{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/459",
    "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": 459,
    "subject": "Squares of the City",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-03-30T02:40:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-03-30T02:40:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0008-0689@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-03-30T02:40:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Squares of the City",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #7497439 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#\n\nraster,\n\nRe: Algedonic, whoops.  I meant that \"Latinate\" (or more properly\n\"Greco-Latinate\") names are officialese titles for quarters (not\nthat \"algedonic\" was a generic term) that are never used by ordinary\ncitizens of the quarter (who use the \"living name\" based upon local\nfeatures), thus when the quarter is recently dead it is known only\nby this officialese name; and when it is long dead it has no name at\nall.\n\nAlgedonic means \"pertaining to pain, especially when associated with\npleasure\" (MRS. BYRNE'S).  Roche tells Severian that their alibi is:\nthey are optimates who, having finished business at the Citadel, are\nnow going to amuse themselves at the brothel.  This suggests that\nsuch behavior is common.  But I hasten to agree with you that the\nquarter's northern boundary shifts depending upon who is talking:\ndenizens of the Citadel think of it as a quarter unto itself; people\nacross the river think of the Citadel as something else, part of the\nAlgedonic Quarter or worse, i.e., omophagist ruins (IIRC).\n(\"Omophagist\" is \"Greek-Greek[English],\" again an example of what I'm\ncalling the officialese language.)\n\nIn a sense this naming of quarters is like the naming of guilds and\norders: there is the official name (\"Seekers of Truth and Penitence\")\nand the common name (\"[commonly known as] the torturers\").  But another\nquality of Greco-Latinate titles for districts of the city is to make\nit seem (to me at least) more like realms of a netherworld (a nod to\nTHE INFERNO and all its Greco-Roman sources: with rivers \"Phlegethon\"\nand all that).  \"Algedonic Quarter\" sounds like a ring of hell for a\ncertain kind of sexual sinner: algophilics anonymous?\n\nYou are right--the House Absolute is littered with the same sort of\nGreco-Latinate zones, furthering my impulse about the officialese.\n(There are also the more prosaic \"Well of Green Chimes,\" \"Well of\nOrchids,\" etc.  Then again, given the unusual chthonic architecture\nof the House Absolute, these \"wells\" [ring-ring-ring, \"What is THE\nTIME MACHINE?\"] amount to \"gates\": another category of names.)\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}