{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/596",
    "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": 596,
    "subject": "alga's enumeration",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-05-12T05:43:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-12T09:53:46+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0146@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-12T05:43:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) alga's enumeration",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "alga,\n\nRe: seven Severians as ten or more.  Yes, of course you are right.\nAnd you know I know--I've listed the probable resurrections (under\n\"Miracles,\" AE& p. 13) including eight for Severian himself.\n\nThe thing is, the text talks of a \"first Severian,\" which then makes\nthe narrator a \"second Severian.\"  This Sev2 goes through four deaths\nbefore leaving TBOTNS, and then all the rest in URTH, but from his\npoint of view as narrator he remains Sev2.\n\nHe knows this mindset has flaws.  He can see Apu get up and walk\naround without \"him,\" et cetera--the whole sliver phenomenon.  And\nsome of the deaths are more spectacular than others, they offer less\nleaway for non-miraculous explanation.  Finally when he has to accept\nthat he has been a ghost putting on weight (more than once!), which\nthe reader had begun to suspect long before with those long swims\nunderwater-without-breathing episodes, Severian comes close to having\na breakdown.\n\nWe see all these Severians from Sev2 onward because they are the\nnarrative voice; but we cannot see Sev1, the one who made it without\nthe Claw (and all the other bells & whistles).  Sev1 is =not= the boy\nwho drowned in the river--Sev1 is the one who did the whole quest\nwithout dying once (!).  The one who is at the pivotal point (maybe);\nthe one who is (perhaps) confessing to and receiving counseling from\nthe time-traveling angels at his testing in Yesod.  (\"But didn't you\nhave a dog?  Tell me more about your mother.  Ever talk to the girl\nnext door?\"<g>)\n\nSev1--the unseen.\nSev2--drowned apprentice.\nSev3--journeyman killed in Fiacre crash.\nSev4--journeyman killed at Sanguinary Field.\nSev5--irregular soldier killed at the front.\nSev6--autarch killed on starship.\nSev7--the white fountain.\nSev8--Conciliator.\nSev9--Claw of Conciliator.\nSev10--New Sun drowned at deluge.\nSev11--Apu Punchau, strangled at dawn age.\nSev12--the Sleeper awakes . . .\n\nAside to viz,\n\nArgument that Sev1 was granted a white fountain anyway.  Because\n\nIf there is no white fountain in transit, then it only exists as a\nprobability wave (like the ragnarok/ushas futures).\n\nThen again, this thought =might= go a distance towards explaining\nthe Claw's wishy-washy, sometimes yes, sometimes no miracle\nproduction; that is, it isn't the Claw acting like some kind of boy\nscout/Jimminy Cricket/Super Ego, awarding miracles for good deeds\ndone.  Rather, according to this half dead/half live cat model, the\nClaw as dumb object (like the photographs in BACK TO THE FUTURE and\nTHE TERMINATOR) only responds in Ragnarok mode (when Sev errs toward\nentropy) by doing nothing or in Ushas mode (when Sev blunders into\ngoodness) by doing something random.  Litmus paper.\n\nMore about the limbo land between Briah and Yesod--as the ship goes\nthrough it, Severian thinks of Master Ash and says \"It seemed to me\nthat he was beside me again . . . on the ship I learned when he had\nfled me\" (V, ch. 14, p. 99).  So it seems at least Ash, who\ndiscorporated, is there in some form.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0150@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mark Millman",
        "address": "mark_millman at hmco.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-12T09:53:46+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) alga's enumeration",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0010-0146@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "mantis wrote on 12 May 1998:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Sev1--the unseen.\nSev2--drowned apprentice.\nSev3--journeyman killed in Fiacre crash.\nSev4--journeyman killed at Sanguinary Field.\nSev5--irregular soldier killed at the front.\nSev6--autarch killed on starship.\nSev7--the white fountain.\nSev8--Conciliator.\nSev9--Claw of Conciliator.\nSev10--New Sun drowned at deluge.\nSev11--Apu Punchau, strangled at dawn age.\nSev12--the Sleeper awakes . . ."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Sev4.5--traveler who dies of fever in the mountains.\n\nGiving us 13 Severians?  Hmmm.\n\nMark Millman"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}