Subject: (urth) Severian's Trials

From: David_Lebling <david_lebling at avid.com>
Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 12:51:06 +0000

* William Ansley's epigraph

Wonderful epigraph!  I hereby petition Ranjit to add it to the Archive
Web Pages, and the digest. As they say in alt.folklore.urban, "Motto!"

* mantis, re: The Two Sevs

I had momentarily forgotten the Baldanders-as-contender timeline, thanks
for reminding me.

The differences between the lives of Severian1 and Severian2? There's a
fruitful avenue for speculation!

Obviously, the first turning point is his rescue from drowning. It is
not a coincidence that this is the first incident in the books.  The
question is, in Sev1's life, what happened? My money says that he was
either rescued by one of the other apprentices, or saved himself.  (Sev2
engineers his own rescue, as you point out, so it couldn't have happened
to Sev1.)

Similarly, his finding and saving Triskele was the second turning point.
He even describes what happened in Sev1's life: (paraphrasing) "had we
found him even a year earlier, we would have worshipped him as a god". 
Another nudge happens on his visit to the library, where he gets and is
thus exposed to _The Book of the New Sun_ and _The Book of the Wonders
of Urth and Sky_ (the others are trivial).  I suspect they (and
particularly the former) couldn't be found in Sev1's life.

To elaborate on the qualities desired in the bringer of the New Sun,
Severian1 was obviously well-supplied with ruthlessness,
single-mindedness, and so on.  The goal of the timeline engineering was
to produce a Severian2 whose victims would forgive him and fight for him
in the final battle (Armageddon, anyone?), where only the shades of his
victims support him.

This is a wonderful twist on the usual religious point of view, where
the question is; will God forgive my sins, how will I be judged?
Severian, as a literary Christ-figure, must be judged and forgiven by
his victims to restore the earthly paradise.

I think Severian1 lost this battle.

* William Ansley, re: Timeline of _Peace_.

My guess was mostly that.  I had found that Emil Ludwig's _Napoleon_ was
first published in English in 1925, so Weer probably hadn't read it
before about 1927 or 1928 (it was a best seller in 1926).  Ludwig's
biography was a "popular" one, and one of the first biographical works
to use Freudian techniques.

I'll have to get the NYRSF backissue that has the timeline.

     --viz
     (david_lebling at avid.com)

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.geis.com>
Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 18:01:00 +0000

vizcacha,

Yes!  Yes!  The drowning; the dog Triskele (Severian's first
resurrection; excercises in mercy and compassion; the excercises in
loss, searching, and letting go.  Like Valeria sez: having loved the
dog, you can now love another creature); Thecla's books.  These are
the first milestones warping Sev1 into Sev2.

Sev1 had no Thecla, and certainly no Dorcas.  He was sent to Thrax
at the request of the Archon of Thrax.  Somehow from there he was
drawn to the war (as Sev2 muses about Sev1).

Re: Sev1 failing.  I will agree with that with the qualification that
as the last and only contender he was then =made= to win
retroactively.  Because Absolute Time is running out: the fork in the
road between Ragnarok and Ushas is quickly approaching.  The fate of
Yesod hangs in the balance.

So in that scene where Sev2 runs down the hallway in Yesod where his
lifescenes are portrayed in stained glass (well, portrayed at least
<g>), Sev1 walked down the hallway and examined the failures and
shortcomings of his life--wondered at how it could have been made
better--and was granted the New Sun anyway.  This penitent dream of
optimization then is part of the white fountain circuit which powers
the Claw and begins the actual process of optimization (don't forget
that the Claw and the white fountain are independent agents, "quiet
characters" if you will).  (Which of course is paralleled by Sev2
writing his memoirs, an act which obviously optimizes one's own story
at the same time it examines it.)

I.e., failure or not, there has to be a New Sun to power Sev2.  If
Sev1 fails to bring the New Sun at greater than 51%, why would the
enemies lift a finger?  Well, that's false on two counts: first, the
distinction between friends/enemies of the New Sun is as tricky as
angels/devils (i.e., both are working, hammer and anvil like, upon
Sev2); second, it is the potential of Sev2 to bring the New Sun that
is at issue--Sev2 is the battleground.  That Sev1 took the ship to
Yesod might have been enough for that iteration.

So Sev1 failed, period.  But he =did= make it to Yesod, which was more
than any other participants could do.

(Fits nicely with my sense that the Real Present is a clock ticking
from Valeria's Regency, beginning when Sev1 steps onto the ship, to
the Deluge.)

=mantis=