{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3628",
    "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": 3628,
    "subject": "no inhumi on Urth - reason, Silk/Sev parallelism",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-12-01T01:37:12+00:00",
    "last": "2002-12-01T01:37:12+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0212-2297@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2002-12-01T01:37:12+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) no inhumi on Urth - reason, Silk/Sev parallelism",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Here is a fascinating quote from Sword of the Lictor, which talks about a \nsecret of the trees that is almost revealed to Severian (from the chapter \nentitled \"The Widow's Hut\":\n\n\"I made my way through a forest less precipitious than the one through which I \nhad followed the brook.  The dark trees seemed, if anything, older.  The great \nferns of the south were absent there, and in fact I never saw them north of \nthe House Absolute ... but there were wild violets with glossy leaves and \nflowers the exact color of opoor Thecla's eyes growing between the roots of \nthe trees, and moss like the thickest grenn velvet .... I heard the barking of \na dog.  At the sound, the sildence and wonder of the trees fell back, present \nstill but infinitely more distant.  I felt that some mysterious life, old and \nstrange, yet kindly too, had come to the very moment of REVEALING ITSELF to \nme, then drawn away like some immensely eminent person, a master of the \nmusicians, perhaps, whom I had struggled for years to attract to my door but \nwho in the act of knocking had heard the voice of another guest who was \nunpleasing to him and had put down his hand and turned away, never to come \nagain.  Yet how comforting it was.\" (89)  Then he goes on to say that the \nroots of the trees may have pre-existed Urth, or form the very ground that he \nwalks on.  Also, remember that the trees take part in the cannibalistic ritual \nof Vodalus: \" the trees nodded, and I nodded with them\". THE TREES PARTICIPATE \nIN THE CEREMONY OF THE LIEGE OF LEAVES.  Also remember that there is a big \nsection that talks about Vodalus hiding the forests of Lune - sentient trees \nthere, maybe?  The trees of Green?\n\nHere is the deal: it is too cold down South for the trees to thrive.  Warmth \nis necessary.  The reason that there are obviously little to no inhumi in the \nUrth sections of Return to the Whorl is not because they can't have evolved \nyet (it only takes a generation or two, as Quetzal must prove), but because IT \nIS TOO COLD ON URTH.  It would kill them before the New Sun came.  Only in the \nwarmer north can the sentient trees even survive.  After the new sun comes, \nLune is pulled from its regular orbit (perhaps even out of orbit if you but \nthat Green is a separate planet altogether, but I buy an oscillating spiral \norbit that blue and green follow around a central point of gravity as both go \naround the sun - remember that the long sun whorl has the same year that Blue \ndoes,and therefore the same year as Urth does).  Blue, or Ushas, is much \nwarmer than Urth was.  The trees and the inhumi can thrive farther south and \ncome to the planet that is now more suited to living.\n\nAt last we have the case that sentient trees with a secret exist on Urth in \nthe quotes from Claw of the Conciliator and Sword of the Lictor - and remember \nthat these trees partake in a cannibalistic ritual in which the consumer takes \non the traits of the one consumed, and that Vodalus leaves with these trees.\nBlue is warm, the orbit of Lune is changed, the salty sea is diluted by the \nmelted polar ice caps, and the Green Man could always travel freely through \nthe corridor of time - but remember the stipulations - he couldn't come back \nand set himself free from his trap because there are time restrictions through \nthe Brook Madregot.  If there are sentient trees and giant sea creatures and \noxygen to breath and cognates of many Urth species on Blue, then I think it's \ntime we really apply Occam's razor and get to the motivation of Pas: he wants \nto immortalize himself on the original home of mankind: Urth.  The whorl \nalways had a circular destination.\n\nWe even have evidence of sentient trees on Urth now participating in eating \nhumans.  What more do we need?  Imagine that the liana's thrive in the \nnewfound warmth of Lune after the New Sun comes, and that the Neighbors (aka \nthe hybrids produced by the bioengineered trees meant to cultivate Lune and \nthe original settlers of Lune) of Green come back to Ushas, then leave, with \nonly the trees to mark there passage.\n\nOne more thing: in On Blue's Waters, there is a quote that talks about going \nto a region where the trees are less sleepy, and how babbie won't remain \nintelligent for long if he goes into the trees.  I'll find it tomorrow.  Also, \none of the only places where Horn the narrator says that we won't believe him \nis when the four-armed man comes onto his boat and he says how absurd his \nideas are to explain that man: that he was a favored of the gods who lived so \nlong and then abandoned the upper world for the depths of the ocean, one who \ncouldn't die.  The only other case of a narrator stating that what happened \nwas completely unbelievable, despite all the strange stuff that happens, is \nwhen Severian says that he won't include Silk in his text because no one would \nbelieve it. I argue that Wolfe employs this parallelism to make the one \nunspeakable thing in Severian's narrative Horn/Silk and the one deliberately \nunexplainable thing in Silk's narrative Severian.\n\nalso, Horn performs Severians task in \"In Green's Jungles\" when he takes a \nblack sword and a light and cuts away the detritus of human remains to allow a \ncleansing flood through the aqueduct.  (just as Severian carries Terminus Est \nand the Claw and eliminates all humanity to start anew with green men).  They \nreally do parallel each other.\n\nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}