{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5893", "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": 5893, "subject": "Spiritual and Ecological Succession", "messages": 14, "voices": 7, "first": "2011-01-12T01:58:32+00:00", "last": "2011-01-14T12:34:35+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-01-12T01:58:32+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and Ecological Succession", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We have forests on Lune but no apparent civilization remaining." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Jane Delawney: (in UOTNS) The sailors have a proverb regarding the bad luck incurred if \none kills a Port o'Lune man. That's about the only reference in the text \nto doings on Lune." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nThat sounds familiar Jane, thanks for reminding. Perhaps I should have said \"no apparent\ncivilization during Severian's (normal lifetime) era.\"\n \nI would guess the black hole in the sun that makes life difficult on Urth would make it\neven tougher on Lune and Verthandi, ending civiliation there. (of course Skuld (venus) \nmight be a more hospitable place..but that would mess up the story). \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<9F0340A1CF764F11B221FEE0BF1F7CFC@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-01-12T02:06:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and Ecological Succession", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Lee Berman\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "We have forests on Lune but no apparent civilization remaining." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Jane Delawney: (in UOTNS) The sailors have a proverb regarding the bad \nluck incurred if\none kills a Port o'Lune man. That's about the only reference in the text\nto doings on Lune." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That sounds familiar Jane, thanks for reminding. Perhaps I should have \nsaid \"no apparent\ncivilization during Severian's (normal lifetime) era.\"\n\nI would guess the black hole in the sun that makes life difficult on Urth \nwould make it\neven tougher on Lune and Verthandi, ending civiliation there. (of course \nSkuld (venus)\nmight be a more hospitable place..but that would mess up the story)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If Lune is still green with plant life, presumably civilisation is \nsustainable there also.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-01-12T02:36:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and Ecological Succession", "in_reply_to": "<9F0340A1CF764F11B221FEE0BF1F7CFC@jill>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn: What obvious conclusions can we draw? That there is a black hole in Fomalhaut too?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nYes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Feel free to explain how this \"spiritual side of the cycle\" causes Fomalhaut to age rapidly." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nThanks. But no thanks.\n\n\n \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-01-12T02:58:58+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and Ecological Succession", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Lee Berman\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Gerry Quinn: What obvious conclusions can we draw? That there is a black \nhole in Fomalhaut too?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It seems to me there could be many reasons, and there doesn't seem anything \nin the book to support the notion that Fomalhaut is some sort of 'twin' of \nSol.\n\nPossibly Wolfe just picked a star out of his hat, so to speak. fomalhaut is \nan unlikely candidate to have \"one surviving planet\" in an astrophysically \nshort time, given that it is a very young star which does not even have all \nits planets yet." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Feel free to explain how this \"spiritual side of the cycle\" causes \nFomalhaut to age rapidly." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Thanks. But no thanks." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What a shame... I would have liked to know how \"it's because you are missing \nthe spiritual side of the cycle\" was more than meaningless bluster it \nappears to be.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-01-12T04:38:27+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and Ecological Succession", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Jeff: > Where are we told they get black holes for being bad?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam: I thought we were in _The Wonders of Urth and Sky_. Perhaps I will look \nfor it tomorrow." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nIt may be that this fantasy was concocted from the idea that Typhon's astronomers,\nwere so wrong in predicting the rate of decrease in the sun's output.\n \nAlso contributing might be the Saltus caloyer proclaiming that the New Sun's dual\nrole was to remove the black worm eating the heart of the sun and to vanquish the\nguys in the oceans like Abaia, Scylla and Arioch.\n \nSome think that the Apu Punchau eclipse was the result of Tzadkiel's ship zooming \nin to plant a black hole in the sun at the perfect time to start causing trouble on\nUrth during Typhon's rule.\n \nRelies on the assmuptions that Typhon and megatherians were bad like monsters and demons\nand Tzadkiel was this cosmically powerful angel and into judgement and even punishment. \nThe text really doesn't tell us any of this stuff. Sounds more like the Bible or something. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<867558.5682.qm@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-01-12T16:47:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) the miracle of apu-punchau (text based questions)", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Last night I was looking through the coming of the New Sun in Urth and it gave me a big headache. Like Roy, I actually prefer to work with the text instead of math or real astronomy, but I usually think there is a whole lot of irony in comments by narrators. We have a bunch of sea monsters floating around at some point at the end of Urth, no surprise, some with kraken bellies, some with a hundred heads.\n\nThe following quotes gave me a headache, I was hoping somebody more lucid than myself could make a connection here.\n\nFirst, the postscript in which Wolfe says the eclipse \"may leave less credulous minds puzzling over the ways in which such a marvel might be achieved without a cataclysm GREATER than that which accompanied the arrival of the new sun\", that they will posit a solution to the opaque body causing the prolonged night, barring mass hypnosis. Why would a greater cataclysm stem from an eclipse without the arrival of an extremely dense and large object? A bizarre aside, I feel.\n\n\"No sort of wonder is more convincing to the primitive mind than one affecting the presumably immutable workings of the heavens .... it should be noted that the stars seen in the skies of the Comonwealth in winter rise in spring over the stone town (presumably due to the precession of the equinoxes); but that during his prolongation of the night Severian SEES HIS ACCUSTOMED SPRING STARS. This would seem to favor the second explanation,as does the immediate manifestion of the Old Sun, already higher than the rooftops, after the capitulation of the autochthons. Nothing Severian writes indicates what the opaque body may have been; but the thoughtful reader will find little difficulty in advancing at least one possible speculation.\" (371-372)\n\nSo are the constellations Sev sees supposed to be visible from the other side of the world at that time? Is this a mirror like effect, a portal, something else? I don't understand that passage very well. What would cause unseeable constellations to appear in the sky?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From chapter xliv, the morning tide" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"There was a shimmering azure light. The claw had returned - not the claw destroyed by ascian artillery, nor even the claw I had given the chiliarch of Typhon's Praetorians, but the Claw of the Conciliator, the gem I had found in my sabretache ... The claw endured, shining and swaying against the dark void. ... I lifted my head, opened my eyes, and spat a stream of crystal fluid like no water of Urth's; it seemed not water at all, but a richer atmosphere, corroborant as the winds of Yesod.\"\n\nI am assuming here the claw he speaks of is the new sun in the sky, right? But what is this water he's spitting that is like Yesod, and nothing like the water of Urth?\n\nChapter XLVIII is more disconcerting, he has just visited Nessus underwater, and then:\n\n\"under me lay another city, one I did not know, a city that was NEVER NESSUS. Its towers sprawled along the floor of Ocean ... at last a huge shadow glided down the sand-strewn avenue before me, and I looked up to behold the undine, kraken-tressed and ship bellied, pass swiftly overhead and vanish in a dazzle of sunfire ... I waded out of the sea while living it still, even as I had earlier dropped from the stars while loving them; and in truth there is no place in Briah that is not lovely when it no longer holds the threat of death ... 'the new sun comes and he will send them crashing into the sea like foundered ships. and from the sea lift new-glittering with gold, silver, iron, and copper. ... \"I who boast of forgetting nothing, had forgotten that IT WAS THE DEMONS WHO HAD SPOKEN SO.\"\n 338- 339\n\nThe chapter title here is old lands and new, but the demons making the claim that the sea lift the continents to something new seems to have a significance I do not immediately grasp. Is this just another city on Urth, an older one than Nessus?\n\n\"Lune was concelaed behind clouds from which fell a gentle rain. ... again green light drenched the beach. One of the flapping horrors that had snatched me from the wreck of the old Autharch's fliers fluttered mothlike between my eyes and Lune, waxing ever larger; for the first time I knew that notules were its wings. ... Fish as large as ships swam between the towers, which I had been wrong to think fallen; save for the water and their wreaths of weed ... the great gun that had fired at me when I had been taken to the prefect Prisca now boomed again, its bolt cleaving Ocean with a roar of steam. The bolt struck me, but it was not I who died - this drowned citadel vanished like the dream it was, and I found that I was swimming through the gap in the curtain wall and into the REAL Citadel itself.\" (340-341)\n\nHere Sev has \"abandoned\" his life and slips into this watery grave, but whether this is real, imagined, where it is exactly, seems terribly confused, and I wondered if anyone had made any sense of the bolt that cleaves ocean and suddenly leaves him deposited going through the curtain of the REAL citadel (like the other one was not?)\n\nHere we go, this is only trite semantics:\n\n\"you were urth, and thus urth lives.\"\nI shouted, \"this is ushas.\"\n\"if you say it. But Urth live in Ushas and in you.\" (342)\n\nSo Severian is Green. That last quote is not important at all. Seriously though there are a lot of weird weird weird things going on at the end of Urth that I just can't seem to get my head around, and Apheta saying that planetary bodies can be created doesn't help very much.\n\nI don't know how the ship blocking the sun would allow different constellations to be seen in the night sky. A giant galactic mirror? I don't know. Do the masters of apheta create one of their temporary galactic bodies? Can they even reach there?\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D2DE13B.8070803@io.com>", "from": { "name": "Jeff Wilson", "address": "jwilson at io.com" }, "date": "2011-01-12T17:13:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) the miracle of apu-punchau (text based questions)", "in_reply_to": "<867558.5682.qm@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 1/12/2011 10:47 AM, Marc Aramini wrote:\nSo are the constellations Sev sees supposed to be visible from the other side of the world at that time? Is this a mirror like effect, a portal, something else? I don't understand that passage very well. What would cause unseeable constellations to appear in the sky?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A giant mirror, or giant mirrors, like the sails on Tzadkiel's ship. \nGiven F, B, and O also visit him at this time, I would say it is the \nvery same ship." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From chapter xliv, the morning tide\n\"There was a shimmering azure light. The claw had returned - not the claw destroyed by ascian artillery, nor even the claw I had given the chiliarch of Typhon's Praetorians, but the Claw of the Conciliator, the gem I had found in my sabretache ... The claw endured, shining and swaying against the dark void. ... I lifted my head, opened my eyes, and spat a stream of crystal fluid like no water of Urth's; it seemed not water at all, but a richer atmosphere, corroborant as the winds of Yesod.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I am assuming here the claw he speaks of is the new sun in the sky, right? But what is this water he's spitting that is like Yesod, and nothing like the water of Urth?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He's exhaling air, and the silvery bubbles have a lustre in the renewed \nsunlight that he has seen before only on Yesod." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The chapter title here is old lands and new, but the demons making the claim that the sea lift the continents to something new seems to have a significance I do not immediately grasp. Is this just another city on Urth, an older one than Nessus?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No pat answer here. It could be a more ancient human city, or it could \nbe a city built by inhuman Things ala Lovecraft." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Here Sev has \"abandoned\" his life and slips into this watery grave, but whether this is real, imagined, where it is exactly, seems terribly confused, and I wondered if anyone had made any sense of the bolt that cleaves ocean and suddenly leaves him deposited going through the curtain of the REAL citadel (like the other one was not?)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I am pretty sure he is dreaming, fitfully as he adjusts to breathing \nunderwater. Possibly another Lovercraft reference, R'lyeh is a sunken \ncity where the Cthulhu lies dead but dreaming." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So Severian is Green. That last quote is not important at all. Seriously though there are a lot of weird weird weird things going on at the end of Urth that I just can't seem to get my head around," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is probably intentional; there should be more going on in the birth \nand death of worlds than Severian is able to perceive and communicate." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and Apheta saying that planetary bodies can be created doesn't help \nvery much." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "She says stars and planets can be created *in Yesod*, and they are not \nthe same as the objects Severian knows by those same words." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com\nComputational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana\n< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >" } ] }, { "message_id": "<200166.72986.qm@web84102.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "DAVID STOCKHOFF", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-01-12T17:41:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) the miracle of apu-punchau (text based questions)", "in_reply_to": "<4D2DE13B.8070803@io.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Wed, 1/12/11, Jeff Wilson wrote:\nFrom: Jeff Wilson \nSubject: Re: (urth) the miracle of apu-punchau (text based questions)\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Wednesday, January 12, 2011, 12:13 PM\nOn 1/12/2011 10:47 AM, Marc Aramini\nwrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The chapter title here is old lands and new, but the\ndemons making the claim that the sea lift the continents to\nsomething new? seems to have a significance I do not\nimmediately grasp. Is this just another city on Urth,\nan older one than Nessus?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No pat answer here. It could be a more ancient human city,\nor it could be a city built by inhuman Things ala\nLovecraft." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Here Sev has \"abandoned\" his life and slips into this\nwatery grave, but whether this is real, imagined, where it\nis exactly, seems terribly confused, and I wondered if\nanyone had made any sense of the bolt that cleaves ocean and\nsuddenly leaves him deposited going through the curtain of\nthe REAL citadel (like the other one was not?)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I am pretty sure he is dreaming, fitfully as he adjusts to\nbreathing underwater. Possibly another Lovercraft reference,\nR'lyeh is a sunken city where the Cthulhu lies dead but\ndreaming." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nThe \"towers\" seem to be sideways but not \"fallen.\" Is that right? If so, they are not towers at all." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-01-12T18:09:33+00:00", "subject": "(urth) the miracle of apu-punchau (text based questions)", "in_reply_to": "<200166.72986.qm@web84102.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Marc Aramini: > > The chapter title here is old lands and new, but the" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "demons making the claim that the sea lift the continents to\nsomething new seems to have a significance I do not\nimmediately grasp. Is this just another city on Urth,\nan older one than Nessus?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nI considered posting a response under the subject: under the subject: Spiritual and\nEcological Succession. This phenomenon seems to fall squarely in the same category.\n \nRuins under the waves of Urth imply the same thing that ruins under Blue's Oceans\nor on Green imply: the pattern of Floods is cyclical.\n \nWe think the \"angels\" are the ones who pushed for Severian's Flood but there is \nevidence that all the angels and demons that we encounter have an aquatic origin\nand perhaps the Flood is part of their life cycle. They seem to be working against\neach other but perhaps at a deeper level they are working together.\n \nPerhaps this is a cosmic example of the good cop/bad cop gambit to manipulate a \nsubject. (I think Peter Wright leans in this direction). Maybe these god-like\ncreatures are somehow forbidden to create each cyclical Flood without getting \nthe express permission of a representative or \"epitome\" of the population which\nwill be destroyed.\n\nApheta labelling herself a \"larva\" has implications of a life cycle. It may be\ninter-universal but it would seem humanity is an integral part of the life-cycle\nof the species called Hierogrammates. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2011-01-13T16:26:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and Ecological Succession", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Jerry Friedman wrote:\nWhat evidence do we have that he was that old?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "/Lexicon Urthus/ isn't evidence?\n\nThat means I hope someone else knows." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't believe Severian's age is ever made clear in the text. The\nnearest thing is where Hildegrin says that he is a couple of years\nolder than 'her'. Unfortunately it's unclear whether 'her' is Dorcas\nor Agia. Agia claims to be twenty-three (but may be lying). Agia also\nestimates Dorcas's age at sixteen or seventeen (but may be lying or\nmistaken). Hildegrin may also be mistaken. So in short, we can't tell.\n\nSeverian is in any case rather vague about time. There'a a suggestion\nthat when he meets Eata again near the end of COTA, he _realises_ that\nhe has been away less than a year, and is rather surprised by it. GW\nin one of the appendices comments on the frutstrating vagueness about\ntime that people in that age seem to have.\n\nSeverian does tend to distinguish rather firmly between the time when\nhe was a boy (including the opening part of SOTT) and the time when\nhe was a man, even though only a year or so seems to have passed I do\nsometimes wonder if another year or two went by without his noticing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Antonio Pedro Marquez wrote:\nHow many Urth days does a bluish year span?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think it's made clear at one point that we don't know. More\nprecisely, no one knows exactly how the Blue year relates to the Whorl\nyear, which, being artificial, is presumably based on the Urth year.\nThey're clearly fairly close, or someone would have spotted the\ndifference - it's not as if children are reaching maturity at the age\nof three, or alternatively thirty-two. This makes sense, as Blue in an\nUrth-like planet. But we can't tell precisely." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2011-01-13T21:24:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and ecological succession", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Andrew Mason wrote:\nSeverian does tend to distinguish rather firmly between the time when\nhe was a ?boy (including the opening part of SOTT) and the time when\nhe was a man, even though only a year or so seems to have passed ?I do\nsometimes wonder if another year or two went by without his noticing." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Footnote to this: Severian says towards the end that he revived\nTriskele two years before he had the Claw, though a simple reading of\nthe text would suggest it was at most a year and a half. This could\njust be a slip, by either Severian or Wolfe, but another possibility\noccurs to me. Triskele's chapter is strangely self-contained. Could it\nbe that it did not happen at the place where it comes in the narrative\n- between Sev's meeting with Vodalus and his visit to the library -\nbut rather during an earlier winter?" } ] }, { "message_id": "<32BC884F-068B-4FFB-9B16-4672743049BC@butcherbaker.org>", "from": { "name": "Son of Witz", "address": "sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org" }, "date": "2011-01-13T22:18:01+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and ecological succession", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Andrew Mason wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Severian does tend to distinguish rather firmly between the time when\nhe was a boy (including the opening part of SOTT) and the time when\nhe was a man, even though only a year or so seems to have passed I do\nsometimes wonder if another year or two went by without his noticing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Jan 13, 2011, at 1:24 PM, Andrew Mason wrote:\nFootnote to this: Severian says towards the end that he revived\nTriskele two years before he had the Claw, though a simple reading of\nthe text would suggest it was at most a year and a half. This could\njust be a slip, by either Severian or Wolfe, but another possibility\noccurs to me. Triskele's chapter is strangely self-contained. Could it\nbe that it did not happen at the place where it comes in the narrative\n- between Sev's meeting with Vodalus and his visit to the library -\nbut rather during an earlier winter?\n_______________________________________________" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not by my reading. I think the text suggest it happens in the sequence the book presents.\nIn CLAW he recounts the story to Master Ash, in Foila's Request. In the context, Drotte is giving him orders, so Drotte is allready Captain of the apprentices.\n\n?I was angry because I was the oldest, except for Drotte and Roche, and I thought the younger apprentices ought to have to do the work. I was poking at the clog with my stick when I saw him across the Old Yard. \"\n\nSeverian in the first telling sees himself as a man:\n\"I had been a man (if I was truly a man) such a short time; I could not endure to think that I had become a man so different from the boy I had been.\"\n\nIn the second telling he gives that a second thought:\n\"I was only a boy, I suppose, though I didn’t think so then.\"\n\n~witz" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D2F80E0.8030202@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-01-13T22:46:56+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and ecological succession", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 1/13/2011 4:24 PM, Andrew Mason wrote:\nAndrew Mason wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Severian does tend to distinguish rather firmly between the time when\nhe was a boy (including the opening part of SOTT) and the time when\nhe was a man, even though only a year or so seems to have passed I do\nsometimes wonder if another year or two went by without his noticing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Footnote to this: Severian says towards the end that he revived\nTriskele two years before he had the Claw, though a simple reading of\nthe text would suggest it was at most a year and a half. This could\njust be a slip, by either Severian or Wolfe, but another possibility\noccurs to me. Triskele's chapter is strangely self-contained. Could it\nbe that it did not happen at the place where it comes in the narrative\n- between Sev's meeting with Vodalus and his visit to the library -\nbut rather during an earlier winter?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree that it feels like that." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2011-01-14T12:34:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Spiritual and ecological succession", "in_reply_to": "<4D2F80E0.8030202@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Son of Witz wrote:\nNot by my reading. I think the text suggest it happens in the sequence the book presents.\nIn CLAW he recounts the story to Master Ash, in Foila's Request. In the context, Drotte is giving him orders, so Drotte is allready Captain of the apprentices.\n\n?I was angry because I was the oldest, except for Drotte and Roche, and I thought the younger apprentices ought to have to do the work. I was poking at the clog with my stick when I saw him across the Old Yard. \"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Do we know that Drotte was only captain for one year? (It's not a\nforegone conclusion that he would be - Eata was expected to be captain\nfor three)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Severian in the first telling sees himself as a man:\n\"I had been a man (if I was truly a man) such a short time; I could not endure to think that I had become a man so different from the boy I had been.\"\n\nIn the second telling he gives that a second thought:\n\"I was only a boy, I suppose, though I didn’t think so then.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Regarding the 'boy' thing, by the way, the context where it keeps\ncoming up is that Severian frequently says he played in the necropolis\n'as a boy' - though it ended, it would seem, just a year and a half\nbefore his masking. I guess we have to explain this psychologically,\nthough. The story of Triskele and Valeria has a self-contained feel,\nbut all the other events of that winter - the meeting with Vodalus,\nHunna's examination, the capture of Thecla, the library, Drotte and\nRoche's masking, the House Azure - are linked in a way that would make\nredating very difficult." } ] } ] }