# Digest urth.v008.n005 *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 12 Mar 1998* > 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. --- ### Alice Turner *12 Mar 1998, 06:28* Peter, > As a fan of both Wolfe and W.B. Yeats, I've been struck by some > parallels. I could easily be convinced that they are simply > parallels, and not direct influences, but they seem to be close enough > to be interesting. Don't forget the rose imagery. Yeats is chock-full of it, Wolfe only somewhat less so. -alga- --- ### Paul C Duggan *12 Mar 1998, 08:49 · follows Alice Turner* > On Thu, 12 Mar 1998 urth-errors at lists.best.com wrote: > Even if this isn't what happens in this particular episode, it's > certainly striking how quickly Severian `falls off' in any episode > where he is somehow fleetingly put up against Christ... In the first > example I hazarded, which looked a bit like Christ before Pilate, the > chapter ends with Severian demonstrating his torturing skills on one > of the soldiers (at the lochage's suggestion, it should be said). In > the last, he ends up by killing Typhon/Piaton (though if he's somehow > the Devil in this episode then my weak theology has run out of > exegetic steam). These sort of references seem like little pieces in > a mosaic, which is a suitably Byzantine image. While your first example of Severians failures rings ture, I'm not so sure abotu the second. It seemed analogous to what happens in C.S. Lewis's _Perelandra_, where the devil is defeated by SPOILERS physical force, after Ransom realizes that the argumentation phase was at a close. END SPOILERS usually, people either love Lewis' solution at that point, or hate it. I'm one of the ones who likes it a great deal. "I am an impure thinker. I am hurt, swayed, shaken, | paul + | + elated, disillusioned, shocked, comforted, and I | --|-- have to transmit my mental experiences lest I die." | + | + -- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy | pduggan at world.std.com ---