Subject: (urth) sev's skull

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 19:47:19 +0000

So there is some disagreement over the skull.  I tried to emphasize that 
perhaps the Severian we knew was just a copy, as the Apu-Punchau who rises 
over his body is just a copy.  The original Severian has long since died, and 
has always been dead, as he says while underground with Master Ultan: I felt 
as if we were both dead and buried, or something like that.  Why should the 
chapter entitled "resurrection and death" be any different than the later, 
heirodule maintained Severian?  If he's not the first Severian (and we meet 
Ymar in Urth, and Severian says little about being identical to him - 
something one would certainly note: "he looked just like me as a kid! Go 
figure!")  I think that when Severian speaks of not being the first Severian, 
he means that there was a boy raised among the torturers who died and was then 
altered and artifically maintained by the Hierodules, who have the ability to 
tamper with time itself - and remember that the conciliator is the master of 
time.   If the Severian of the narrative of The Book of the New Sun is simply 
another eidolon, then surely that could be Severian's skull.
Marc Aramini

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <katbarx at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 19:57:54 +0000

>perhaps the Severian we knew was just a copy,

What do you mean "just" a copy? If the original drowned and the Sev
we knew is a copy ... isn't he still the important one?

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 20:29:48 +0000

I always felt the reason Severian - at the time of his writing the BotNS - 
felt as if there had been another one before him was actually quite 
straightforward, and I am surprised not to have heard the same explanation 
from anyone else here.

We know that Severian's subjective timeline jumps all around in comparison 
to everyone else. We also know that at least one of these incarnations is an 
autarch at some point before Severian the boy torturer was born. The 
autarchs seem to have a tradition, going back quite a long time, of using 
the alzabo to pass on the memories of the previous autarchs to the new 
autarch.

Now, with normal people who don't have Sev's perfect memory, these memories 
aren't passed on completely - there is considerable loss. And you can expect 
that, through many generations, these memories would be faint indeed. So, 
when Severian became autarch, he in fact picked up faint traces of his *own 
memories*, including some he hadn't even had yet. At the time he was writing 
it is only natural that he would have a vague feeling that somehow he had 
been through all this before, and would make inferences (correct or not) 
about why this might be.

And this is assuming that the loss of "resolution" by the time of BotNS is 
fairly severe. If you assume less loss (fewer generations, or less loss per 
generation), the situation becomes even more perverse and difficult to 
interpret - how would Severian be affected by having picked up memories of 
things he hadn't done yet? However, given that Severian seems unaware (or 
claims to be unaware) of his future success, I think that whatever he picked 
up must have been very vague. He assumes that he must have failed, based on 
the general feeling of having done it all twice; he can't think of any 
reason why he'd be doing it twice, unless he had somehow failed and was 
being sent back to get it right.

On a more abstract and unrelated note, I suspect it's probably misleading to 
think of "copies of Severian". If the "real" Conciliator is more or less 
angelic/archetypal, then Severian and all the rest are sort of 
imprints/copies of him, rather than of each other.

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From: Lisa Schaffer-Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 07:56:07 +0000

On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 12:47 PM, maa32 wrote:

>    If he's not the first Severian (and we meet
> figure!")

Don believes that the skull might or might not be Severian's.  Don 
however is certain that Severian leaves out many things when it suits 
him as both the Book of the New Sun and the Urth of the New Sun are 
Apologies and somewhat self serving autobiographies.  Don would also 
venture to guess that if a person fully grown ran into someone who 
looked exactly like him as a child he might not recognize it, a 
person's current self image being the dominant one in his thoughts.  
Ymar is the first Severian.  He is the Aleph.  He is also the only 
other one who was raised by torturers and went in a ship to attempt a 
reconciliation with the Hieros.  The original "Severian" has a tomb on 
Urth.  His timeline is not negated by our Severian who, though he may 
have died many times, has no mausoleum.  I have no doubts about this 
and only a direct negation by Gene Wolfe himself will change my mind.

Don is through ranting now.

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From: Don Palumbo <enpalumb at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 16:42:52 +0000

<html>
Somewhere in BNS (it's at the end of Torturer), Sevarian talks
about the writing process, comparing it to being a torturer, and says
among other things that one of the tasks a writer must perform is to
follow the prescribed models. Wolfe, in writing this story, is following
the prescribed model of the monomyth very consciously, and all of the
references to death and rebirth throughout the text--as well as
references to a whole lot of other things, such as ogre/father-figures,
women of all sorts, initiations, threshold crossings, talismans, etc,
etc.--should be understood in this light.  Campbell asserts that
death and rebirth is a metaphor for transitions that occur to everyone in
the course of life, and Severian certainly undergoes enough changes of
this sort so that this invites the reader to see his death-and-rebirth
experiences as symbolic of his own transcendence of past selves.

As the demands of the monomyth model, and a symbolic reading in any case,
is enough to explain the reason for all the death and rebirth stuff in
the story, I see no reason to believe that Severian ever literally dies
for good and is replaced by some other version of himself unless what
happen cannot be explained in any more plausible way, which I don't think
is the case in BNS inself.

Mind-boggling as reading BNS is in itself, this effect is truly
compounded if you read it while keeping the monomyth in mind every
sentence of the way.  This adds whole new dimensions to the
story.

--Don Palumbo

At 12:47 PM 7/8/03 -0700, maa32 wrote:
So there is some disagreement over the
skull.  I tried to emphasize that 
perhaps the Severian we knew was just a copy, as the Apu-Punchau who
rises 
over his body is just a copy.  The original Severian has long since
died, and 
has always been dead, as he says while underground with Master Ultan: I
felt 
as if we were both dead and buried, or something like that.  Why
should the 
chapter entitled "resurrection and death" be any different than
the later, 
heirodule maintained Severian?  If he's not the first Severian (and
we meet 
Ymar in Urth, and Severian says little about being identical to him -

something one would certainly note: "he looked just like me as a
kid! Go 
figure!")  I think that when Severian speaks of not being the
first Severian, 
he means that there was a boy raised among the torturers who died and was
then 
altered and artifically maintained by the Hierodules, who have the
ability to 
tamper with time itself - and remember that the conciliator is the master
of 
time.   If the Severian of the narrative of The Book of the New
Sun is simply 
another eidolon, then surely that could be Severian's skull.
Marc Aramini

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