Subject: (urth) The Ascian's Shadow

From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 10:11:02 +0000

I can't find the thread this subject came up in a day or two ago but I
chanced upon the matter last evening.

TCotA Ch 16.  Ash is speaking to Severian:

 "The men without shadows..."

 "You call your enemies Ascians, which of course is not what they call
themselves, because your fathers believed that they came from the waist of
Urth, where the sun is precisely overhead at noon. The truth is that their
home is much farther north."

As an allusion to the shadow of the torturer it seems inapt or perhaps
ironic: the Ascians seem to have no lack of tortuers despite the
"perfection" of the rule of the Group of Seventeen.

Matthew

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 15:35:47 +0000

>>>Matthew malthouse wrote:
That is an -excellent-- point! Except the title is not "The Shadow of **A**
Torturer", it is "The Shadow of THE Torturer".

Is it "The Sword of the Lictor" where Severian describes the proper
procedure in a public execution as requiring that he cast his shadow on the
condemned (IIRC)? All Commonwealth torturers follow that ritual. All beings
on Urth cast shadows - even the Ascians and their torturers. Only for
Severian does his interposition before the Sun constitute a symbol.

"Shadows" in tBotNS represent the NEW SUN and the new order and future it
brings. Only Severian is affirmed by the sun symbol and only he --the NEW
Sun-- in coming ordinally and chronologically after the old Sun, brings
death (in his shadow) as well as life (ie. All the people killed in the
Deluge). That is Erebus' and Abia's hold on the New Sun's enemies - that the
New Sun will destroy everything.

So.... The Ascians are shadowless. They repudiate the "shadow" (i.e. the
destruction and change) of the New Sun, thus they serve (i.e. are "under")
Erebus (the TOTAL Darkness of Death).

-- Crush

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 16:47:02 +0000

> "perfection" of the rule of the Group of Seventeen.

Correct ... as far as it goes.

But _the_ shadow of _the_ torturer (not _some_ shadow of _some_ torturer)
does not fall upon them; they are not touched by the salvation Severian 
is to bring.

So much for universalism.

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 00:20:47 +0000

> So much for universalism.

Neither are 99.9% of the Commonwealth's population.  And do we know that no
Ascians survived?  If a few people survived the destruction of the
Commonwealth, isn't it probable that a few Ascians would also have survived?
In fact, wouldn't Erebus, being aware (as Volenta was not) of what the New
Sun's coming means, have prepared for it?

OTOH, if "the shadow of the torturer" is the death and destruction Severian
brings, the Ascians certainly are touched by it.

--Adam

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 00:20:54 +0000

on 8/1/02 10:35 AM, James Wynn at crushtv at HotPOP.com wrote:

> brings. Only Severian is affirmed by the sun symbol

One of the Ascian's sayings also alludes to shadow imagery: "Behind
everything some further thing is found forever; thus the tree behind the
bird, stone beneath soil, the sun behind Urth." (ch. XI; p. 80, Timescape,
ed.)  This can't be an accident on Wolfe's part, though I don't know what
its significance is.

Some of the Ascian's other remarks also seem to have a wider significance:

"How are the hands nourished?  By the blood.  How does the blood reach the
hands?  By the veins.  If the veins are closed, the hands will rot away,"
(Ibid.) which Foila interprets as a reference to roads; whether intentional
on the Ascian's part or not, this can be taken as a criticism of the
Autarch's policy of closing the roads.

"[A] brave woman desires children, and not husbands." (ch. V, p. 33)  Sure
enough, very few of the women we meet in TBotS desire husbands; even Foila
doesn't seem that eager to marry, despite organizing the storytelling
contest herself.

The longish paragraph which Foila interprets as meaning that the stories by
the skill of their telling, not their content, may be Wolfe's ironic comment
on his own reception.

--Adam

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 10:20:54 +0000

>So much for universalism.

The coming of the New Sun and the cataclysm caused by it's unquiet arrival
can hardly be just for the Commonwealth.  What "salvation" can Severian
bring that would not touch the Ascians?

>Erebus (the TOTAL Darkness of Death).

Yet their repudiation avails nothing.  They too live on Urth, will not one
survive into Ushas?

Matthew

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 10:56:33 +0000

>Autarch's policy of closing the roads.

It may be so.  The Autarch in explaining to Severian says that the policy
is bad, deliberately fostering stagnation. Yet the implication is that the
Ascian's progress is a chimera (it may be explicit, I haven't the book
with me today).

The Autarch speaks of human kind going again to the stars when it can
carry with it some "wholeness". The Ascian's progress will not achieve
this aim but I don't see how the stagnation of the Commonweatlth fosters
it.

Matthew

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 15:08:32 +0000

>Matthew Malthouse wrote:

True. But they ARE in league with Erebus ("the darkness of Death" - that is
the literal definition of the word). The fact that the New Sun eventually
overcomes the darkness does change with whom they through their lot.

After the Deluge, there is no more Ascia and the Ascians are no longer
"shadowless". And if Erebus had won, there would be no New Sun and the
Concilliator's title and *declared* destiny would have been academic.

Crush

----------------------------------------
And now, ---> stuff I typed which I have determined are irrelevant to my
point:
-----If I were to derive theology from everything in tBotNS - a mistake -
then I would say this rejects the posit that what each person believes his
afterlife will be like is what it will be like (ala the 9-11 bombers are NOT
currently being tended by 64 virgins). ----

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 15:49:29 +0000

I wrote:
>The fact that the New Sun eventually overcomes 
>the darkness does change with whom they through 
their lot.

Of course I meant "does NOT change with whom they threw their lot"

-- Crush

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 19:02:13 +0000

I observed that 

> Neither are 99.9% of the Commonwealth's population.  

Again, so much for universalism. But at least _some_ are.

> And do we know that no Ascians survived? 

Mere survival is not the "salvation" I referred to; it is
the regeneration of humanity which (according to the Hieros)
will ultimately lead Urth-humans back to the stars. It 
begins not with Severian's bringing the New Sun, but with
his ascending the throne (and, I think, its overt sign is
his abolishing torture).

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