Subject: (urth) Close Reading: Torturer Chapter II: Severian

From: JWillard <aldenweer at charter.net>
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 06:13:17 +0000

Paragraph #3: "That first recollection is of piling pebbles in the Old 
Yard."  Casual comment, or something more?  My mind traveled to Sev 
being overwhelmed by the Sand Garden (XIX), and his comment, ""I felt I 
belonged there," I said.  "That I was to meet someone ... and that a 
certain woman was there, nearby, but concealed from sight.""  Don't 
know; probably nothing.

#4: "... they seldom had much stomach for expelling us from our lurking 
places in the cypress groves."  Robert Graves talks about the cypress in 
The White Goddess:  "Thus as the tree of Sunday, succeeding the alder of 
Saturday, it symbolized resurrection in the Orphic mysteries, the escape 
of the Sun-hero from Calypso's alder-girt island, and became attached to 
the cult of the Celestial Hercules.  Cypress is still the prime 
resurrection symbol in Mediterranean church-yards."  Are all the 
torturers being groomed as potential new suns?  And how much of the 
Hercules cult is explored in BotNS: Palaemon is a link to Hercules and 
the White Goddess.

#5: Does the layout of where the different social strata are buried help 
us anywhere else?

#6: "...observing how cruel the women were and how often they exceeded 
the punishments he had decreed..."  Is Wolfe in agreement with Severian 
and Ymar, or is this misogynous comment specific to his characters?

#8: What "great northern clan" does Eata believe he belongs to?

#9:  Crucial paragraph, but I have no new observations.

#10:  I'm stupid: Is the giant fox a lion?  I puzzled over this 
paragraph.  It seems so simple, but it nags at me.  Then the line in #11 
nags me more:  "The decades of a saros would not be long enough for me 
to write all they meant to the ragged apprentice boy I was."  Is this a 
pointer disguised as reminescence?  Is there importance in the 
procession/order of animals mentioned?  (Lion (?), snake, hawk.)  Is 
there some astrological significance here?

#11:  "The second ..." Does the white fountain do more than resurrect?  
Any odd critters out there other than Hethor's?

#14:  Once again, torturers have a disturbing idea of fun, don't they?

#20 and 27:  Two comments specific to Eata:  "Eata guessed, I think - 
before they come too near to being men, boys often have an almost female 
insight," and after Sev's drowning, "I ... thought that some defect in 
my own vision was multiplying Eata's eyes."  Are we meant to think 
something about Eata?

#25:  Why a spoon?  Why?

#26:  Is he in Thecla's cell?  Mother's cell?

#12, 21, 27:  What is it with hair in this chapter?

Dialogue after #28: "Someone in the crowd said, "He shot right out of 
the water!""  It's almost as if Severian *himself* is excalibur in this 
image.
Someone who's read this recently:  Why does the boatman (Charonus?) have 
"tar-stained clothes"?  I'm sure it's something obvious.
""No, no," Roche told him, "There are no women in our guild.""  This 
fact is given special emphasis in this chapter, bookended by the earlier 
reference to Ymar and Roche's response here. 

Last paragraph:   "Night atop the khan"  Last chapter we had one mention 
of Erebus; here one of Night.

---

From: Bruce Hayles <brucehayles at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 16:46:58 +0000

Severian adopts the fountain, ship volant, and rose as his devices. A couple
of pages ago we were told that
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are
their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges."
The fountain is the New Sun, the ship the Tzadkiel's ship, and the rose new
life on Urth (I think someone has suggested that is love also, or instead).
Severian obsesses about two things
"The first was that at some not-distant time, time itself would stop ... The
second was that there existed somewhere in a miraculous light... that
engendered life in whatever objects it fell upon..."
Why is Severian thinking these things? Obviously this foreshadows what will
happen later, but are we also being told something about the power of
symbols again--that Severian was shaped by the tomb that bore his face? If
so, we were clearly misdirected earlier. The focus is put on Severian's
tying himself to Vodalus when Severian talks about the coin Vodalus gave
him. We are told that symbols shape things, but can Vodalus really be
compared in magnitude to the ship volant, the fountain, and the rose? Yet
Severian directs our attention to Vodalus, not the ship volant, fountain,
and rose. Does Severian see the connection between the symbols graven on his
tomb and what he would later do? It certainly seems Wolfe is at least trying
to tell us they are important, because he gives us the symbol speech. If all
Wolfe wanted us to do was think Vodalus in responsible part for the person
Severian became, is the symbol speech actually necessary? We all know enough
Pop Psychology that we could draw that rather shallow indirect connection.
It seems instead that Wolfe is giving us a rule, and that we can use that
rule to derive the influence of the ship volant, the fountain, and the rose,
despite the fact that Severian does not emphasize them whatsoever. If this
is so, Wolfe is an amazing teacher: he shows Severian instructing us on the
power of symbols yet simultaneously being blind to them (making their power
all the more evident).

On 9/9/06, JWillard <aldenweer at charter.net> wrote:
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 06:43:34 +0000

>life on Urth (I think someone has suggested that is love also, or instead).
[snip]

The rose, most directly, symbolizes the Claw. The Claw symbolizes the
"Eternal Principle", all that is sacred and holy. (CITADEL, chapter XXXI)

>Does Severian see the connection between the symbols graven on his
>tomb and what he would later do?
[snip]

I don't think so. It wasn't until he was pricked by the thorn of the wild
rose on the beach late in CITADEL that he made the connection between the
Claw he had surrendered at the Pelerine camp and the blood-tainted thorn he
pulled from his arm. He carried that thorn for ten years before Apheta
finally made him understand that it was/would become *the* Claw stolen by
Agia.

>> certain woman was there, nearby, but concealed from sight.""  Don't

I don't see a connection between the pebbles and the Sand Garden, but the
Sand Garden to some extent replicated/foreshadowed what would happen months
later on the beach, right down to the tracks of the two-wheeled cart, which
had no business being on that beach. The person he was to meet was likely
his future self, and the concealed woman almost certainly the part of Thecla
that would soon be forever part of him, and *was* in him that day on the
beach.

-Roy

---

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 19:05:27 +0000

Addressing some notes from JWillard's post (and apologies for repeating 
things from my previous posts)

>Yard."  Casual comment, or >something more?

I think it is very important, paired with Severian's later, augmented 
recollection of piling pebbles, "as Thecla dodged the hooves of my father's 
mounted guard". Others attribute this less importance.

>#5: Does the layout of where the different social strata are buried help us 
>anywhere else?

Does the location of Vodalus' victim mark her as an armiger?  She is on 
higher ground, not near the river, right?  I notice the term "potter's 
field" is used for the burial area of the scruffiest.  The internet says: "A 
potter's field is a place for the burial of unknown or indigent people." and 
"The term comes from Matthew 27:7 in the New Testament of the Bible, in 
which priests take 30 pieces of silver returned by a repentant Judas and 
"used the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners."

>#6: "...observing how cruel the women were and how often they exceeded the 
>punishments he >had decreed..."  Is Wolfe in agreement with Severian and 
>Ymar, or is this misogynous comment >specific to his characters?

In our politically correct world, this comment might seem misogynistic but I 
don't see it that way.  First, the comment has an ironic tone because women 
are stereotyped as the nurturing gender.  A similar comment noting men are 
more cruel than women wouldn't garner much attention.  It might be Wolfe 
acknowledging the stereotype of the ball-busting woman who has been given 
unchecked power.  Then again we have Severian killing Madame Prisca for the 
crime of a bit of cruel taunting...Looking across all Wolfe's work I think 
it could be said that males and females generally tend to stay within 
traditional gender roles (yes, there are exceptions, but generally..).

>#8: What "great northern clan" does Eata believe he belongs to?

I think it is pure fantasy.  Eata's blonde hair and light complexion mark 
him as being from the South.

>#9:  Crucial paragraph, but I have no new observations.

I have one, I think.  There are 5 coffins.  "..two empty ones lay on the 
floor.  Three more too heavy for me to shift and still intact, waited on the 
shelves along one wall."  Some have wondered when Severian's corpse might 
return to inhabit one of the empty coffins but it is the closed coffins 
(presumably full?) which are "waiting" not the open ones.
    This ties to my previoius posts suggesting the five coffins refer to the 
five heads of Cerberus, lliterary avatars of Wolfe, and a cameo appearance 
in the funeral bronze.  If the two open coffins gave us #5 and Severian then 
who will be released from the other three?  Latro?, Silk?, Horn?  Anyone 
have thoughts on who Wolfe's primary avatars would be?

>#26:  Is he in Thecla's cell?  Mother's cell?

He hears a woman crying.  I think it is his mother's cell, the near-death 
experience forcing his memory back further than stacking pebbles.  Later (in 
Urth?) he remembers nursing in a cell and a dark haired woman, I think.

>#28:  Why does the boatman (Charonus?) have "tar-stained clothes"?  I'm 
>sure it's something >obvious.

Sailors on old wooden ships and boats would waterproof them with pitch or 
tar, making "tar" a nickname for sailors.  This boatman, Dorcas' husband and 
Maxellindis' uncle are all sailors and all discuss undines so I think they 
might all be the same person, Severian failing to notice. (I don't have 
Citadel here but wasn't Dorcas' final boat "freshly pitched"?)

-bsharp

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 20:34:35 +0000

A very few additional comments.

A rose is traditionally (among other things) a symbol of the
Trinity; Dante's vision of God at the end of the _Commedia_
is an eternally-unfolding Rose.

Para7: "In our Matachin Tower, a certain bar of iron thrusts
from a bulkhead at the height of a man's groin." Am I the
only person who has had some rather grisly thoughts about
what this bar was _for_?

Also Para7, on time scale: "...the days of Ymar...are now
by many hundreds of years forgotten."

Para13: What is "high-toss-cockle?" I don't actually suppose
it's important, just curious...

General on Gyoll: They're swimming in the sewage of
everyone upriver.

Para16: Someone asked about Potter's Field. It's a pretty
common term for the place where paupers are buried; it's
used ironically in the film _It's A Wonderful Life_ -- the evil
banker is named "Potter," and in the allohistorical world
where George Bailey never lived, Bedford Falls becomes
a city of the dead, a Potter's Field.

Para20: "I have chosen to describe all this now because I
never went again after the day on which I saved Vodalus."
Not to mention that this is the earliest part of his life he's
narrating at all, so it makes sense to give some detail...
Severian is often defensive about his narrative choices.

Para25ff: Apparition of Malrubius:  Sev's first encounter
with the giantess is accompanied by his first encounter
with an aquastor, suggesting strongly that his near-drowning
is part of the **plan** by which the Hiero*s are manipulating
him to his fate.

Para26: Note that the giantess throws him up by flinging him
down.

Para27: "I was enveloped in eyes as one is enveloped in
the repetitious patterns of a kaleidoscope..." this is pretty
close to one of the descriptions of an angel (I think a
cherub?) in the Old Testament. I don't think it's Eata's eyes,
or those of the crowd, he's seeing here.

Para33ff: the old boatman seekign a woman. I don't think
he's asking about the Brides; I think he's looking for Dorcas.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com
I've got a piece of braaaaain lodge in me heeead!!!