Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v029.n036

From: Peter Stephenson <pws at pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 21:47:28 +0000

> From: Nigel Price <NigelPrice1 at compuserve.com>
> Did you hear the reading of "In the Heart of the Sea" on Radio 4 recently?

Missed that, sounds fascinating.  I wonder why it's in fashion at the
moment?

> As to what happens to Severian at and immediately after his passage through
> the gate of Nessus, well, you do gradually get bits and pieces of the
> story, a detail here and there throughout the length of TCotC. I'm
> rereading the whole thing very slowly as part of the research for my paper
> for the symposium at the end of August. Will you be there?

I've been thinking I really ought to go...  For ages I've been planning an
essay on time themes in the Book, and I have this inferiority complex about
showing my face in polite society until I actually sit down and write it.

> From: "Tony Ellis" <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
> Slightly more on topic: one of the conceits in Barnes' novel is the idea
> of history repeating itself, but as a whimper rather than a bang. (The
> image he uses, as I recall, is the way a belch faintly brings back the
> taste of the hotdog you had earlier in the day.) This certainly chimes
> with the idea of Hethor standing in for Simon of Cyrene, and indeed with
> the idea of Severian standing in for Christ.

`And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'

(Yeats, `The Second Coming', from the collection `Michael Robartes and the
Dancer'.)  There's another essay I should have written ages ago.  Sigh.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws at pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk>
Work: pws at CambridgeSiliconRadio.com
Web: http://www.pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk

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