# Digest urth.v029.n036 *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 27 Jul 2000* > 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. --- ### Peter Stephenson *27 Jul 2000, 21:47* > From: Nigel Price > 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" > 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 Work: pws at CambridgeSiliconRadio.com Web: http://www.pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk ``` ---