Subject: (urth) fountain online

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 00:04:00 +0000

While the white fountain is heading towards Urth as some kind of
probability wave function in TBOTNS, Apheta's comment, if taken at
100% veracity (granted: how often do we grant that?), proves that
Severian doesn't yet have an energy link to it until after he leaves
Yesod.

(Unrelated detail:
If the white fountain arrives 50 years after main events of TBOTNS,
and it is travelling less than light speed, then it must be relatively
close-by in TBOTNS.  If speed is 99% c [speed of light], then
distance is 49.5 light years; if speed is 50% c, then distance is
25 light years; if speed is 20% c, then distance is 10 light years;
and so on.)

The idea that Severian is an unconscious energy vampire is one of
those revelations that casts a look back at the past (the previous
text) and a look ahead (to the remaining text of URTH).  The Mother
Earth link tends to look and feel like . . . oh, what's his name?
The son-of-Earth wrestler that the Greek Hero could only defeat by
lifting him off the ground [de-feeting him, in a way] from whence
flowed the Earth energy.  So Severian lying dead on Sanguinary Field,
there's an Earth case, maybe.

Gives new meaning to the term, "living off the land." <g>

"Ah, here comes journeyman Severian, bringing the wasteland in his
wake; drawing the green from the grass, milking the blush from the
rose, drinking the spring rain from dull roots."

(But I think this energy use is "limited" to the miracles of healing
and resurrection attributed to the Claw, rather than simple survival
without food.  In the past I too wondered about the long, lean
stretch from the shores of the lake to the point where Severian was
going to cut a haunch of dead destrier, but in the end I concluded
that he could do it without super powers.  Just imho, fwiw.)

And just when we'd gotten rid of the Claw-power paradox, here comes
another "destiny device."  In Yesod, when all of Severian's victims
choose to fight for him against the sailors, they are said to be
aquastors drawn from his mind.  Ah, but we know how slippery =that=
is now!  (I.e., the ghosts are real.)  And Apheta refers to them as
the unborn, since their universe is over.  So what we have is: the
Trial educates the souls of all of Severian's victims, giving them
all the predestination from beyond (or "outside of") time, so that
as they are born into Briah there is a part of them that knows; but
Severian in TBOTNS doesn't have their knowledge and thus they
(victims) serve as his teachers in this hidden way as well as in
the more obvious ways regarding compassion, mercy, etc.

=mantis=

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

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 09:00:04 +0000

> that he could do it without super powers.  Just imho, fwiw.)

It's been too long for me to remember where that passage comes, but could
it serve as a kind of Christ fasting 40 days in the wilderness episode?
Does he face either major temptation or something that could be called the
beginning of his ministry afterwards?

-Rostrum