{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4070", "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": 4070, "subject": "Severian and Horn's perfect memory", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2003-07-09T01:12:20+00:00", "last": "2003-07-09T08:23:15+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "the.wynns at usa.net" }, "date": "2003-07-09T01:34:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Severian and Horn's perfect memory", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Prucher wrote:\n\" the ability to record all the events of a person's life which is what\nSeverian's memory does.\"\nand Chris said:\n\"Now, with normal people who don't have Sev's perfect memory...\"\n\nCrush goes off on a tangent:\nThis has always bugged me. I don't believe Severian really does have a\nperfect memory, but it is interesting that he thinks he does. In \"On Blue's\nWaters\" Horn makes a similar claim that he does not believe he has\n\"forgotten anything\" that he and Nettle wrote in the Book of Silk.\n\nI don't believe Severian has a perfect memories because of the error in\nmemory he makes at the very beginning of tSotT. A previous review of the\narchives showed me that Bill Carmichael addressed this question way back in\nOct 1999 http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0028/0209.shtml but it seems to\nhave gotten zero rise out of the list back then. Has this been determined to\nbe a typo? If not then....\n\nIf Severian and Horn are not merely ignorant of facts, or concealers of\nunpleasant facts, or shaders of the truth, or even out-right liars -- but if\ntheir memories of events are just plain faulty as well, then this carries\nthe concept of the untrustworthy narrator to a whole new level. But why is\nWolfe playing this game over again?\n\nThe questions I pose are:\n1. What does the false belief in one's flawless memory mean in these\nstories? That is, what is Wolfe driving at here?\n\n2. What is the connection between Severian and Horn that we are surely\nexpected to draw from their shared claims of perfect memory?\n\nI am still winding my way through tBotSS, but I have a sneaking suspicion\nregarding the answer to the second question; however I have no clue about\nthe answer to the first.\n\nCan anyone take these on?\n\n--- Crush" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jeff Veyera", "address": "teflon93 at cox.net" }, "date": "2003-07-09T01:12:20+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Severian and Horn's perfect memory", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've always wondered myself if Severian's commentary on his memory wasn't a\ngrim joke regarding the infallibility of the Autarch.\n\nThere are certainly gaps in Severian's narrative if not his memory---what\nhappened during his long captivity amongst the Ascians, for instance? It is\nstrange that a man who \"forgets nothing\" should neglect more than a passing\nmention of this.\n\nAlternately, if there's as much fooling with timelines going on as there\nseems to be, it might not be Severian's memory which is faulty---perhaps\nRoche pointed out the pikes in one world, Drotte in another, and this\nincident is a signpost to tinkering with the past.\n\nOf course, it might just have been a typo.\n\nTeflon\n\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom: James Wynn [mailto:the.wynns at usa.net]\nSent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 6:35 PM\nTo: urth at urth.net\nSubject: (urth) Severian and Horn's perfect memory\n\n\nJeff Prucher wrote:\n\" the ability to record all the events of a person's life which is what\nSeverian's memory does.\"\nand Chris said:\n\"Now, with normal people who don't have Sev's perfect memory...\"\n\nCrush goes off on a tangent:\nThis has always bugged me. I don't believe Severian really does have a\nperfect memory, but it is interesting that he thinks he does. In \"On Blue's\nWaters\" Horn makes a similar claim that he does not believe he has\n\"forgotten anything\" that he and Nettle wrote in the Book of Silk.\n\nI don't believe Severian has a perfect memories because of the error in\nmemory he makes at the very beginning of tSotT. A previous review of the\narchives showed me that Bill Carmichael addressed this question way back in\nOct 1999 http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0028/0209.shtml but it seems to\nhave gotten zero rise out of the list back then. Has this been determined to\nbe a typo? If not then....\n\nIf Severian and Horn are not merely ignorant of facts, or concealers of\nunpleasant facts, or shaders of the truth, or even out-right liars -- but if\ntheir memories of events are just plain faulty as well, then this carries\nthe concept of the untrustworthy narrator to a whole new level. But why is\nWolfe playing this game over again?\n\nThe questions I pose are:\n1. What does the false belief in one's flawless memory mean in these\nstories? That is, what is Wolfe driving at here?\n\n2. What is the connection between Severian and Horn that we are surely\nexpected to draw from their shared claims of perfect memory?\n\nI am still winding my way through tBotSS, but I have a sneaking suspicion\nregarding the answer to the second question; however I have no clue about\nthe answer to the first.\n\nCan anyone take these on?\n\n--- Crush" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "-- " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Chris", "address": "rasputin_ at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-07-09T02:03:56+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Severian and Horn's perfect memory", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Chris makes a flailing attempt to help:\n\nAll I can say regarding Horn is that I didn't read anything he said in Short \nSun to be a categorical statement of perfect memory. When he refers to his \nown memory, it always struck me as being the sort of thing where he's \nacknowledging \"Yes, I have considered the possibility that I might be \nmis-remembering, but as far as I can tell I don't think so.\" As far as the \nconnection to Severian, I believe there's an interview with Wolfe in which \nhe comes close to outright stating the connection between Severian and Silk. \nI don't remember which interview, but the question had been one where they \nwere asking whether Silk was an incarnation of Severian, or Severian an \nincarnation of Silk, or something along those lines.\n\nI find Severian to be a more interesting case. If we knew he was a liar that \nwould definitely give us a direction to look in the text; *usually* people \nlie for a reason, so we could examine what he was trying to conceal and what \nhe gains by lying in this particular way. So, just as an exercise, can \nanyone think of something he gains by telling this story as if he had \nperfect memory when he knew he didn't? (I can't come up with any myself, but \none thing that makes a very large difference to this question is the purpose \nof the text. He seems to have written it for cathartic/personal reasons, but \non the other hand it could have been deliberately written to become a \nreligious text).\n\nSpeaking of the book itself, it occurred to me at least once that his \nperfect memory could be a metaphorical reference to him having read or \nhaving at hand a copy of... the Book of the New Sun. If so, when did he get \nit/read it? I don't think this possibility is trivial, but I tend to \ndisregard it because it seems to lead in too many possible directions.\n\nIf he *did* have perfect memory and there are discrepancies in the text, \nthen these probably again point to something that he wanted to conceal. Or \nthat some later copyist wanted to conceal. Another possibility that I have \nto admit seems a bit too trivial for Wolfe's taste is that Severian simply \nwas distracted and not paying attention to detail in those places. \nPersonally while my memory is not perfect, I have made errors in writing of \nsomething that I remember perfectly well, but was not actively calling that \ndetail to mind at the moment. To make another connection with Horn, at one \npoint in his narrative he refers to his sons as \"Hoof and Horn\" and then as \n\"Horn and Hide\". Certainly both Horn and Silk know perfectly well the names \nof Horn's sons, and there's no reason to lie about something the reader \nalready knows. The passage, however, is a particularly emotional one and we \ncan guess that it's a kind of Freudian slip. The idea of Severian having \nFreudian slips would itself be interesting, if we knew for a fact that's \nwhat they were.\n\nAs a final note (I have rambled too long), I've also wondered if perhaps \nSeverian had a normal memory, but came to believe that his memory seemed \nperfect to him because of the recursive-alzabo-effect I was talking about \nearlier. Even receiving partial memories an infinite number of times would \nlead to perfect recall, but only of *those* memories. Depending on how it \nworked it could be confusing in a number of ways, some of them crippling; it \ncould even lead him to believe that he'd had perfect memory all along. I \ndiscarded this theory, however, after recalling (perhaps imperfectly) that \nin BotSS I believe that Silkhorn describes Severian as having a strange \nmemory - and Silkhorn meets Sev long before his experience with ingesting \nalzabo. (This, if reliable, also tends to argue that if Sev's perfect memory \nis a lie, it's a lie he's been telling since childhood and not just in his \nbook).\n\nHope that wasn't entirely useless,\nChris" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Crush goes off on a tangent:\nThis has always bugged me. I don't believe Severian really does have a\nperfect memory, but it is interesting that he thinks he does. In \"On Blue's\nWaters\" Horn makes a similar claim that he does not believe he has\n\"forgotten anything\" that he and Nettle wrote in the Book of Silk.\n\nI don't believe Severian has a perfect memories because of the error in\nmemory he makes at the very beginning of tSotT. A previous review of the\narchives showed me that Bill Carmichael addressed this question way back in\nOct 1999 http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0028/0209.shtml but it seems to\nhave gotten zero rise out of the list back then. Has this been determined \nto\nbe a typo? If not then....\n\nIf Severian and Horn are not merely ignorant of facts, or concealers of\nunpleasant facts, or shaders of the truth, or even out-right liars -- but \nif\ntheir memories of events are just plain faulty as well, then this carries\nthe concept of the untrustworthy narrator to a whole new level. But why is\nWolfe playing this game over again?\n\nThe questions I pose are:\n1. What does the false belief in one's flawless memory mean in these\nstories? That is, what is Wolfe driving at here?\n\n2. What is the connection between Severian and Horn that we are surely\nexpected to draw from their shared claims of perfect memory?\n\nI am still winding my way through tBotSS, but I have a sneaking suspicion\nregarding the answer to the second question; however I have no clue about\nthe answer to the first.\n\nCan anyone take these on?\n\n--- Crush\n\n\n--" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lisa Schaffer-Doggett", "address": "harlekin at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2003-07-09T08:23:15+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Severian and Horn's perfect memory", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 06:34 PM, James Wynn wrote:\n\n\n2. What is the connection between Severian and Horn that we are surely\nexpected to draw from their shared claims of perfect memory?\n\nI am still winding my way through tBotSS, but I have a sneaking \nsuspicion\nregarding the answer to the second question; however I have no clue \nabout\nthe answer to the first.\n\nCan anyone take these on?\n\n--- Crush" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Don rushes in,\n\nI'm fool enough to recklessly speculate on this question, but only on \nthe understanding that I've still only read Long and Short Suns once \neach and your post is the first time I've thought of such a connection. \n Assuming that Silk is an embryonic clone of Typhon (which I \nwholeheartedly believe) and Hyacinth is an embryonic clone of the \noriginal Kypris (who I also believe is Katharine) then it stands to \nreason that Typhon might have put his whole nasty family on the Whorl, \nespecially since he went through the trouble to put them all in \nMainframe as gods and gave them the ability to possess people. I have \nbeen thinking seriously that Musk might very well be Hierax, thus his \nand Silk's mutual hatred of one another. It is possible that Horn \nmight be another Severian especially if you believe as I do that Sev is \nTyphon's genetic son. I think it's a stretch though. The only thing \nthat gives it thematic appeal is that it would mean that Horn is Silk's \nson and that in a bizarre way Severian is the author of all the Sun \nbooks. That's almost too much even for me. Almost." } ] } ] }