{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/543", "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": 543, "subject": "Severian's Trials", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-05-02T12:51:06+00:00", "last": "1998-05-02T18:01:00+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David_Lebling", "address": "david_lebling at avid.com" }, "date": "1998-05-02T12:51:06+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Severian's Trials", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "* William Ansley's epigraph\n\nWonderful epigraph! I hereby petition Ranjit to add it to the Archive\nWeb Pages, and the digest. As they say in alt.folklore.urban, \"Motto!\"\n\n* mantis, re: The Two Sevs\n\nI had momentarily forgotten the Baldanders-as-contender timeline, thanks\nfor reminding me.\n\nThe differences between the lives of Severian1 and Severian2? There's a\nfruitful avenue for speculation!\n\nObviously, the first turning point is his rescue from drowning. It is\nnot a coincidence that this is the first incident in the books. The\nquestion is, in Sev1's life, what happened? My money says that he was\neither rescued by one of the other apprentices, or saved himself. (Sev2\nengineers his own rescue, as you point out, so it couldn't have happened\nto Sev1.)\n\nSimilarly, his finding and saving Triskele was the second turning point.\nHe even describes what happened in Sev1's life: (paraphrasing) \"had we\nfound him even a year earlier, we would have worshipped him as a god\". \nAnother nudge happens on his visit to the library, where he gets and is\nthus exposed to _The Book of the New Sun_ and _The Book of the Wonders\nof Urth and Sky_ (the others are trivial). I suspect they (and\nparticularly the former) couldn't be found in Sev1's life.\n\nTo elaborate on the qualities desired in the bringer of the New Sun,\nSeverian1 was obviously well-supplied with ruthlessness,\nsingle-mindedness, and so on. The goal of the timeline engineering was\nto produce a Severian2 whose victims would forgive him and fight for him\nin the final battle (Armageddon, anyone?), where only the shades of his\nvictims support him.\n\nThis is a wonderful twist on the usual religious point of view, where\nthe question is; will God forgive my sins, how will I be judged?\nSeverian, as a literary Christ-figure, must be judged and forgiven by\nhis victims to restore the earthly paradise.\n\nI think Severian1 lost this battle.\n\n* William Ansley, re: Timeline of _Peace_.\n\nMy guess was mostly that. I had found that Emil Ludwig's _Napoleon_ was\nfirst published in English in 1925, so Weer probably hadn't read it\nbefore about 1927 or 1928 (it was a best seller in 1926). Ludwig's\nbiography was a \"popular\" one, and one of the first biographical works\nto use Freudian techniques.\n\nI'll have to get the NYRSF backissue that has the timeline.\n\n --viz\n (david_lebling at avid.com)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com" }, "date": "1998-05-02T18:01:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Severian's Trials", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "vizcacha,\n\nYes! Yes! The drowning; the dog Triskele (Severian's first\nresurrection; excercises in mercy and compassion; the excercises in\nloss, searching, and letting go. Like Valeria sez: having loved the\ndog, you can now love another creature); Thecla's books. These are\nthe first milestones warping Sev1 into Sev2.\n\nSev1 had no Thecla, and certainly no Dorcas. He was sent to Thrax\nat the request of the Archon of Thrax. Somehow from there he was\ndrawn to the war (as Sev2 muses about Sev1).\n\nRe: Sev1 failing. I will agree with that with the qualification that\nas the last and only contender he was then =made= to win\nretroactively. Because Absolute Time is running out: the fork in the\nroad between Ragnarok and Ushas is quickly approaching. The fate of\nYesod hangs in the balance.\n\nSo in that scene where Sev2 runs down the hallway in Yesod where his\nlifescenes are portrayed in stained glass (well, portrayed at least\n), Sev1 walked down the hallway and examined the failures and\nshortcomings of his life--wondered at how it could have been made\nbetter--and was granted the New Sun anyway. This penitent dream of\noptimization then is part of the white fountain circuit which powers\nthe Claw and begins the actual process of optimization (don't forget\nthat the Claw and the white fountain are independent agents, \"quiet\ncharacters\" if you will). (Which of course is paralleled by Sev2\nwriting his memoirs, an act which obviously optimizes one's own story\nat the same time it examines it.)\n\nI.e., failure or not, there has to be a New Sun to power Sev2. If\nSev1 fails to bring the New Sun at greater than 51%, why would the\nenemies lift a finger? Well, that's false on two counts: first, the\ndistinction between friends/enemies of the New Sun is as tricky as\nangels/devils (i.e., both are working, hammer and anvil like, upon\nSev2); second, it is the potential of Sev2 to bring the New Sun that\nis at issue--Sev2 is the battleground. That Sev1 took the ship to\nYesod might have been enough for that iteration.\n\nSo Sev1 failed, period. But he =did= make it to Yesod, which was more\nthan any other participants could do.\n\n(Fits nicely with my sense that the Real Present is a clock ticking\nfrom Valeria's Regency, beginning when Sev1 steps onto the ship, to\nthe Deluge.)\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }