{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5108", "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": 5108, "subject": "Valeria", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2008-07-18T03:29:38+00:00", "last": "2008-07-19T03:13:15+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "b sharp", "address": "bsharporflat at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2008-07-18T03:29:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Valeria", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As with the end of CotA, the end of UotNS is rather densely packed with explanations.\nI just noticed a passage I hadn't ever noticed before (perhaps Roy will know if it was\ndiscussed before):\n\nSeverian has discovered he is an eidolon and says: " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"I felt as real as I ever have; and when I searched among my memories, I found \nValeria there still, and Thecla and old Autarch, and the boy Severian (who had been\nSeverian only)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Valeria, with her home in the tower near the Atrium of Time is a pretty mysterious \ncharacter. Some have guessed she is Severian's mother, daughter, sister. But why is\nshe included in the select company of those who have been grafted onto Severian's \nmemory, chemically?\n\nRacking my brain for the past day or two produced only two weak answers:\n\n1. The assassin's blade had an alzabo extract on it and when it pierced Valeria, then\nSeverian's chest, her memories were implanted.\n\n2. Valeria symbolizes Wolfe's wife and he wanted to honor her and their long marriage \n(though his avatar Severian) by including her, in literary form, as a permanent part of\nSeverian's memory. (I suspect Thecla and old Autarch also represent important people\nin Gene Wolfe's life).\n\nBut I'm hoping someone can come up with explanations better than these :-).\n\n\n-bsharp \n\n\n_________________________________________________________________\nTime for vacation? WIN what you need- enter now!\nhttp://www.gowindowslive.com/summergiveaway/?ocid=tag_jlyhm" } ] }, { "message_id": "<93d4039f0807172042x273d33d5lc0bed297f87d5fd@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "John Watkins", "address": "john.watkins04 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2008-07-18T03:42:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Valeria", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Could it just be Wolfe saying that if you're married to someone for\nlong enough, their personality imprints onto your mind?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 7/17/08, b sharp wrote:\n\nAs with the end of CotA, the end of UotNS is rather densely packed with\nexplanations.\nI just noticed a passage I hadn't ever noticed before (perhaps Roy will know\nif it was\ndiscussed before):\n\nSeverian has discovered he is an eidolon and says:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "\"I felt as real as I ever have; and when I searched among my memories, I\nfound\nValeria there still, and Thecla and old Autarch, and the boy Severian (who\nhad been\nSeverian only)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Valeria, with her home in the tower near the Atrium of Time is a pretty\nmysterious\ncharacter. Some have guessed she is Severian's mother, daughter, sister. But\nwhy is\nshe included in the select company of those who have been grafted onto\nSeverian's\nmemory, chemically?\n\nRacking my brain for the past day or two produced only two weak answers:\n\n1. The assassin's blade had an alzabo extract on it and when it pierced\nValeria, then\nSeverian's chest, her memories were implanted.\n\n2. Valeria symbolizes Wolfe's wife and he wanted to honor her and their long\nmarriage\n(though his avatar Severian) by including her, in literary form, as a\npermanent part of\nSeverian's memory. (I suspect Thecla and old Autarch also represent\nimportant people\nin Gene Wolfe's life).\n\nBut I'm hoping someone can come up with explanations better than these :-).\n\n\n-bsharp\n\n\n_________________________________________________________________\nTime for vacation? WIN what you need- enter now!\nhttp://www.gowindowslive.com/summergiveaway/?ocid=tag_jlyhm\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4880237E.1010204@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dave Tallman", "address": "davetallman at msn.com" }, "date": "2008-07-18T05:00:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Valeria", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "b sharp wrote:\nValeria, with her home in the tower near the Atrium of Time is a pretty mysterious \ncharacter. Some have guessed she is Severian's mother, daughter, sister. But why is\nshe included in the select company of those who have been grafted onto Severian's \nmemory, chemically?\n " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Valeria's family was connected with Typhon: \"They had waited, at first, \nto leave Urth with the autarch of their era, then had waited because \nthere was nothing left for them but waiting.\"\n\nCould Valeria actually be a woman from Typhon's time, posing at the last \ndescendant of a family with no remaining members? \"I am all the sisters \nwe breed... And all the sons.\"\n\nThe mention of the story of the Faire Rosamund in \"A Solar Labyrinth\" \nconnects the sundial-related Valeria to the story of a royal mistress \nwho was hidden from a jealous wife in a maze. (\"Here Rose the Graced, \nnot Rose the Chaste, reposes...\") Valeria's house is reachable only by a \nmaze-like underground path. Could Valeria in fact be the original of \nKypris, the mistress of Typhon who was scanned to become the love \ngoddess of the Whorl?\n\nKypris and Typhon produced several frozen embryos, one of which became \nSilk. Could Catherine have been already pregnant with another of these \nembryos before she met Ouen? Then Severian is actually Valeria's child, \nand this give a reason why her memories might be found in Severian (per \nthe Lamarkian inheritance theory in \"House of Ancestors\").\n\nHere are the sundial mottoes Valeria quotes, with correct translations \nand location references from \"The Book of Sun-dials\":\n\nASPICE UT ASPICIAR -- \"Look on me that I may be looked on.\"\nThis graceful appeal from the dial to the sun was inscribed on a device\nbelonging to Queen Louise de Vaudemont, the wife of Henry III of France.\n\nLUX DEI VITAE VIAM MONSTRAT,\nSED UMBRA HORAM ATQUE FIDEM DOCET --\n\"The light of God showeth the way of life,\nBut the shadow telleth both the hour and teacheth the faith.\"\nOn a fine vertical dial set up in 1891 on an old stone wall which marked\nthe northern boundary of the Sta. Barbara mission in California.\n\nFELICIBUE BREVIS, MISERIS HORA LONGA --\n\"The hour is short to the happy, long to the wretched.\"\nCopied in 1866 from a dial from a house at Martigny. Time's hourglass \nand wings were painted above the dial.\n\nMartigny was once called Octodurus, and it was the site of a famous \nbattle by the forces of Julius Caesar. The mottoes connect Valeria with \nroyalty, emperors, shadows, and torturers. Also, Santa Barbara just \nhappens to be another female martyr executed by beheading. Interesting..." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "b sharp", "address": "bsharporflat at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2008-07-19T03:13:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Valeria", "in_reply_to": "<4880237E.1010204@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dave Tallman, again kudos for your research! If the source of the sundial \ninscriptions had been tracked down before I was unaware of it. Still, unlike\nthe slam dunk of your three Contessa maids all being beheaded, I don't find\nthe connection between the inscriptions compelling. Perhaps there is no \nindividual significance to them but only a collective significance that Valeria \nis connected to the distant past of Urth (or distant future of Earth?). I'll note\nthat the animal statues in the Atrium of Time have the names of South \nAmerican fossil creatures (barylamdas, arctothers, glyptodons and smilodons).\n\nConnecting Valeria to Typhon might prove fruitful. I am reminded that another \ndenizen of the Citadel, the Mandragora, is probably related to Typhon (I think \nonly these two characters show evidence of telepathy in BotNS).\n\n\n-bsharp" } ] } ] }