\nrealized he was and wrote: \"If I had ever wept before, it was when I was so\nsmall I can scarcely remember it ...\" (V, XVIII) But when he left Dorcas in\nThrax: \"Just as when I had first left the Citadel I had pulled up my hood so\nthat the passersby might not see my smiles, so now I hid my face to conceal\nthe tears running down my cheeks.\" (III, XII) (I'm almost certain there is\nat least one other instance of him crying, but I can't recall it at the\nmoment.)\n\nThe instances in the text where he admits lying about something are even\nmore common than I thought. I've come across several more that I haven't\nposted; what's the point? People here just don't seem to want to hear of Sev\nbeing a liar. He's a murderer, a torturer, a thief, a coward, an adulterer,\netc., that's okay, just don't call him a liar. I wonder; are there *any* of\nthe Ten Commandments he *didn't* break? \n\nIn another vein--when Sev went to the House Azure he saw a door with \"...a\nstained-glass insert showing the Temptation.\" I take the allusion to be to\nthe Conciliator rather than Christ. If so, and the Temptation refers to the\nscene where Typhon tempted Sev, then how did the story get into popular\ntradition to become a subject of artistic expression? Sev hadn't lived the\nscene yet, much less written of it. He wasn't even the Conciliator yet when\nit happened. What was it based on? Or, like Jesus's prayers in Gethsemane\nwhen there was no one awake to hear and record them, we're not supposed to\nask?\n\nRoy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Ron Hale-Evans", "address": "rwhe at apocalypse.org" }, "date": "1999-11-22T16:10:32+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Stuff, Temptation", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 05:46 PM 11/22/99 -0600, you wrote:\nIn another vein--when Sev went to the House Azure he saw a door with \"...a\nstained-glass insert showing the Temptation.\" I take the allusion to be to\nthe Conciliator rather than Christ. If so, and the Temptation refers to the\nscene where Typhon tempted Sev, then how did the story get into popular\ntradition to become a subject of artistic expression? Sev hadn't lived the\nscene yet, much less written of it. He wasn't even the Conciliator yet when\nit happened. What was it based on? Or, like Jesus's prayers in Gethsemane\nwhen there was no one awake to hear and record them, we're not supposed to\nask?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Time travel is tricky. It may be that at some point after the New Sun\ncomes, Sev returns to the time of the Old Sun and recounts his story (in\nhis role as Conciliator) to a believing audience. After all, how did\n*anyone* know *anything* about the Conciliator when Sev was only a child?\nIt may also be that another \"version\" of Sev either underwent a separate\ntemptation and/or described the Temptation to someone.\n\nI am near the end of _Shadow_ in my most recent reading of TBOTNS; I will\nkeep an eye out for answers to this question, which has puzzled me at times\ntoo. I'm a little vague on the whole aquastor thing, frankly.\n\nSpeaking of which, does anyone agree with my assessment that (a) Triskele\nwas already dead, and is an aquastor from the moment Sev touches him and he\nopens his eyes, and that (b) it is likely that it is the aquastor Malrubius\nwho is caring for Triskele on his forays away from Sev?\n\nRon H-E" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Ron Hale-Evans: rwhe at apocalypse.org ... \nCenter for Ludic Synergy: \nKennexions GBG artgame: \nHexagram-8 I Ching Mailing List: \nPositive Revolution FAQ: " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-11-23T11:02:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Stuff, Temptation", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "And Pip, and Holden Caulfield, and Graves' Claudius, and..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes. We take it as read, surely, that whatever a\nfirst-person narrator tells us is filtered through his own\nperceptions and predjudices. It's a game the author plays with the reader.\n\nIf this is all you mean by Severian \"lying to us\", then I\nsay again, I'm on your side, Roy. But that's not what I\npersonally would call it, and I don't understand why you're\nsingling-out Severian for something every first-person narrator does.<<\n\nNone of those other narrators claimed to have a perfect memory." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, but they're assumed to have. They report conversations word-for-word, they tell us exactly what\nsomeone was wearing twenty years after the event. We don't say \"oh, so Pip has a photographic memory\",\nbut we also don't quibble and say \"oh, he couldn't possibly be remembering all this perfectly.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Even if we concede him an extraordinary ability to recall events, that\nrecall is subject to the same malleability as any other human." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, any other human. But with fictional, first-person narrators, the convention is to overlook this\nmalleability and assume that what the narrator remembers is what happened." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It is his repeated insistence that his\nversion of events, based on his memories, is the true and correct one which\ncauses me to doubt him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Does Sev actually repeat this -that- many times? In any event, I really think that in this case this is\njust a simple narrative device. GW loves 'em. His stories are written in journals, presented as\ndialogues, recorded in electronic devices, scribbled on a scroll with a lead stylus before the narrator\ncan forget them. In \"I-Bem\" the medium is the robot's own fading memory chips. In the case of TBOTNS,\ninstead of having to -assume- that a narrator has perfect recall when he reports every conversation and\nevent , as we have to do with every other first-person story, we have a narrator who really can pull\noff this trick." } ] } ] }