Subject: (urth) The Hut in the Jungle

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:47:44 +0000

I've been beating my head up about this part.
serious WTF?!?!? territory.

but then I find this 11 year old tidbit from Mantis. Blows my mind:

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(Tangent: when Severian enters the jungle hut he waxes philosophical
about "changelings" being polar opposites--the hut being a bower of
light compared to the Matachin's prison of darkness.  This is
important because it presages the Hildegrin/Apu-Punchau encounter,
but it also gives a datapoint on what "changeling" means to Wolfe [re:
story of that name].)

Second, the next chapter has Isangoma's interrupted tale of somebody
else fish hunting.  This time the Fish is real, the girl's face on
the mirror-like surface of the water is illusory, the fish hunter is
thwarted.  Another angle (as in "angling"? <g>) of interpretation in
comparing these two stories might be that "the next creature to
manifest in the mirrors, after the Fish, has the face of a woman" (which
certainly works well later on, when Severian opens the Book of Mirrors
and sees the butterfly woman swimming through space).

We get one chapter to digest this, and then the third installment,
very brief.  Hildegrin refers to Dorcas and Severian as "the girl"
and the Fish she caught.  Whoa!  Severian is the Fish; Dorcas is the
girl; both are real; the lake is a mirror-like surface dividing two
universes (living in air/dead in water; or living shore/avern shore);
Dorcas' husband is the fisherman, this time clueless.

An interesting progression using very few elements.