{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2342",
    "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": 2342,
    "subject": "Cyriaca",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-11T09:31:15+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-11T09:31:15+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0150@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jonathan Laidlow",
        "address": "laidlojm at hhs.bham.ac.uk"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-11T09:31:15+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Cyriaca",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hi Jim,\n\nThanks for a stimulating suggestion for rereading portions of \n'Sword of the Lictor' again, specifically chapters 5-7, if anyone \nneeds the reference.\n\nA few thoughts in addition to those already posted. Sadly they take \nthe form of questions, as I'm still puzzled myself:\n\nWhat relevance does the context of the story have? Specifically - \nCyriaca is a fallen woman - a failed Pelerine (Roman Catholic nun \nanalogue?). Her eyes weren't right  - which is suggestive of either a \nfailure of vision (she could not 'see' the truth which a Pelerine must) \nor that she saw too much, that she had knowledge, specifically the \nworldly knowledge of sex. Certainly after leaving the Pelerines she \nenters into the fallen world of Eve, and she is to be killed for her \npromiscuity. She also seduces our hero, not that he complains. All \nthis suggests the fallen world of post-Edenic humanity, where \nknowledge is the cause of the fall.\n\n2. The archive is quite obviously, in one sense, a mythology of the \nlibrary of Nessus. Cyriaca suggests that it is in Nessus and that it \nhas a guardian. A library is a repository of knowledge, after all.\n\n3. The story is also quite evocative of the story of Pandora's box \nand the evil knowledge loosed on the world, although here the \nknowledge is not absolute evil. Indeed, by giving up their \nknowledge of base Earthly things the beings lose something. They \nlose more when the knowledge is regained.\n\n4. Why does Severian state that he knows 'more of it than you, but I \nhad never heard it before' (end chap 6) What is he referring to? The \nobvious answer is the library of Master Ultan, but there are probably \nmore answers which the denizens of Urth can drag up. Anyone?\n\nJonathan\n\n\n --\nJonathan Laidlow\nEditor, Ultan's Library\nAn electronic journal for the study of Gene Wolfe\nhttp://www.english.bham.ac.uk/ultan\nemail: J.M.Laidlow at bham.ac.uk"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}