{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/269",
    "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": 269,
    "subject": "More: Dr Talos's Play",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-11-24T16:07:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-11-24T16:07:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0005-0406@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-11-24T16:07:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) More: Dr Talos's Play",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Dan Rabin,\n\nYes, your list is nearly perfect.  According to Wolfe, the demons are\nboth played by Dorcas and Jolenta.\n\nRe: the missing characters, I would make a strong bet that \"the Moon\"\nis played by Dorcas, and I'm also guessing that the women play the\nAngelic Beings (mirroring how they played the demons).\n\nTony Ellis,\n\nRe: sons from stones in Greek myth, to be precise I believe you are\nthinking of Deucalion's Flood (alga note: wolves and wolfmen here), which\nis not exactly a genesis myth--more an eschatology and genesis myth\n(i.e., a flood myth).  \"Noah\" here being Deucalion, and his wife here\nbeing \"Pyrrha.\"\n\nRe: acts versus scenes.  Ah, so the whole misunderstanding was due to my\nmisuse of the technical term?  It happens: \"scenes\" they are then; a\none act play with several scenes on a stage without a curtain in a\nGreco-Roman culture.\n\nRe: divine week.  Right, that was the nebulous theory \"frosting\" built\nupon a few layers of cake, said cake in turn concocted of solid info\n(cast of characters; number of internal divisions; relation of play to\nseveral eschatology, genesis, and eschatology and genesis myths; how\noften genesis myths use a divine week; and so on).  Sorry, I really\nshould always remember to tag mantic things as mantic and solid\nthings as solid.\n\nRe: why Severian ends his transcript when he does.  I thought I had\nhammered this home a couple of times, but you've managed to get most\nof it despite my fumbling: yes, he is recording the play as it was\nperformed both times.  The first time, at Ctesiphon's Cross, he walked\non cold and was talked/stage directed through the whole thing (as was\nDorcas), and Baldanders did his scare bit; the second time, while\nsomewhat (i.e., barely) more practiced, ended the same way.\n\nMy main point of \"why\" before had to do with the wrath of Baldanders.\n\nBut now I'd like to move beyond that and make a hash of why Severian\nis being coy about the play (or why he has to be coy about it).\n\nThe fact is, I think we all agree, that this play is a blueprint of\nthe whole Urth-into-Ushas shebang.  Playing as an actor in such a\nplay obviously has an impact upon the actors who actually turn out to\nhave a role in the real deal.  We're back to the thorny thicket of\nFree Will versus Determinism.  If Severian leans too heavily upon the\nplay when he is going through the real thing, then he is just a\npuppet of a pre-determined Fate; if he willfully ignores the play as\nhe transforms the world, then he is a fool of Free Will.\n\nThe same thing is going on to a lesser extent with the stories in the\nbrown book.  They really are all messages to him about his big\nmission.\n\nThe same thing is going on to a much greater extent in a third text\nwhich is shrouded in such crafty silence that most readers do not\nknow that it was read in the cell by Thecla and Severian: the\noriginal, \"long lost\" work (that Dr. Talos has also apparently seen),\n(Canog's) THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN.  (No, I didn't figure this one\nout, dispite the clues--I only learned it in an essay by Wolfe in\nPLAN[E]T ENGINEERING.)\n\n(Obviously this has to be.  Otherwise, Severian would always be\nsaying to himself and the reader, \"Lessee now, what did the\nConciliator do next?\"  Rather than just going through life as it\npresented itself to him.)\n\nRe: which play (whole/truncated) is \"the one we are supposed to think\nabout,\" I disagree.  I think both are important--and often times, in\nWolfe's fiction, things hinted yet =not= said are very important\nindeed.  But everybody is entitled to a different opinion, of course.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}