{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2982",
    "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": 2982,
    "subject": "fuligin",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-02-24T02:32:21+00:00",
    "last": "2002-02-24T02:32:21+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0202-209@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Steve Strickland",
        "address": "sstrickland at satx.rr.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-02-24T02:32:21+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) fuligin",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Ok, I'm sure this is old news, since it involves The Book of the New Sun,\nbut I thought it was interesting.\n\nI was looking up the word 'fuligin' in the dictionary the other day.  I was\ninterested to see that sitting right in front of the 'fuligin'-like words\n(namely, 'fuliginated', meaning 'of a sooty color or appearance'; 'fuligo',\nmeaning 'soot'; and 'fuliginous', meaning 'blackened with soot'), there were\nwere several similar sounding words derived from a root with a quite\ndifferent meaning.  These were 'fulgurate' ('emit flashes like lightening');\n'fulguration' ('the action of lightening'; 'in assaying, a brightening in\nthe appearance of a molten metal'); 'fulgurous' ('resembling, full of or\ncharged with lightening').\n\nLike the little girl in the jacal Severian brought back to life, we all know\nthat the fuligin that is blacker than black, when worn by Severian, the\ntorturer who is not a torturer, is in reality whiter than white.  Severian\nis the shadow of the torturer, which means, in Chesterton's terms, that he\nis not the torturer, not death, but something in fact like the opposite of\ndeath; and it is he who brings the white sun as the new sun.  As I recall,\ntoward the end of Citadel of the Autarch Severian even laughs at himself as\nhe describes how he exchanged the cloth that is blacker than black for the\nwhite that is whiter than white.\n\nSo I wonder if Wolfe intentionally selected the term fuligin in part because\nits root word meaning 'soot' is so similar to the root word meaning\n'lightening'.   Sort of a play on words.  Something like that would\ncertainly be within his bags of tricks, uh, I mean, repertoire.\n\nSteve\n\n*****************\n           Who are you in those bright clothes?\" she asked.  And then, \"Oh,\nI am dreaming.\""
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}