{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4741", "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": 4741, "subject": "Catherine, Cyriaca and baby Severian", "messages": 5, "voices": 4, "first": "2006-10-20T13:44:25+00:00", "last": "2006-10-21T12:33:34+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "b sharp", "address": "bsharporflat at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2006-10-20T13:44:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Catherine, Cyriaca and baby Severian", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Regarding Catherine, Roy writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think it would be rather strange that the torture and death of a woman \nwho looked just like the >maid who annually played Holy Katharine would \nhave gone unnoticed and unmentioned by >Severian and every other member of \nthe guild. Besides, the torturers buried their \"clients in the >lower \nreaches of the necropolis\". The woman whose body was taken by Vodalus was \nburied >higher up the hill, among the statuary." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Apprentices routinely asked older journeymen about their parentage but were \ntold little. If Severian's mother had escaped from the torturers and then \nwas returned 20 years later for execution then we can be sure it would be \nkept secret, especially from Severian. Severian doesn't recognize the woman \nin the coffin as a client. Perhaps it was a private torture/execution \nconducted by Master Gurloes as directed by the voices he talks to at the top \nof the tower.\n\nIs Roy is arguing that the woman in the coffin isn't a torture client \nbecause of where she is buried? Are we to think that Thecla was buried down \nin the lower reaches of the necropolis? Exultants were usually buried in \nprivate mausoleums. Where would you bury an exultant who was missing for 20 \nyears then secretly tortured to death? I think the upper level of the \nnecropolis is a good compromise.\n\nIf Catherine did escape from the torturers, who helped her? I'm tempted to \nsay Palaemon. It would explain why he was banished from the guild for a \nwhile and why he is so attached to Severian. Roy's dratted time frame \narguments stand in the way, unfortunately. Winnoc says he was flogged by \nJourneyman Palaemon 30 years previously. I don't think Severian is 30 and \neven using time travel and Path Of Air devices I can't make the scenario \nwork. I still like it, however ;-) so I woudn't mind if someone can make it \nwork.\n\non Cyriaca, Roy writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I just don't see any text-based connection that links Cyriaca with the \ntwins, but there are some >things that weigh against a connection. Cyriaca \nwas apparently a postulant traveling in the >southern part of the country \nwith the Pelerines at her time of menarche. Sometime in her last >year with \nthem before making her final commitment, she ran away from the order (sound \nfamiliar?) >and went home. The Pelerine outfit she wore to the archon's \nparty still fit her, so she must have >been full grown when she left the \norder. So she must have spent several years with them." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Wolfe has made it clear that Thecla's four books are clues. I consider \nAgia's four weapons to be parallel to that. Two of them (athame and \nlucivee) connect her to the sorcerer's cult. The other two I believe \nconnect her to Cyriaca. They are the crooked blade of Thrax and the \nmisericorde (battlefield mercy killing blade, a Pelerine tool I think).\n\nCyriaca says she could be Severian's mother if she conceived him a year or \ntwo after it was possible. If Agia is a few years younger than Severian \nthen Cyriaca conceiving twins soon after leaving the Pelerines is in the \nproper time frame. Cyriaca left the Pelerines because she wanted to be with \nmen so a pregnancy isn't surprising.\nCyriaca is currently used to being served by maids but she tells Severian \nshe can dress hair and sew. Perhaps she learned these skills as a postulant \nbut it might suggest her high status was acquired later in life. If her home \nwas Nessus, it can be imagined that an armiger visiting from Thrax \"rescues\" \nher from a dreary life as a used clothing shop girl and brings her north to \nhis estate, only to treat her cruelly thereafter. Borski has suggested \nSieur Racho, who often visits Nessus, for this role. Her baby twins are \nthen left in Nessus to be raised by the shopowner, surrogate mother, \nGrandma, who later dies and bequeaths the shop to Agia and Agilus. Being \nfrom a shopkeeper family of the optimate class, Cyriaca could have gained \nentrance to the Pelerines, as Ava did. Cyriaca maintains a secret \ncorrespondence with a Pelerine friend. Perhaps with her daughter also.\n\n\nI think Roy makes a good argument for Severian not being born in the Citadel \nbut rather arriving as a small child. He worries about the nursing in a \ncell memory conflicting with the memory of playing with pebbles. In a \nnon-baby formula/baby food society, it is likely a child would still be \nnursing at an age old enough to play with pebbles so I think those two \nmemories are compatible.\n\nI willl take issue with this statement:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Early on, Severian said that his earliest recollection was of \"piling \npebbles in the Old Yard.\" That >isn't true, and he knew it wasn't true when \nhe wrote it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "We know that Severian's memories are not actually perfect. That may have \nbeen the earliest memory he had at that point in his life in the story. He \nis able to add memories later in the story when properly stimulated (the \nmandragora and Thecla are very intrusive stimulations). Severian manages to \nadd a vague memory of his mother and nursing in a cell and feels elated, \"at \nhaving reached back at last to her, after so many fruitless attempts.\" \nThere is no mention of Severa in these added memories but I'll forever \nwonder about Thecla being added to his pebble piling memory.\n\n-bsharp" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f7617370610201031s36b990a2ye84b5915aecf6ea2@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2006-10-20T17:31:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Catherine, Cyriaca and baby Severian", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Okay, here's a side note on the \"Who played Katherine?\" question...\n\nRecall the attitudes people have towards the torturers. Where are they\ngoing to find a woman who willingly works with them, year after year?\n\nAnd a woman who can apparently be beheaded without dying?\n\nNow, think about Jonas........" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant\n-----\nhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\nhttp://www.danehyoakes.com\nTragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open\nsewer and die.\n - Mel Brooks" } ] }, { "message_id": "<000e01c6f491$c0803220$913ec6d8@rclackey.stic.net>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2006-10-20T21:50:20+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Catherine, Cyriaca and baby Severian", "in_reply_to": "<1f7617370610201031s36b990a2ye84b5915aecf6ea2@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "bsharp quoted and wrote:\nI think it would be rather strange that the torture and death of a woman\nwho looked just like the >maid who annually played Holy Katharine would\nhave gone unnoticed and unmentioned by >Severian and every other member of\nthe guild. Besides, the torturers buried their \"clients in the >lower\nreaches of the necropolis\". The woman whose body was taken by Vodalus was\nburied >higher up the hill, among the statuary." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Apprentices routinely asked older journeymen about their parentage but were\ntold little. If Severian's mother had escaped from the torturers and then\nwas returned 20 years later for execution then we can be sure it would be\nkept secret, especially from Severian. Severian doesn't recognize the\nwoman\nin the coffin as a client." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Neither did he recognize her as the maid who played Holy Katharine, which he\ncould hardly have failed to do." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Is Roy is arguing that the woman in the coffin isn't a torture client\nbecause of where she is buried? Are we to think that Thecla was buried\ndown\nin the lower reaches of the necropolis? Exultants were usually buried in\nprivate mausoleums. Where would you bury an exultant who was missing for\n20\nyears then secretly tortured to death? I think the upper level of the\nnecropolis is a good compromise." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Exultants weren't usually buried in the necropolis at all. They were buried\non their private estates. Thus, there would not have existed any family plot\nor mausoleum to bury her in on the hill." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Cyriaca says she could be Severian's mother if she conceived him a year or\ntwo after it was possible. If Agia is a few years younger than Severian\nthen Cyriaca conceiving twins soon after leaving the Pelerines is in the\nproper time frame. Cyriaca left the Pelerines because she wanted to be\nwith\nmen so a pregnancy isn't surprising." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Agia said she was 23, which would make Severian about 25. If those ages are\ncorrect, that would make Cyriaca about 40, if she wasn't lying." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I willl take issue with this statement:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Early on, Severian said that his earliest recollection was of \"piling\npebbles in the Old Yard.\" That >isn't true, and he knew it wasn't true\nwhen\nhe wrote it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We know that Severian's memories are not actually perfect. That may have\nbeen the earliest memory he had at that point in his life in the story." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "is able to add memories later in the story when properly stimulated (the\nmandragora and Thecla are very intrusive stimulations)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Severian's manuscript was not a daily journal or diary. He wrote it all ten\nyears after the events related in it. The nursing memory came to him on the\nsame night that Jolenta was wounded and Juturna paid him a visit in the\nCephissus river. The mandragora incident happened on his first night in the\nCitadel after returning as autarch. He had already experienced both memories\nten years before he wrote the piling pebbles sentence.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<001201c6f4e0$0bf9a6c0$623ec6d8@rclackey.stic.net>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2006-10-21T07:10:48+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Catherine, Cyriaca and baby Severian", "in_reply_to": "<000e01c6f491$c0803220$913ec6d8@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dan'l wrote:\nOkay, here's a side note on the \"Who played Katherine?\" question...\n\nRecall the attitudes people have towards the torturers. Where are they\ngoing to find a woman who willingly works with them, year after year?\n\nAnd a woman who can apparently be beheaded without dying?\n\nNow, think about Jonas........" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Okay, I'll bite. A friggin' 'female' android as Holy Katharine? Are you\nserious? That would really screw up Severian's family tree. \n\nWhile checking a spelling just now, I took note of Severian's persistence in\nreferring to the female as a \"maid\" when he recounted his own elevation\nfeast -- ten times in about three pages. My old _Webster's_ first definition\nof maid is: \"1. a) a girl or young unmarried woman. b) a virgin.\"\n\nI don't know why I never noticed it before, but that many references to a\n\"maid\" is hard to dismiss. Minimally, it suggests that, if Ouen got\nCatherine pregnant and she was Severian's mother, she can't be the maid in\nthe ceremonies.\n\nWhere do they grow those damn khaibits anyway? And what does the khaibit get\nout of the deal?\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<453A139E.4030206@io.com>", "from": { "name": "Jeff Wilson", "address": "jwilson at io.com" }, "date": "2006-10-21T12:33:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Catherine, Cyriaca and baby Severian", "in_reply_to": "<001201c6f4e0$0bf9a6c0$623ec6d8@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nDan'l wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Okay, here's a side note on the \"Who played Katherine?\" question...\n\nRecall the attitudes people have towards the torturers. Where are they\ngoing to find a woman who willingly works with them, year after year?\n\nAnd a woman who can apparently be beheaded without dying?\n\nNow, think about Jonas........" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Okay, I'll bite. A friggin' 'female' android as Holy Katharine? Are you\nserious? That would really screw up Severian's family tree. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can't say it's without textev, given Hethor's paracoita speech." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "While checking a spelling just now, I took note of Severian's persistence in\nreferring to the female as a \"maid\" when he recounted his own elevation\nfeast -- ten times in about three pages. My old _Webster's_ first definition\nof maid is: \"1. a) a girl or young unmarried woman. b) a virgin.\"\n\nI don't know why I never noticed it before, but that many references to a\n\"maid\" is hard to dismiss. Minimally, it suggests that, if Ouen got\nCatherine pregnant and she was Severian's mother, she can't be the maid in\nthe ceremonies." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm telling you, she must be mom's khaibit du jour." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Where do they grow those damn khaibits anyway? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The witches' tower." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And what does the khaibit get\nout of the deal?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "pampered existence, similar to the recent _The Island_" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com\n< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >" } ] } ] }