Subject: (urth) Two tombs

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 03 Jul 2006 23:51:19 +0000

Last year there was some debate about whether or not the mausoleum where
Cilinia was buried was the same mausoleum where Severian played as a boy.
They are *not* the same, and I can prove it.

There were a total of five coffins in Sev's mausoleum, two open on the
floor and three intact on shelves. These latter three were too heavy for him
to even shift. (SHADOW, chap. II) Where Cilinia had been buried there were
"lots of coffins. They were supposed to be up on stone shelves, but most of
them were not, and a lot were empty." (RTTW, 391) "Lots" is, I think, more
than five, and "a lot" is certainly more than two. At any rate, no matter
how you parse it, the majority of the coffins in Sev's mausoleum were on
shelves. The majority of the coffins in Cilinia's mausoleum were on the
floor.

Plus, Cilinia's coffin was half the size of adult coffins.

-Roy

---

From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com <thalassocrat at nym.hush.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2006 14:03:52 +0000

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 09:51:19 +1000 "Roy C. Lackey" 
<rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>Last year there was some debate about whether or not the mausoleum 

>where
>Cilinia was buried was the same mausoleum where Severian played as 

>a boy.
>There were a total of five coffins in Sev's mausoleum, two open on 

>the
>than five, and "a lot" is certainly more than two. At any rate, no 

>matter

Yep. 

I've tried to make up stories about who the other coffins in Sev's 
tomb might belong to, but I can't find anything to go on. And why 
*two* open? 

Ideas, anyone?

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2006 18:27:58 +0000

> tomb might belong to, but I can't find anything to

One is Severian's analog (Ymar, imo) or Sev himself,
the other his twin sister (probably Merryn, possibly
Valeria) though I feel strongly that the sex of Sev's
twin is variable. There's a lot of gender ambiguity in
Wolfe's work, it seems to me, beginning with 5HC.

Don

p.s. I've finished Soldier of Sidon, and I couldn't be
more pleased. If anyone else has read it, feel free to
write me offlist. Otherwise, I eagerly await the
October discussions.

__________________________________________________
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---

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2006 20:50:46 +0000

thalassocrat and don write:
I've tried to make up stories about who the other
>coffins in Sev's tomb might belong to, but I can't find anything to
>go on. And why *two* open?
>
>Ideas, anyone?

>Wolfe's work, it seems to me, beginning with 5HC.

I don't have a good practical theory within the story regarding Severian's 
mausoleum but I always think the five coffins are related to  Five Heads in 
some way. And I think most agree that the Five Heads of Cerberus are related 
in some way to Gene Wolfe.

Also, for some reason, I think the opened coffins have let someone out, 
while the other three have a person/character not yet released. So maybe the 
first coffin is the Number 5 incarnation of Gene Wolfe and the second coffin 
is the Severian incarnation.  Not very well supported, but...for what it's 
worth.

-bsharp

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 07:26:59 +0000

>tomb might belong to, but I can't find anything to go on. And why

The clues about the mausoleum are few and scattered. The image of the man on
the funeral bronze (we don't even know which coffin, if any, it may have
been associated with) was said by Severian to look just as he looked at the
time he was resurrected in Apu's tomb. By my calculations, Sev should have
been about seventy years old at the time he was strangled as Apu. The
logical implication is that Sev died not long after returning to Ushas and
writing URTH; that or some cognate of himself who was that same age died
somewhen in time and the body placed in the mausoleum by someone unknown, at
an unknown time.

One bit of information comes from when Sev placed the skull before the
closed door of the drowned mausoleum. (URTH, 335) He said that the flood had
closed the long-jammed door, "having completed a motion begun perhaps a
century ago." That implies that someone was messing around in the mausoleum
something like thirty years before he was born. I assume that a body (or
two) was removed. Who did it and why? But what I would really like to know
is, *where are the bodies*?

It is possible that each of the five coffins at one time held the body of
the same man -- Severian, from one or another of his incarnations. He was
forever getting himself killed.

-Roy

---

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 11:45:14 +0000

>forever getting himself killed.

I've thought about that but somehow the pieces don't seem to fit together.  
How many times does Severian die in the text? He says the first Severian 
didn't drown while swimming, and neither did he, because of Juturna. He 
postulates that the skull he found underwater was a boy who drowned in his 
place, then he puts the skull at the threshold of the now closed mausoleum 
as Roy noted. I wish I could tell if that showed the death of an incarnation 
or not.

He definitely died on the Sanguinary Field from his avern wound. As he dies 
he hears bells and sees the world as an Easter egg with all the artist's 
colors flashing. This is the only death where we have another observer to 
help us. Dorcas tells, "I remember seeing the leaf, a horrible thing like a 
flatworm made of iron, half in your body and turning red as it drank your 
blood.  Then it fell away. I don't know how to describe it.  It was as 
though everything I had seen had been wrong.  But it wasn't wrong. I 
remember what I saw."

What happened there? Maybe it was it the nascent power of his claw/star 
working to shift time back a little, to where the avern didn't fully 
penetrate?  Doesn't seem like an eidolon could have been created and 
Severian's dead body spirited away without the crowd and Dorcas seeing.

His death in the flood in the throne room seems to me to be the last gasp of 
his claw/star resurrection power.  Again there are bells which have rung, 
though he sees only blue color this time.  That sort of resurrection 
wouldn't leave a body.

He definitely dies and leaves a body on Tzadkiel's ship and as Apu Punchau 
so if somebody is collecting his old bodies and putting them in the 
mausoleum, that would account for two coffins.  Anyone have thoughts on the 
third?

-bsharp

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 05:46:48 +0000

>mausoleum, that would account for two coffins.  Anyone have thoughts on the

The body of strangled Apu came back to life when the first light from the
White Fountain reached Urth, so we don't really know what may have happened
to it after Sev used the Corridors of Time to get back to Ushas. The revived
Apu was exactly equal in knowledge and power to the newly made eidolon,
equal at least up to the moment he was strangled. So if eidolon Severian
could walk the Corridors, so could he. Who knows where/when he may have
gone?

An obvious candidate for one of the coffins is the person for whom the
mausoleum was built in the first place. In the second chapter of SHADOW we
learn:

"Our necropolis is said to be the oldest in Nessus. That is certainly false,
but the very existence of the error testifies to a real antiquity, though
the autarchs were not buried there even when the Citadel was their
stronghold, and the great families--then as now--preferred to inter their
long-limbed dead in vaults on their own estates. But the armigers and
optimates of the city favored the highest slopes, near the Citadel wall; and
the poorer commons lay below them until the farthest reaches of the bottom
lands, pressing against the tenements that came to line Gyoll, held potter's
fields. As a boy I seldom went so far alone, or half so far."

Autarchs had never been buried on Citadel Hill, which eliminates Ymar;
neither were exultants. The mausoleum was evidently built during the period
of the autarchy, by or for an armiger or optimate. Neither armigers nor
optimates were normally classed as "servants of the throne", but neither
does that exclude them; after all, the cacogen Inire was such a servant.

There are scattered hints in URTH that Sev, in the future, would do some
time traveling that was not related in the manuscript. One or more of those
trips may have been directly related to the building of the mausoleum. This
theory is reinforced by the three graven images above the door, which point
directly to Sev and which would have no special significance for anyone
else. I don't know what position he may have held during the early autarchy
or how he died, if he did die (it may have been a cognate), but it earned
him a position high on Citadel Hill.

Another candidate for a coffin is the "first Severian" who was not (who
*could not*) be returned to his own time after failing in Yesod.

-Roy

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 07:29:46 +0000

--- "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:

> to it after Sev used the Corridors of Time to get
> back to Ushas. 

He returned to Springfield and the Quickie Mart of
course. . .
Sorry, but I absolutely could not resist that.

Don

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 17:20:26 +0000

> Sorry, but I absolutely could not resist that.

"Please do not offer peanuts to my god."

Has anyone ever found the etymology of "punchau"?

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

---

From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com <thalassocrat at nym.hush.com>
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 04:56:32 +0000

On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 15:46:48 +1000 "Roy C. Lackey" 
<rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
> The mausoleum was evidently built during 
>the period
>of the autarchy, by or for an armiger or optimate.

Why do you assume that? Assuming continuity betwen BOTNS and LS/SS, 
I think we can safely assume that in pre-Autarchial days, the 
necropolis could be a resing place of the highest status. Why else 
would Typhon's daughter have been interred there (in what I guess 
was probably Typhon's family mausoleum)? The tomb might have 
belonged to some very high-ranking, pre-Autarchial figure, however 
related to Sev.

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 21:23:59 +0000

Andrew quoted and wrote:
>Why do you assume that?

The images above the door, for one thing. If they represent Tzadkiel's Ship,
the White Fountain and the Claw, they had no meaning before Typhon's era.
The cult of the Conciliator didn't exist until Severian was sent from Yesod
to Typhon's era for the express purpose of establishing the legend. The
thorn that became the Claw and founded the Pelerines was also delivered
then. There was no need for a White Fountain before then, or a Ship to take
someone to Yesod to earn it.

> Assuming continuity betwen BOTNS and LS/SS,

Apart from Cilinia's burial on the hill, I don't think there exists another
shred of textual evidence in the twelve books to connect any rulers, by
whatever title or name prior to Sev, with any mausoleum in the necropolis. I
don't know how much time passed between Typhon's unceremonious demise behind
his curtain and Ymar's rise to power, but I don't see anyone on Urth
erecting a burial monument on his behalf. He was both feared and hated while
he lived, and we know he wasn't buried anywhere.

After Sev the Conciliator prophesized Typhon's death behind the curtain,
Typhon's retort indicates that, if he were to die at all, he expected he
would be interred in the skull cavity of his mountain. (URTH, 275) So if a
"family mausoleum" was constructed on Citadel Hill, it must have been done
while he still was alive, and it was intended to house only his family, not
himself. Cilinia died young, whether in consequence of her revolt against
her father or not. I suspect the former. If that is true, it is quite
possible that most, if not all, of his family who may still have been on
Urth at the time of his death died before him. At any rate, none of them
seem to have had an impact on Urth's future history.

But this is all conjecture. I still see no reason to suppose Sev's mausoleum
existed prior to Typhon's era, and his mausoleum was not the one where
Cilinia was buried.

-Roy

---

From: Stanislaus <sbocian at poczta.fm>
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 21:31:10 +0000

Hello Jeff,

> Has anyone ever found the etymology of "punchau"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apu_Punchau

"In Inca mythology, Inti was the sun god, as well a patron deity of
Tahuantinsuyu. His exact origin is not known. The most common story
says he is the son of Viracocha, the god of civilization. ...

Inti was also known as Apu Punchau, which means "leader [of the]
daytime". Inti is represented as a golden disc with a human face. A
great golden disk representing Inti was captured by the Spanish
conquistadors in 1571 and was sent to the Pope via Spain. It has since
been lost."

-- 
Best regards,
 Stanislaus                           mailto:sbocian at poczta.fm

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zobacz, gdzie mieszka Twoja dziewczyna!
http://map24.interia.pl/

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 03:14:57 +0000

--- "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
(regarding Typhon's family)

 At
> any rate, none of them

This isn't quite true since, as the gods of mainframe
on the Whorl, they helped to shape Silk and thus
Severian, if the last book of the SS is to be
believed.  But that's not really what you meant by
your statement, I imagine. You mean the immediate
influence of their mortal lifespans, no?

Don

---

From: Mo Holkar / UKG <lists at ukg.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 08:25:58 +0000

At 22:31 09/07/2006, you wrote:
>Inti was also known as Apu Punchau, which means "leader [of the] daytime".

Merryn: "The Mother has told us that his name means the Head of Day."

Is it generally accepted that the Apu-Punchau episode takes place in 
Earth's 'real' Inca period, rather than in some future-historic 
period for which Inca signifiers are used in the same way that Latin is?

Mo

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 08:30:33 +0000

> period for which Inca signifiers are used in the same way that Latin is?

I think it is, except for (as the author says) it being the previous 
cycle of creation, before our latest Big Bang. Though I am not sure if 
he is speaking as the same GW who is the notional translator.