Lanark and Severian

The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 17 Apr 2003
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3944

Malco17 Apr 2003, 12:56original
--- ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus <zibethicus at hotmail.com> skrev: >
19 quoted lines
Nastler says: "The Thaw narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is enclosed by [Lanark's] narrative which shows civilization collapsing for the same reason." (p.484.) Dunno if this necessarily equates with a judgement per se...and Lanark's abject failure at the 'general assembly of council states' in Provan was planned and intended by Sludden, who sent him there knowing he was going to get rolled... The council is disgusted by his abjectness and jeers at him after his arrest and release from the drunk-tank, yes, but the destruction of Unthank is not caused by this event...
Judgement is maybe too formal a term for what happens in Lanark. But the text does give the impression that an alternative was at least possible and that it depended largely on Lanarks actions. If he had stayed focused at the assembly, maybe developing a new relationship with Multan, then he could have made a big difference and received help for the environmental problems and eventually brought back the sun (!!!) and natural time to Unthank. Instead he failed and was sent home to wait for the chaos and the flood, which would profit the hidden powers at the expense of the people that Lanark was supposed to be representing. All of these things echo with Severians story, even the argument that Sev is something of an object of forces that don’t necessarily care much for the “common people”. But hope and possibility of change wrought entirely by human hands and purely for our good does exist for Gray. While in the flying thing Lanark hears “..is…is…is…if…is…is..”, and as Nastler says that’s “an incredible amount of freedom”. Malco And you are spot on about Sludden/Blair… g Yahoo! Mail (http://dk.mail.yahoo.com) - Gratis: 6 MB lagerplads, spamfilter og virusscan

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