{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3384",
    "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": 3384,
    "subject": "Le Esprit de Escalier",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-07-29T19:09:17+00:00",
    "last": "2002-07-29T19:09:17+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0207-1474@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jennifer Van Goethem",
        "address": "screeminwillie at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-07-29T19:09:17+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Le Esprit de Escalier",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Whoa.\n\nActually, Merryn had been my first choice, but the\ntime thing got in my way.  Wouldn't she be pushing 90,\nas Severian points out in the discourse on the boat\nregarding the \"real\" Severian, as his father? \n(\"Severian the Great would be eighty or more if he\nwere alive.\")  Of course she is a witch and all, so\nwho knows.  \n\nFor that matter there's a pointed pause at her\nintroduction on the boat.  \"And this, ah, female will\nnot introduce herself...\"  Perhaps Thais is an\nemasculated Severian returned from his mission in\nfailure.  Hell, if we're going to go nuts analyzing\nevery ellipses and turn of phrase, might as well pull\nout all the stops.\n\nI do love all the House Azure, \"dearest sister\" stuff.\n I'll have to reconsider my whole take on the Merryn\ntheory.  However, Thais-Thecla-Thea?  Weren't Thecla\nand Thea blonde and fair?  I don't actually recall.\n\nAlso, I believe Mantis pointed out a third de ja vu\nencounter like the ones you describe, where Severian\nin UTNS sees a dark, weeping woman, surrounded by\nPraetorians, as he makes his way back into the House\nAbsolute.  Thais?  Katherine?  Both?\n\nSeverian's genealogy is so completely whacked it's a\ndifficult knot to unravel.  He's his own grandfather,\nhis mother might be his sister, and so on.\n\nI need an advil.\n\nAnd now Pega-Pelagia-Agia?  Make that three advil.\n\nJ"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Shortly after Severian joins Odilo, Pega, and Thais\non their makeshift raft,\nOdilo begins an anecdote about how his father once\nencountered Severian in\nthe secret passageways of the House Absolute.\nSeverian, dressed in the\nfulignin of a carnifex, is thought by Odilo père to\nbe on his way to a\nmasque, \"of which there are several in one part or\nanother of the House\nAbsolute on any given night. Yet,\" as Odilo fils\ncontinues to explain, his\nfather \"knew none was to take place in our Hypogeum\nApotropaic, neither\nFather Inire nor the then Autarchy having much\nfondness for those\ndiversions.\"\n\nNotice now both Severian's and Thais's reaction:\n\n\"I smiled, recalling the House Azure. The dark woman\nshot me a significant\nglance and ostentatiously covered her lips with her\nhand.\" Severian thinks\nThais wants him to cut Odilo's anecdote short here,\nbut I believe she's\nattempting to enjoin his silence, fearing he's\nrecognized her. Thus the\nsignificance glance.\n\nThere are also clues in the House Azure and Hypogeum\nApotropaic\nreferences--these being the two places Severian and\nThais have encountered\neach other previously.\n\nThe second of these takes place in CLAW. Severian,\nhaving escaped from the\nantechamber where he and Jonas have been imprisoned,\nis now looking for\nTerminus Est.\n\n\"I ascended some distance, reconnoitered the\ncorridor there until I was\ncertain I was still lower than the antechamber, then\nbegan to climb again\nwhen I saw a young woman hurrying down the stair\ntoward me.\n\n\"Our eyes met.\n\n\"In that moment, I felt sure, she was as conscious\nas I that we had\nexchanged glances thus before. In memory I heard her\nsay again, \"My dearest\nsister,\" in that cooing voice, and the heartshaped\nface sprung into place.\nIt was not Thea, the consort of Vodalus, but the\nwoman who looked like her\n(and no doubt borrowed her name) whom I had passed\non the stair in the House\nAzure--she descending and I climbing, just as we\nwere now.\"\n\nThea/Thais and Severian each continue on their\nrespective ways. But then who\nis the very next person Severian encounters? Odilo\npère--who will then pass\non the anecdote of their meeting to Odilo fils, who\nwill then tell the story\nto Severian on the raft fifty years hence.\n(Obviously, all the stairs in the\nHouse Absolute are designed by M. C. Escher.)\n\nAs for the first encounter in the House Azure, once\nagain Severian is\nascending a stairs, this time with his\ninamorata-of-choice, who asks:\n\"'Aren't you coming?' She had already reached the\ntop of the stair, nearly\nout of sight. Someone spoke to her, calling her 'my\ndearest sister,' and\nwhen I had gone up a few steps more I saw it was a\nwoman very like the one\nwho had been with Vodalus, she of the heart-shaped\nface and the black hood.\nThis woman paid no heed to me, and as soon as I gave\nher room to do so\nhurried down the stairs.\"\n\nThus Thais/Thea appears at the very least to be a\nkhaibit--perhaps assigned\nto a Mata Hari role. She is, after all, encountered\nin the Hypogeum\nApotropaic, which belongs to Father Inire, and who\nbetter to function as\nputative spymaster? And is it khaibit technomagic\nthat accounts for how\nThea/Thais is able to preserve her youth (there\nbeing at least fifty years\nbetween encounters 2 and 3) or has Father Inire\nsimply taught her how to\naccess the Corridors of Time? Both seem possible,\nbut I like another theory\nbetter still.\n\nGiven how Thais is \"tall, dark and hollow-cheeked\"\nlike Severian himself,\nand recalling that witch-prostitute connection, as\nwell as the Cumaean's\nwords about how \"there are those who ride the night\nair who sometimes choose\nto borrow a human seeming,\" then factor in the\ntwice-echoed \"My dearest\nsister\"--well, is it possible that Thais is Merryn?\n\n(Not that there may not be still another relative of\nSeverian's aboard the\nraft, but I'll save my Pega-Pelagia-Agia\nspeculations for elsewhen.)\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n-- \nhttp://www.urth.net/\nTo unsubscribe: send \"unsubscribe\" to"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "urth-request at urth.net"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}