{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5487",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 5487,
    "subject": "CLAW: Ancient Salute + Green + Creature of the Present",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2009-09-11T16:34:38+00:00",
    "last": "2009-09-11T16:34:38+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<56524.1252686878@butcherbaker.org>",
      "from": {
        "name": "sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org",
        "address": "sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org"
      },
      "date": "2009-09-11T16:34:38+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) CLAW: Ancient Salute + Green + Creature of the Present",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Before Severian branded Morwenna in CLAW Chapter IV, he \"lifted his arms in the\nancient salute\".\n\nWhat do you suppose this \"ancient salute\" looks like?\njust curious....\n\n\n\n\n     Hi. I haven't had a chance to geek out on the list in a while. I just picked\nup CLAW again and falling in love with this work all over again.  my third read\nof SHADOW had me noticing the words and symbols more than the plot, but by the\ntime I got to CLAW I was back in plot mode. Taking a long break has made me more\nsensitive to the beauty in Wolfe's choice of words again.  What a great book.\n\n     a few things that stand out so far:\n\n     Green as symbol of the proper path for Severian.\n \n     \"When I found light at last, it was the green road stretching from the\nshadow of the Piteous Gate.\"\nIn the dream this comes after the image of the beheaded Morwenna, (so like\nThecla) symbolic of the acts that he must perform, that of killing that which he\nloves. (echos back in The Feast of St. Katherine, and forward in the Flooding of\nUrth)  He is now a torturer, and as perverse as it is, he is on the green road\ntowards the future he would choose.\n\n     Soon he meets the Green Man, who, while it was clear to me that he was an\nexample of the future Ushas (or later) developments that Sev helped realize, I\ndidn't see how ???I guess the term would be 'Truly Christian' he was.\nStep away from the sci-fi pond scum explanation, and swap God for Sun: \" and by\nits intervention have at last made our peace in humankind's long struggle with\nthe sun\"  There is a reconciliation with God implied here.\n\n     Then we here the Green Man's lament: \"And to think I hoped in you. What a\npoor creature I am. I thought I had resigned myself to dying here among a people\nwho are no more than walking dust; but at the tiniest gleam, all my\nresignation fell from me. I am a true man, friend. You are not,...\"\n\n     I lack the terms, but I've heard this notion in Esoteric Christianity &\nGurdjief (& elsewhere) that we are \nnot fully realized until we have unity within, until we are truly like Christ,\nand that only someone who has attained that is truly Christian, or as in\nGurdjief's system, a true Man, in the strict sense, and only then has the\npromised immortality. Here the Green man is telling us that his future is\nenlightened.  They live without murder and have been reconciled. And note that\nSeverian is \"the tiniest gleam\" that gave him hope. \"gleam\"\n    \n     The Green Man goes on to say: \"Perhaps you are right, and for us a new sun\nhas come, and because it has come we have forgotten it. If I am ever able to\nreturn to my own time, I will tell them there of you.\" They have forgotten \"IT\"\nthat the New Sun came, and now that he has met Severian, he will remind them of\n\"You\"(Severian) not \"IT\", the New Sun. He knows that Severian is the New Sun!\nThis pronoun shift is subtle but clearly implies that they are the same thing, as\nwe learn later.\n  \n    Then, when Severian chooses to help him, by giving him the half of his\nwhetstone that will free him, he notes a change in the Green Man's disposition,\n\"Then I saw the knowledge growing in him, so that he seemed to unfold in his\ngreat joy, as though he were already basking in the\nbrighter light of his own day.\"  The Green Man sees that Severian will indeed\nlive up to his hope, and not just be 'walking dust'.\n\n     Great stuff.\n\n\n     another bit that stood out this time:\n\n     chap I, contemplating the Past, & how Vodalus threw away the effectual\nweapon of the ancient high civilization he wants to restore: \"Vodalus, who wished\nas I did to summon it again, yet remained a creature of the present. That we are\ncapable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.\"\n\n     Here is one of those clues for us, implying a difference unseen by the\nnarrator (or just feigned) that Severian is different from Vodalus, in that he\nisn't just a creature from the present, and at by fulfilling his future destiny\nhe does summon. the Conciliator from the past. As well as summoning Apu Punchau.\n Also note how CLAW is book-ended by pulling bald men out of stone dwellings;\nBarnoch and Apu Punchau. ?\n\n\nokay, I was worried this would happen. I started reading the book yesterday and\nalready I've spent a half hour writing at this forum and have a flood of\nillustration ideas at a time when I'm way to busy for any of this stuff.\n\nGrief Gravy!!\n~Son of Witz"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}