{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3176", "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": 3176, "subject": "Time, Briah, 5HC, and other things", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-04-19T19:55:36+00:00", "last": "2002-04-19T22:03:58+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-04-19T19:55:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Time, Briah, 5HC, and other things", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rostrum asks:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Which raises the question again, are there no more rainbows on\nUrth?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And Nutria responds:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Is history running backwards on Urth, so that we are moving back\ntoward a Garden of Eden with a Green Man? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I wonder about this also ... In my favorite passage in SHADOW, the\nconversation with Dorcas in the boat on the lake, is the interesting\nremark that \"I, like you, would turn back time if I could...\" (note\nthat this is quoted from memory and somewhat-inaccurate. I am beginning\nto think I'm going to have to type the whole Lupiverse cycle into my\ncomputer!) Aside from the dramatic irony of the situation (Severian\n_has_ just turned back time and brought Dorcas to life, though neither\nof them knows it), it seems somehow relevant, though I'll have to post\nthe whole quote (unless someone else gets to it first) to explain \nwhy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Hey, I do have an answer, though it may be more than Wolfe \nintends. The rainbow is generated by the sun. If the Old Sun winks\nout for an instant before the New Sun kicks in, then briefly there\nis no rainbow, so there can be another Flood. Can't recall if this\nis so, though." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It shouldn't. The White Fountain just drops into the Old Sun; it \nshouldn't snuff it out or anything.\n\n* * * * * *\n\nNow...\n\nDoes anyone else beside me remember a comment in an early interview\nor something in which Wolfe suggested that these books may be taking\nplace, not in our far future, but in our distant past? This is a\nremarkably relevant question, for a number of reasons, among them the\nnature of the Severian/Christ relationship...\n\nIf this is true, then it offers a new and peculiar way to fit 5HC \ninto the Lupiverse, by asking and answering the question: \"Where did\nthe Shadow Children come from?\" They are clearly not natives of \nSte-Anne; they have clearly been on Ste-Anne for a long time, and they\nhave been keeping humans away by use of the \"song of bending the sky\" \nor whatever it's called. Who are they, when did they come, and why do\nthey do this? Possibly-plausible answer: they are (descended from) \nhumans from the pre-Autarchial Age of Empire.\n\nObviously this would be a massive retcon; Wolfe surely didn't have\nthe whole story of Severian wandering in his head when he wrote 5HC.\nBut it's an intriguing possibility... Wolfe seems to like finding new\npossibilities in old things (which is why I haven't totally abandoned\nthe idea that he might have retconned the Cumaean into an inhuma). It\nwould also allow for the possibility that there are no rainbows in the\ntime of the Autarchs..." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2002-04-19T20:27:23+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Time, Briah, 5HC, and other things", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 4/19/02 2:55 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at ddanehy at siebel.com wrote:\nRostrum asks:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Which raises the question again, are there no more rainbows on\nUrth?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Is it possible that, since the sun is dim enough that the sky is black\nduring the day, there are naturally no rainbows on Urth?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Does anyone else beside me remember a comment in an early interview\nor something in which Wolfe suggested that these books may be taking\nplace, not in our far future, but in our distant past?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"It occurred to me when I began _The Book of the New Sun_ that Urth has\nalready wonders enough--if only it has inherited the wonders of Earth. Or\nif (as may be) Earth's wonders have descended to it from Urth.\" (CASTLE OF\nDAYS (pb), p. 249)\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-04-19T22:03:58+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Time, Briah, 5HC, and other things", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 02:55 PM 4/19/2002, Blattid wrote:\nDoes anyone else beside me remember a comment in an early interview\nor something in which Wolfe suggested that these books may be taking\nplace, not in our far future, but in our distant past?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yep, though it's not \"our\" distant past. It was part of my loooong \ninterview, online at\nhttp://www.op.net/~pduggan/gwjbj.html\n\nAnd here is the relevant part, with a bit more for those who might not have \nread all this before. (I've tried to clean it up a bit, but someday I have \nto find the tapes and really clean it up.) -- Nutria\n\nJJ: Is Briah our universe? Or is that a universe that resurrected saints \nhave set up in the world to come as part of the cities that they made?\nGW: No. I thought of it as a long past universe. Something that we are \nrepeating rather than something that we are.\nJJ: I don't know that I have any other questions. It is a universe in which \nangelic like beings actually have physical control over the universe of \nstars and suns. I noticed that you had scarabs in the great machine in \nYesod. Severian goes through and sees that\nGW: Oh yeah, yeah.\nJJ: Scarabs push the suns. But that is a past world in your imagination.\nGW: Yes, I was looking at what past universes might have been like really \nand that is how...I began with the idea of what is going to happen to us if \nwe just keep going the way we are going and continue to live on the \ncontinent of Earth without ever really going into the sea or going into \nspace and we just wait for the money to run out. The do nothing future and \nthinking about what that would be. And then I got into the idea of \nuniversal cycles. And decided that I would show that this might be a past \ncycle. Some physicists at least think that the Big Bang is eventually going \nto be followed by a Big Gnab in which the whole universe coalesces again \nwhich will be followed by another Big Bang which is sort of like a \nsuccession of universe as piston impulses in an internal combustion engine. \nI certainly don't have any great emotional investment in that idea but I do \nthink it is a useful idea to play around with. Physics is coming nearer and \nnearer and nearer mysticism. It has been doing this now for over 50 years \nand it seems to me that is a fascinating thing that much too little \nattention has been given to.\nJJ: That poses something of a difficulty in terms of Christian eschatology \nif there is to be a time and there is a resurrection where the world comes \nto an end. Are you making an attempt to unify those two ideas or just to \nplay with the idea of a gnostic universe?\nGW: I was toying with those ideas, I think, rather than trying to make \nsense of them. Is our resurrection going to be in another universal cycle? \nWell, yes, maybe it is. I don't know. We don't know what is really meant by \nthe world coming to an end, and God rolling up the sky like a carpet and \nall that. It is all picturesque language. Figurative language to try to \ngive a general idea to an audience that would not be capable of \nunderstanding the actuality. And I am not sure we are more capable of \nunderstanding that actuality than they were. It is like the Genesis story. \nI don't believe in a literal apple and I don't believe that literally \nbiting into the fruit had this effect but if you have to explain to a bunch \nof primitives how men differ from animals and where men went wrong in \ndiffering from animals, this is a pretty good way to do it.\nJJ: Who is on trial in The Urth of the New Sun? Severian or Tzadkiel? \nBecause Tzadkiel tells him as the captain of the ship ______________mind.\nGW: Severian is really on trial. Tzadkiel is pretending to be on trial as a \npart of Severian's trial as I remember.\nJJ: Tzadkiel means the righteousness of God.\nGW: He is an angel of justice.\nJJ: He passes judgement there. Apheta, that would mean opheta with an eta: \nthat is speechless. Was that your idea? Opheta with an epsilon could mean \nforgiveness.\nGW: No it is speechless. They talk by centering the sounds that you hear so \nthat you think that you are hearing a voice but they are actually \nspeechless. In a completely silent atmosphere they would be unable to speak.\nJJ: Right.\nGW: It was just a physical idea that I decided to play with and it has \ncertain philosophical reasons to it.\nJJ: As if the universe of words is on one level and there is something \nhigher or above that.\nGW: Well, the idea of selection. That we can make ourselves clear to \nsomebody else by selecting things to which they pay attention.\nJJ: Okay. Oh... Severian's sexual relationship with her. What is the \npurpose of that? He is a married man so at one level he is cheating on his \nwife. He gets aboard ship and immediately takes a cabin near Gunnie and the \nway you have it written he thinks to himself well it has been 10 years \nsince I have had anybody since Valaria. It seems to be one of his lapses in \nvirtue at that point.\nGW: Yeah, I was not trying to show him as being that virtuous a man.\nJJ: But here you have an angelic being takes him for the night. What is \ngoing on there? Is that an idea of a celestial marriage between heaven and \nearth?\nGW: I think that the ideal of the higher being trying to raise the lower \nbeing to a greater height perhaps. And also the attraction that the lower \nbeing at least properly should feel toward the higher being.\nJJ: So we could interpret that more symbolic than a moral level?\nGW: Oh yeah, yeah. Well he is there to be morally judged but that does not \nmean that everything... The fact that he is acquitted doesn't mean that \neverything that he does or will do is right. If that is the criteria then \nnone of us are going to make it. None of us are without sin which I realize \nis a platitude but it is also truth and it is very important truth. There \nare..., if that is what we mean by good people then there are no good \npeople. What we have to mean by good people is people who are bad but are \ntrying at times to be good with mixed success because that is the closest \nthat we get.\nJJ: The holy slaves [Heirodules], Famulimus or one of them tells Severian \nthat he is the center of his race, the savior of his race. That is such \nChristlike language you can see why interpreters would say well Severian is \na Christ figure. But is there a Christ figure in the book, or is he simply \nfor this universe?\nGW: In so far as there is a Christ figure it is Severian. That doesn't mean \nhe has to be identified with Christ. He is in a position similar to that of \nChrist. But really it is a different position because Christ really is both \nGod and man. Severian is not. Severian is a Christian rather than a Christ. \nBut he is been taken as the representative of humanity by whom humanity is \nto be judged. This I think is what has happened perhaps with the actual \nhuman Jesus. He is or was is as fully human as you or I and we are saved by \nHim. By the fact that he passed. That the corruption did not destroy Him. I \nthink that St. Paul is absolutely correct when he says that Jesus was \ntempted in all the ways that we are tempted. I think that Jesus was tempted \nto commit murder or any other sin that you want to name just as the rest of \nus are. And the difference is that He did not sin." } ] } ] }