{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4072", "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": 4072, "subject": "Sev's Deaths", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2003-07-09T02:23:58+00:00", "last": "2003-07-10T02:24:45+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2003-07-09T02:23:58+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Sev's Deaths", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The thought that each time Sev dies he leaves an old body behind is a new \none for me, but it seems to be in the text.\n Has anyone made a list of all the deaths of Sev, and investigated \nclues for all the leftover bodies?\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2003-07-09T14:28:38+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Sev's Deaths", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Nutria wrote:\nThe thought that each time Sev dies he leaves an old body behind is a new\none for me, but it seems to be in the text.\n Has anyone made a list of all the deaths of Sev, and investigated\nclues for all the leftover bodies?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, I covered this in \"Additions, Errata, &cetera\" volumes 2 and 3.\n\nThere is definitely a body for \"sailor Severian\" on the ship Tzadkiel, and\none for Apu-Punchau in the Age of Myth. Apu-Punchau is clearly independent\nonce the \"narrative Severian\" has moved on. Based on this, there might\nwell be an independent Conciliator who miraculously \"survives\" the blast at\nMount Typhon at about that point where \"narrative Severian\" takes to the\ncorridors of Time . . . this becomes boggling because, just like the\npost-narrative Apu-Punchau, it means that we do not have all of their lives\nand acts as direct witness -- they both go off and do other things, which\nSeverian doesn't know about. As I've called them before, they are\n\"slivers,\" or maybe \"sheddings\" would be better.\n\nAbout the \"first Severian\" mentioned by Severian himself. Maybe everybody\nshould look at the text itself, in chapter 38 of CITADEL.\n\nThe first Severian:\n1) Did not drown.\n2) Was raised by torturers.\n3) Was sent to Thrax.\n4) Did not have the Claw.\n5) Fled Thrax.\n6) Encountered the autarch.\n7) Became the new autarch.\n8) Sailed to Yesod.\n9) Was not returned to his own time, so that ultimately he became Apu\nPunchau in the Age of Myth and the annonymous armiger/exultant of the\nmausoleum (some time in the early Age of the Autarch).\n\nThis means, I think, that the first Severian (\"ProtoS\" or \"Severian the\nCruel\") had no Thecla (at the very least, not an indwelling Thecla) and no\nDorcas.\n\nAs for possible resurrections (taken from AE&2):\n 1) Drowned in river\n 2) Triskele\n 3) Fiacre crash, Severian and Agia\n 4) Dorcas\n 5) Sanguinary Field\n 6) Thecla within Severian\n 7) Typhon\n 8) Miles\n 9) Severian killed on battlefield\n10) Mandragora\n11) Severian killed by winged thing on Ship\n12) Zama\n13) Severian killed as Conciliator\n14) Severian drowned at deluge\n15) Severian killed as Apu Punchau\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Josh Geller", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2003-07-09T15:38:53+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Sev's Deaths", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 2003-07-09 at 07:28, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nThere is definitely a body for \"sailor Severian\" on the ship Tzadkiel, and\none for Apu-Punchau in the Age of Myth. Apu-Punchau is clearly independent\nonce the \"narrative Severian\" has moved on. Based on this, there might\nwell be an independent Conciliator who miraculously \"survives\" the blast at\nMount Typhon at about that point where \"narrative Severian\" takes to the\ncorridors of Time . . . this becomes boggling because, just like the\npost-narrative Apu-Punchau, it means that we do not have all of their lives\nand acts as direct witness -- they both go off and do other things, which\nSeverian doesn't know about. As I've called them before, they are\n\"slivers,\" or maybe \"sheddings\" would be better." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Bifurcations. \n\nThis is all correct, as near as I can tell.\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Bollen", "address": "abollen at internode.on.net" }, "date": "2003-07-10T02:24:45+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Sev's Deaths", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From mantis:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "About the \"first Severian\" mentioned by Severian himself. Maybe everybody\nshould look at the text itself, in chapter 38 of CITADEL.\n\nThe first Severian:\n1) Did not drown.\n2) Was raised by torturers.\n3) Was sent to Thrax.\n4) Did not have the Claw.\n5) Fled Thrax.\n6) Encountered the autarch.\n7) Became the new autarch.\n8) Sailed to Yesod.\n9) Was not returned to his own time, so that ultimately he became Apu\nPunchau in the Age of Myth and the annonymous armiger/exultant of the\nmausoleum (some time in the early Age of the Autarch).\n\nThis means, I think, that the first Severian (\"ProtoS\" or \"Severian the\nCruel\") had no Thecla (at the very least, not an indwelling Thecla) and no\nDorcas." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe this ties in tangentially with something that bugged me about the end\nof RTTW, the meetings between Silkhorn and young Sev. On the surface, these\nmeetings are quite unsatisfactory. Why do they meet at all? Sev tells\nSilkhorn about the powers\nin the water of Urth, leads him to Scylla's tomb; shows him his dog, gives\nSilkhorn some stump-care tips ... It all seems rather ad-hoc.\n\nI think there should be a parallel between these meetings, and New Sun Sev's\nmeeting with young Ymar. I read the latter as quite epochal. Sev (we can\ninfer, without stretching too far) inspires Ymar with the vision of higher\nthings, the sun renewed, Ymar's own future ascendancy etc and so probably\ncauses Ymar to do things which lead to him founding the line of Autarchs,\nleading eventually to Sev himself. Sev is at least a \"completion\" of Ymar,\nthe terminus in a series which started with Ymar's Alpha, and which Sev\nhimself initiated through his acts and prophesies.\n\n(Sev the minor-god is his own prime mover in many things - by fulfilling\nthe legend of the Conciliator and the New Sun, he creates it; by becoming\nthe New Sun he initiates the line of Autarchs with their transcendental\nmission to bring the New Sun, himself. He perhaps causes himself to be saved\nby Juturna in his youth - undines are not bound by time, and I think you\nhave to assume that her meeting with Sev at the end takes place before Sev's\nnear-drowning, from her point of view.)\n\nI want to find something similar in young-Sev/Silkhorn. It may be that a\ncrucial difference between \"Sev the Cruel\" and \"our Sev\" is embodied in and\ncaused by his compassionate destruction of Thecla. This prefigures his\ncompassionate destruction of Urth as the New Sun, and it is an act of Love\nwhich maybe \"Sev the Cruel\" was incapable of, and thus incapable of bringing\nthe New Sun.\n\nPerhaps it's not too much opf a stretch to see SilkHorn's influence as the\ncause of this difference. Part of Silk's charisma is to bring out the best\nin everybody he meets, where any good exists at all: he is pretty much an\navatar of the proposition that the only divinity is Love.\n\nSo that's one parallel I am comfortable with. But more broadly, I would like\nto see Silkhorn as the self-caused \"completion\" of Sev in the same way that\nSev is the completion of Ymar.\n\nIn some partial ways that seems straightforward. Silkhorn has a pretty\ndirect line to the Increate, receiving inspiration & standing in His\npresence on occasions, while Sev only gets to meet the local managers.\nSilkhorn is wiser, holier, at least as efficacious in worldly things,\npossesses magical powers not reliant on hokey cosmic power sources, is even\nmore irresistable to female entities of various species, etc etc etc. He is\na great charismatic leader, bringing out the best in just about everybody,\nwhile just about everybody who gets close to Sev leaves him, or is left, or\ndies. Silkhorn sets Blue & Green on the path of righteousness, and these\nworlds will avoid the fate of old Urth (at least that's the way I read it),\nwhereas Sev doesn't have that kind of juice - his function is more to rather\ncrudely destroy hopelessly bad things to make way for the good (the Urth,\nthe prison governess etc).\n\nBut it doesn't get me to the point where Silkhorn is a self-caused\n\"completion\" of Sev, and I don't see any way to get there without going\nquite a long way beyond the text: perhaps there was some cloning\njiggery-pokery going on, perhaps a Sev-sliver did something to \"cause\"\nSilkhorn somewhere in time, perhaps Silkhorn is somehow Ymar come again to\nclose the circle. Maybe, but I don't see anything in the text to support any\nof these scenarios.\n\nI'd abanadon this tack, except for GW's statement somewhere to the effect\nthat Silk (and only Silk, on The Whorl), in the broadest sense, is a member\nof the torturer's guild. I can only see two ways of reading that: either\nSilk is (a clone of) Ymar, or a Sev, or perhaps some other torturer; or some\npart of Silk dwells in Sev after their meeting." } ] } ] }