{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3728", "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": 3728, "subject": "a (kind of) brief summary", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-12-29T23:58:12+00:00", "last": "2002-12-30T23:41:20+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "maa32", "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu" }, "date": "2002-12-29T23:58:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) a (kind of) brief summary", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My theory in the past was argued against primarily based on the ideas that\n\n1)Blue system couldn't be Urth system because the animals were \"doubled\".\n\n2) Blue system couldn't be Urth system because there was no mechanism to \nexplain how the narrator wound up in the past at Rigolio's home, while SOME \ntime had passed since Rigolio left. This was the big killer that I struggled \nto overcome.\n\n3)My argument was theme based - a man who doesn't know who he is attempts to \ngo home, only to discover that he has changed so much that he is going to a \nhome that was never his ... while ironically, he is on his home system but \ncan't recognize it because both it, and humanity, have changed.\n\nRead the chapter in Sword of the Lictor with Typhon again. Here is the \nclincher - he knows that URTH WILL FLOOD. He TELLS Severian that water brings \npurification and renewal, and hints that the Urth will be flooded. He knows a \nlot more than anyone else, including Severian - he knows exactly who the \nconciliator is.\n\nDue to the importance of hybridization and plant genetics to the first chapter \nof The Book of the Short Sun, I posited a mechanism to explain the doubling of \nlimbs which in fact WAS textually grounded - hybridization is a doubling, \nwhether you believe it or not. And it explains why inhumi don't have to eat \nand can survive being buried, and perhaps why the narrator no longer requires \nnormal sustenance and how the Green Man came to be. (Chloroplasts aren't just \ngoing to appear without some kind of endosymbiosis in an animal cell, right? \nOnly this time the trees are the active consumers)\n\nI lacked the mechanism to explain how time travel occured, but I cited several \nexamples of time/astral travel, including his observation of Nettle on the \nbeach and his appearance in Salica's stories - things which don't make much \n\"real\" sense unless you buy into the time thing - then I quoted that \"The song \nof the mother is a song of time\" and that \"the only return to the past is in \ndreams\" and that the narrator considers his astral travel dreams.\n\nThen with this new interpolation of Urth as Green, I quickly grabbed onto the \nevidence in the text that supports it - the narrator thought of Green's \njungles and his son Sinew, and Rigolio was thinking of his home, and SILK \nthought about how he wanted to show everyone how the world of blue could be \ncorrupted. Also, a song was playing - a song of time. This is all in Chapter \n20 and 21 of In Green's Jungles. It explains how we went back to a time right \nbefore the new \"corruption\" of Urth through Severian.\n\nHere is the final piece of evidence, in my mind, that Wolfe wanted to point me \nin the right direction. Several months ago he sent me a letter, which was \nwritten on the back of a manuscript page. I didn't realize it at the time, \nthinking it was a mistake, but the manuscript came from CHAPTER 20 of In \nGreen's Jungles, right before where the narrator talks about thinking of \nGreen. I think Wolfe likes me - and that he wanted to point me in the \ndirection of Chapter 20 - and in his subtle way, he sent me a manuscript page \nto clue me in. He is very, very subtle - as we all know. I don't think he \nwants everyone to know about it, since it is very easy to deny, but I think he \nwrote the text with the idea that he could fool everyone into thinking that it \nwas a different place - and that the whole text is an effort to misdirect the \nreader away from the real questions:\n\nWhere is HORN? (Not where is Silk - too obvious)\nWhat is the secret of the vanished gods? (Not what is the secret of the inhumi \n- too obvious)\nWhat is the plan of the Mother? (Not what is the plan of Pas - which might be \nrecolonization)\n\n\nAlso, I believe that the blind man killed on Green who the narrator mistakes \nfor Auk is an avatar of Hierax - remember that it is revealed that he is dead \nin Return to the Whorl - and the mistake was made because Auk was possessed by \nHierax for so long. Also, I believe that Silk goes back to Green to free \nChenille, and that she comes to Blue WITH THE SILVER RING and is fed upon by \nJahlee in Dorp, but never meets up with Silk. She is drunk because she is sad \nthat her children on Green have been killed.\n\nMy answer to the three challenges:\n\n1. The trees account for the doubling, APPLYING the secret of the inhumi to \nexplain what happened to the vanished people, and what happened to Urth. And \nit explains the meaning of the chrasmological writings that make Silk cry at \nthe end of the work - humanity, while dead, thrives on as flower - and it \nexplains the eucharist scenes in the forest as well - the transmutation of \ngrapes into blood.\n2. The mechanism at the end of Chapter 20 explains how Silk wound up on Urth \nin the past - he was thinking of Green in the past, and he went to Green in \nthe past, where Rigolio wanted to go.\n3. The theme is the same - there is just one more level of misdirection- I \nthink a level too many for anyone to ever \"solve\" the text.\n\nI have to strongly disagree about the claim that the books where shoddily \nconstructed. I think they are the most carefully constructed works ever - \nworks so careful that the veneer of misdirection is almost too good. Very few \npeople can see past their first impression of the books because they don't \nwant to admit that they MISSED SOMETHING BIG. And I think we all missed a lot \nof big things the first time through. Just read the books through again and \npay attention to the trees, and you will be blown away. I swear it - really \npay attention to them. And think of them as vanished gods who can create life \n- possibly the vanished gods who were awakened in the mine of Saltus by the \nClaw of the Conciliator to rise up and change the face of the world.\n\nWe should still pay attention to Seawrack and the Mother's plans - Silk goes \nback in time to placate the mother and learn the location of Seawrack. She is \na threat of some kind - just look at the conclusions description of her.\n\nI better go. \nMarc Aramini" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-12-30T23:41:20+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) a (kind of) brief summary", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Marc Aramini wrote:\nRead the chapter in Sword of the Lictor with Typhon again. Here is the\nclincher - he knows that URTH WILL FLOOD. He TELLS Severian that water\nbrings" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "purification and renewal, and hints that the Urth will be flooded. He knows\na\nlot more than anyone else, including Severian - he knows exactly who the\nconciliator is.<<\n\nTyphon says _nothing_ about a flood. He knows _very little_ about the person\nknown as the Conciliator. Look at the larger picture. Typhon had been dead\nfor at least a thousand years before Sev's coming revived him. He died not\nlong after his first and only meeting with Sev on his mountain. That meeting\ntook place only a few days after Sev and Burgundofara were dropped off by\nTzadkiel's tender in Urth's past, in the era of the Monarch. Sev was in that\nera for no more than a week. He healed a few people and word of it reached\nTyphon, who had his own health problems. Most of the legends that accrued to\nSev/the Conciliator/the New Sun were born _after_ Sev disappeared and Typhon\nwas dead. The _Whorl_ had departed before Sev ever appeared in Typhon's era\nand Typhon found himself besieged on the mountain. Sev's appearance in the\nera of the Monarch seems to have been the origin of the legend of the\nConciliator.\n\nWhat is even more certain is that the legend of the New Sun _didn't exist_\nbefore Typhon's era. The very concept was meaningless. The 'wounding' of the\nsun took place during Typhon's era. Because it wasn't broken before that, it\ndidn't need fixing. Typhon had no belief in a supernatural 'fix', much less\na supernatural fixer. Therefore he had no idea that the fix would cause the\nflooding and destruction of Urth. When he launched the _Whorl_, it was not\ndone with an eye to preserving mankind by founding a colony on another\nworld; mankind was already spread all over the galaxy. And he certainly\ndidn't send the _Whorl_ out to mark time until Ushas was ready to be\nrepopulated. New people were being deposited on Urth even as the flooding\nwas taking place. The very idea of Urth-come-Ushas had no part in Typhon's\nplans because he had no knowledge that such a thing _could_ happen, much\nless would.\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }