Subject: (urth) Short Story 110: The Cat

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:45:51 +0000

“The Cat” first appeared in the 1983 World Fantasy Convention program book
and is reprinted in *Endangered Species*.

SUMMARY:

In the fifth year of Severian’s reign, Odilo, who encountered Severian near
the antechamber in *Claw of the Conciliator *and later serves as steward
under him, listens to stories being told by cooks and servants on
Hallowmass Eve (called “the full of the Spading Moon”) as he goes to the
kitchen to eat, kicking the chief cook out of his seat. Odilo’s father was
the same age as the Chatelaine Sancha, whom he then recalls as he thinks of
a story to write down for posterity, inspired by the scary Halloween tales
of the kitchen.

He describes Inire's proclivity for the young, and says no doubt that
Sancha's maturity at a young age attracted him. Inire speaks to children he
does not know, and “if her face and her answers please him, he may pause in
the conduct of great affairs to tell her some tale of the worlds beyond
Dis” which the child will forget at adulthood. If he has no time, Inire
will give the child a toy, which women, children, and wise men “call
magical.” If Inire comes upon the child a second time and the toy is
displayed as whole, and if, in lieu of a second toy, the child requests a
story from Inire, they will become his “particular friend and pupil for so
long as she — or more rarely he — may live.”

Sancha becomes his friend when she is seven years old, and Odilo's father
sees them walking together with her cat in her arms. He takes her to his
specula, where beings can be materialized from ethereal waves or
“circumfused to the border of Briah.” Sancha tosses her cat into the circle
of mirrors. The cat disappears. Inire promises to recover the cat, and soon
rumors that Sancha is attended by “some fey thing” start. Things are broken
and the bodies of sparrows presented to her. A scandal instigated by
Sancha's mistress, the Chatelaine Leocadia, between the nearly thirty year
old Lomer and the fourteen year old Sancha ruins her reputation and gets
him sentenced to death, but his mistress, the Chatelaine Nympha, intercedes
on his behalf. Sancha becomes a Chatelaine when her father wills her an
estate in the south and she disappears for 50 years from the House
Absolute, wedding the heir of Fors.

She returns as an old, bent, and hook-nosed woman, dissatisfied with her
daughter-in-law, who calls her a witch. Her helper, Aude, is resentful that
no one told her Sancha had a pet. Her spectral cat was even rumored to walk
upon the keyboard of an electronic organ. Odilo attends her when Sancha lay
dying. A dark paw print appears on her white bedspread, and beside it “a
thing not unlike a doll.” When it is pricked, it bleeds. Father Inire
instructed that the figure be buried with Sancha, and Odilo orders the
bedspread sent to the Chatelaine Leocadia, who had grown very dim of sight.
“She has since gone bline, and yet her maids report that she sees the cat,
which stalks her in her dreams. It is not well for those of high station to
involve the servants of their enemies in their quarrels.”

COMMENTARY: The story is first and foremost a Halloween tale involving
prominent and minor characters from *Book of the New Sun*. The old woman
with a cat which has been transported to a different dimension and long
outlives its normal life span becomes a witch consorting with evil astral
spirits in scandal. In a way, the tale is justice for Lomer, the servant of
Leocadia's enemy, tinged with irony from start to finish. The rather rotund
and probably lazy Odilo forces the chief cook from his chair, and will
later tell a tale to his son (the Odilo who appears on a boat with Severian
at the end of *The Urth of the New Sun* and survives the deluge) in which
he boldly confronts the fierce torturer who appears in the halls of the
House Absolute. Severian’s version of the story is of a rather obsequious
and polite but fearful Steward who cooperates with him, but the Odilo who
narrates “The Cat” is never aware that the torturer he saw is the Autarch
he serves. Lomer still spent his entire life waiting in the antechamber for
his case to be heard by the Autarch — so while he was spared death, his
punishment was a life sentence of waiting.

Sancha’s character is morally ambiguous — with the “face of a peri and eyes
that were always laughing”, she becomes one of Inire’s favorites because of
her hunger for knowledge rather than greed for toys, but her lack of regard
for anything save herself is at times callous. When she sees the specula of
Inire, which could “circumfuse” anything which enters them to the borders
of Briah, “Then Sancha, doubtless thinking it a toy, cast her cat into the
circle.” Aude, the servant Odilo sets up for Sancha in her old age when she
returns from her private estate, says “she believed the cat the only
creature Sancha was ever to love, beyond herself”. (A peri is a Persian
spirit somewhere between angels and truly evil spirits — in earlier sources
they were malignant, denied paradise until a suitable penance was
performed, but in some tales are benevolent — female jinn are known as Peri
if they are good).

The scandal between Lomer and Sancha ruin her reputation and force her to
the South, where she becomes regarded as a strange old witch who has
congress with “diakka” (a term used by the spiritualist Andrew Davis to
denote amoral astral spooks). In her old age, Sancha returns to the House
Absolute, bent and with a prominent hooklike nose that matches the
description of Thecla’s memories, angered that her daughter-in-law called
her a *gligua*, a word for the mystery men of the Araucanian Indians of
Chile who were said to divine the future and have control over rain,
diseases, and even worms (Molina 88). (The use of this particular term also
establishes a pretty good bit of linguistic evidence that Nessus is in
South America, given Chile's location at the extreme southern coast).

The back story for this short tale is provided in *The Claw of the
Conciliator.* Lomer’s version of the story, told to Severian, agrees fairly
well with the one we get in “The Cat”:

?I am here by the malice of the Chatelaine Leocadia. I was senescahal to
her rival the Chatelaine Nympha, and when she brought me here to the House
Absolute with her in order that we might review the accounts of the estate
while she attended the rites of the Philomath Phocas, the Chatelaine
Leocadia entrapped me by the aid of Sancha. — They say she is dead now. But
in my days she was a fine, healthy young woman. The Chatelaine Leocadia
persuaded her to it, then caused us to be discovered, as Sancha knew she
would. She was but fourteen, and no crime was charged to her. We had done
nothing in any case; she had only begun to undress me.

Thecla’s memories come to the fore, and Sev calls Sancha the Dowager of
Fors.

“The Cat” reveals that “the Chatelaine Leocadia, who was said to have
concocted the affair to injure Nympha, suffered nothing.” At least, she
does not suffer until Odilo sends the bedspread under which Sancha died to
her ancient and blind mistress.

The story is also important in establishing the name of the Autarch
fifty-five years before Severian ascends to the throne? Appian — though
whether this is actually the Autarch Severian succeeds is doubtful, for
there is no evidence that his reign lasted quite that long.

This tale is also intimately related to Inire's treatment of Domnina,
Thecla's friend, related in Chapter 20 of *The Shadow of the Torturer*,
“Father Inire's Mirrors”. (Incidentally, Severian recalls it while walking
with Agia in the Botanic Gardens — no doubt the properties of the glass and
the light entering the Gardens bears a relationship to the mirrors of Inire
in their bending of space and perhaps time).

In Thecla's story, she and her thirteen year old friend Domnina play
between Father Inire's two great mirrors, and move candelabra to opposite
ends of them. Inire appears and warns them there is “an imp who waits in
silvered glass and creeps into the eyes of those who look into it.” Thecla
perceives this as an injunction against vanity, but Domnina asks if the imp
is shaped like a tear. Inire indicates that the thing she has seen is
someone else and invites her to return the next day to show her.

When Domnina is taken, Thecla plays with her dolls. When Domnina finally
returns, her face is said to be as white as those of Thecla's dolls. She
was guided through unfamiliar halls to a giant octagonal room painted with
labyrinths. Inire steps through one and says that the fish is nearly
caught. “You can watch the setting of the hook, and learn by what means his
golden scales are to be meshed in our landing net.” She sees a figure in
the center of the enclosure moving up and down and from side to side and
her own form reflected infinitely in the mirrors. She realizes that the
fish was formed by the convergence of light of the eight mirrors. Here
Inire lectures her on the idea of the Fish and the concept of traveling
over great distances: “By what means may travel be effected when the point
of departure is at an astronomical distance from the place of arrival?” He
says that the fliers in the air are as to his mirrors as toy fliers are to
those real ones, then that that things which move quickly become heavy, and
are attracted to objects such as Urth more strongly. When these waves are
positioned in such a way that the wave front is intensified, the light
leaves the universe and re-enters at another place. “Eventually it will be
a real being, if we do not darken the lamp or shift the mirrors. For a
reflected image to exist without an object to originate it violates the
laws of our universe, an therefore an object will be brought into
existence.”

The presence of the doll which appears at Sancha's death and the imagery of
Domnina associated with dolls after seeing the mirrors is interesting, but
it seems more likely that this is the toy Inire gave to Sancha as a child,
one linked especially to her.

LITERARY ALLUSIONS

When Jonas and Severian are incarcerated in the waiting antechamber of the
Autarch, Jonas suddenly begins quoting Lewis Caroll’s *Through the Looking
Glass*: “The White Knight is sliding down the poker.” Lomer’s interminable
fate of eternal waiting in the antechamber has a kind of dream-like terror,
and the general feel of Father Inire with his magic mirrors definitely
evokes Lewis Carroll’s love of little girls and Alice’s passage through her
mirror. In “The Cat”, we even see a slightly less tangible Chesire Cat,
though it is “a gray cat, with many stripes of darker gray” originally.
Inire’s love of young children is a consistent motif throughout *The Book
of the New Sun*, whether his interest be in Thecla’s friend Domnina or the
much older Sancha.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:

When Domnina sees herself reflected in *The Shadow of the Torturer *as a
series of infinite girls (while Thecla stays to play with her dolls), does
Inire create a toy from those reflected light waves, based on the girls he
brings to the mirror? Is the doll that appears when Sancha dies really just
the gift he gave to her when she was a young child, and if so, is it based
on her? Did she toss it into the mirrors with her cat?

CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:

Unlike “The Map”, “The Cat” creates no continuity errors and casts Lewis
Carroll and Halloween themes in the science fantasy Urth setting. The
metatextual commentary of other Hallowmass stories have some relation to
other Wolfe stories: “their talk had turned to all manner of ghosts and
bogeys .. I heard such recounting of larva, lemurs, and the like as would
terrify every child in the Commonwealth — and make every man in it laugh
most heartily.?(See ?Many Mansions” and *The Fifth Head of Cerberus *for
further talk of larva, and the widespread presence of strange primates in *New
Sun* is also a matter of some curiousity). It is intimately tied to its
source material in *The Claw of the Conciliator* and consequently to the
ending scenes in *Urth of the New Sun* that feature Odilo.

 Davis, Andrew Jackson. *The Diakka and Their Earthly Victims, Being an
Explanation of Much That is False and Repulsive in Spiritualism*. Boston:
Colby and Rich, Banner of Light Publishing House, 1880.

Molina, Abbe Don J. Ignatius. *The Geographical, Natural, and Civil History
of Chili, Vol. II*. Paternoster Row: Longman, Hurst, Reys, Orme, 1809.
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From: Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 18:59:31 +0000

> one linked especially to her.

I found the thing 'not unlike a doll' to be quite mysterious when I
first read it.

I thought that it might be the returned form of the cat, but since it
was buried with Sancha and the cat is supposed to be haunting other
people, that doesn't work.

The doll theory has a few problems: 1. we're never told that Sancha
took the second, uncommon, path of being given a toy when Inire is too
busy, are we? 2. where did the doll go all those years? Sancha tossed
the *cat* in, not a hypothetical doll (and carrying both a doll and a
cat sounds a bit excessive). 3. why did it bleed when pricked? 4. if
it was a doll, why the odd phrasing 'a thing not unlike a doll'? In
Wolfe, this means 'it looks a bit like but was definitely not a doll,
can you figure out what it is?' 5. why bury a doll with Sanca?

The thing is clearly a homunculus of some sort. Re-reading the story,
here is what I think happens: Inire encounters a charming pleasant
child who is interested in the wider universe, does not give her a toy
but a story, then takes her to show all his gadgets, when she
impetuously (as children often do) does something rash and
ill-considered as toss her beloved pet into mortal danger and with it
goes her childish innocence and ability to love possibly as a
sacrifice to enable Inire to retrieve the cat partially as a spiteful
spirit, with Sancha's lost moral traits returning at the very end as
'a lovely child just become a woman' and justly buried with her
(shades of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_; the malign cat goes on to
persecute Sancha's enemies.

Picking out some important quotes:

> As every thinking man acknowledges, mighty powers move through this dark universe of Briah, though for the most part hidden from us by its infinite night. Is it not every man's duty to record what little he has glimpsed that may give light to it? And do not such idle tales as I heard by the fire but serve to paint yet blacker that gloom through which we grope?

This is quite a black opening and reason for Odilo to record what
seems like a charming and harmless ghost story. Why is it so sinister?
(Similar to "Suzanne Delage".)

> She was (so my father said) an extraordinarily charming child, with the face of a peri and eyes that were always laughing, darker than most exulted children but so tall that she might have been supposed, at the age of seven or eight, to be a young woman of sixteen.

So, to set the scene: Sancha is a very nice child. Odilo's father has
nothing bad at all to say about her, and she is a lovely child who
appears to almost be a woman.

She meets Father Inire, whose attentions are worth having, but like
most things worth having, come with risk:

> Permit me to say at once that these children have often benefitted from his attention. It is true, perhaps, that they have sometimes suffered for it, but that has been seldom and I think by no means by his wish.

The dangers of the mirror system are also mentioned elsewhere:

> In Thecla's story, she and her thirteen year old friend Domnina play between Father Inire's two great mirrors, and move candelabra to opposite ends of them. Inire appears and warns them there is ?an imp who waits in silvered glass and creeps into the eyes of those who look into it. Thecla perceives this as an injunction against vanity, but Domnina asks if the imp is shaped like a tear. Inire indicates that the thing she has seen is someone else and invites her to return the next day to show her.

With the mirrors, you truck with strange powers from out of time and
space, whose effects may not always be physical (Lovecraft, anyone?).
And remember Odilo's warning.

Inire speaks with her, but seems to not give her a doll, as the
description implies gadgetreey:

> some many-hued toy of the kind that wise men and humble men such as I, and all women and children, call magical...Should he find that the toy remains unbroken

Dolls wouldn't be particularly many-hued, magical, or easily-broken.
This description doesn't fit the homunculus at the end, either. In
particular, the incident seems to be Inire's *first* meeting with
Sancha, when he has spare time after a long meeting, and Sancha has
only her cat with her:

> Such a pupil Sancha became, one winter morning when she was of seven years or thereabout and my father much the same. All her replies must have pleased Father Inire; and he was doubtless returning to his apartments in our Hypogeum Apotropaic from some night-long deliberation with the Autarch. He took her with him; and so my father met them, as he often told me, in that white corridor we call the Luminary Way. Even then, when my father was only a child himself, he was struck by the sight of them walking and chatting together, Father Inire bent nearly double, like a gnome in a nursery book, with no more nose than an alouatte; Sancha already towering over him, straight as a sapling, sable of hair and bright of eye, with her cat in her arms.

(Note again the very positive description of Sancha.)

Things go badly at the end. We don't know exactly what happens after
the cat goes into the mirror; Odilo quite explicitly speculates and
has no idea what actually happened:

> Knowing Father Inire as I have been privileged to know him these many years, I feel certain he must have promised poor Sancha that he would do all that lay in his power to retrieve her pet, and that he must have kept faithfully to that promise

So what *did* Father Inire do? The two of them must have done
something to summon the spirit. Well, what often happens in order to
traffic with and summon dark spirits... You sacrifice something.

On top of that, the summoned spirit seems pretty malicious:

> So it became known, and quickly, that the girl Sancha was attended by some fey thing. When she and some friend sat alone at play, a pochette was knocked from a table and broken, or so it was said. On another occasion, a young man who sat conversing with Sancha (who must, I should think, have been somewhat older then) observed the ruffled body of a sparrow lying on the carpet at her feet, though she could scarcely have sat where she did without stepping upon it, had it been present when they began their talk.

Every example is negative: destructive of things on tables, or
littering dead creatures wantonly slain (pets don't go hungry, and
certainly not spectral pets). There is no mention of, for example,
sleeping on her lap or being petted.

Then Sancha changes, becomes scandalous and argumentative and ugly and
without friends and depending on Father Inire's charity and attracts
company only for the cheap thrill that there may be a ghost:

> As for Sancha, Aude said she believed the cat the only creature Sancha was ever to love, beyond herself; but that, I think, was spite; and Aude was but a giddypate, who knew the Chatelaine only when she was old. ...They were discovered together in that state which is too easily imagined. Sancha's rank and age equally exempted her from formal punishment; her age and her rank equally ensured that the disrepute would cling to her for life. ...and no one was surprised, my father said, to hear soon after that she had wed the heir of Fors-it was a country family not liable to know much of the gossip of the court, nor apt to care greatly for what it heard, while the Chatelaine was a young woman of some fortune, excellent family, and extraordinary beauty ...she returned and requested a suite in this hypogeum, which  Father Inire granted in observance of their old friendship. ...Her back was as bent as Father Inire's, her teeth had been made for her by a provincial ivory-turner, and her nose had become the hooked beak of a carrion bird. For whatever reason, her person now carried a disagreeable odor; she must have been aware of it, for she had ordered fires of sandalwood to counter it. ...Suffice it to say that she had borne several children, that her husband was dead, and that her elder son now directed the family estate. The Chatelaine did not get along well with his wife and had many disagreeable anecdotes to relate of her, of which the worst was that she had once denounced the Chatelaine as a gligua, such being the name the autochthons of the south employ for one who has traffic with diakka, casts spells, and the like. ...As the years passed, the Chatelaine Sancha had little need of birds or marmosets. The scandal was revived by doddering women who recollected it from childhood, and she attracted to herself a host of protegees, the daughters of armigers and exultants, eager to exhibit their tolerance and bathe in a notoriety that was without hazard.

She doesn't seem terribly loving of her family, and Aude's comment is
probably right - *after* the incident, she could no longer love
anyone. Something was lost in the incident, and I don't think it was
just the cat.

Then the finale:

> At the dying Chatelaine's cry, all turned to look at her. And all saw, as did I, that upon the snowy counterpane [bedspread] covering her withered body there had appeared the dark pawprint of some animal, and beside it a thing not unlike a doll. This was no longer than my hand, and yet it seemed in each detail a lovely child just become a woman. Nor was it of painted wood, or any other substance of which such toys are made; for when the physician pricked it with his lancet, a ruby drop shone forth.
>
> By the strict instructions of Father Inire, this little figure was interred with the Chatelaine Sancha. Our laundresses having proved incapable of removing the stain left by the creature's paw, I ordered the counterpane sent to the Chatelaine Leocadia, who being of the most advanced age was even then but dim of sight.
>
> She has since gone blind, and yet her maids report that she sees the cat, which stalks her in her dreams. It is not well for those of high station to involve the servants of their enemies in their quarrels.

So as she dies, a silent homunculus reappears with the spirit, Father
Inire (who knows what happened) orders it buried with Sancha and not
otherwise, and the spirit goes on to haunt Sancha's enemy. (Open
question: is it an accident that Odilo sends the haunted bedspread to
Leocadia, who he noted 'suffered nothing', and closes with moralizing
against Leocadia?)

At least, this seems to explain everything, puts the key action into
an explicit lacunae (very Wolfe-like), and indeed justifies Odilo's
otherwise-hyperbolic opening - sacrificing parts of your soul to dark
cosmic powers to retrieve a pet is indeed something to warn
inhabitants of the House Absolute against, inasmuch as they live in
close proximity to Father Inire & his mirrors.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

---

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 19:19:39 +0000

Sounds good. I did mean to imply it was something of her lost innocence,
and of course odilo sends it to leocadia on purpose - he gets revenge for
lomer and sancha.

On Tuesday, August 26, 2014, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > As every thinking man acknowledges, mighty powers move through this dark
> universe of Briah, though for the most part hidden from us by its infinite
> night. Is it not every man's duty to record what little he has glimpsed
> that may give light to it? And do not such idle tales as I heard by the
> fire but serve to paint yet blacker that gloom through which we grope?
>
> > She was (so my father said) an extraordinarily charming child, with the
> face of a peri and eyes that were always laughing, darker than most exulted
> children but so tall that she might have been supposed, at the age of seven
> or eight, to be a young woman of sixteen.
>
> > Permit me to say at once that these children have often benefitted from
> his attention. It is true, perhaps, that they have sometimes suffered for
> it, but that has been seldom and I think by no means by his wish.
>
> silvered glass and creeps into the eyes of those who look into it. Thecla
> space, whose effects may not always be physical (Lovecraft, anyone”).
> > some many-hued toy of the kind that wise men and humble men such as I,
> and all women and children, call magical...Should he find that the toy
> remains unbroken
>
> > Such a pupil Sancha became, one winter morning when she was of seven
> years or thereabout and my father much the same. All her replies must have
> pleased Father Inire; and he was doubtless returning to his apartments in
> our Hypogeum Apotropaic from some night-long deliberation with the Autarch.
> He took her with him; and so my father met them, as he often told me, in
> that white corridor we call the Luminary Way. Even then, when my father was
> only a child himself, he was struck by the sight of them walking and
> chatting together, Father Inire bent nearly double, like a gnome in a
> nursery book, with no more nose than an alouatte; Sancha already towering
> over him, straight as a sapling, sable of hair and bright of eye, with her
> cat in her arms.
>
> > Knowing Father Inire as I have been privileged to know him these many
> years, I feel certain he must have promised poor Sancha that he would do
> all that lay in his power to retrieve her pet, and that he must have kept
> faithfully to that promise
>
> > So it became known, and quickly, that the girl Sancha was attended by
> some fey thing. When she and some friend sat alone at play, a pochette was
> knocked from a table and broken, or so it was said. On another occasion, a
> young man who sat conversing with Sancha (who must, I should think, have
> been somewhat older then) observed the ruffled body of a sparrow lying on
> the carpet at her feet, though she could scarcely have sat where she did
> without stepping upon it, had it been present when they began their talk.
>
> > As for Sancha, Aude said she believed the cat the only creature Sancha
> was ever to love, beyond herself; but that, I think, was spite; and Aude
> was but a giddypate, who knew the Chatelaine only when she was old. ...They
> were discovered together in that state which is too easily imagined.
> Sancha's rank and age equally exempted her from formal punishment; her age
> and her rank equally ensured that the disrepute would cling to her for
> life. ...and no one was surprised, my father said, to hear soon after that
> she had wed the heir of Fors-it was a country family not liable to know
> much of the gossip of the court, nor apt to care greatly for what it heard,
> while the Chatelaine was a young woman of some fortune, excellent family,
> and extraordinary beauty ...she returned and requested a suite in this
> hypogeum, which  Father Inire granted in observance of their old
> friendship. ...Her back was as bent as Father Inire's, her teeth had been
> made for her by a provincial ivory-turner, and her nose had become the
> hooked beak of a carrion bird. For whatever reason, her person now carried
> a disagreeable odor; she must have been aware of it, for she had ordered
> fires of sandalwood to counter it. ...Suffice it to say that she had borne
> several children, that her husband was dead, and that her elder son now
> directed the family estate. The Chatelaine did not get along well with his
> wife and had many disagreeable anecdotes to relate of her, of which the
> worst was that she had once denounced the Chatelaine as a gligua, such
> being the name the autochthons of the south employ for one who has traffic
> with diakka, casts spells, and the like. ...As the years passed, the
> Chatelaine Sancha had little need of birds or marmosets. The scandal was
> revived by doddering women who recollected it from childhood, and she
> attracted to herself a host of protegees, the daughters of armigers and
> exultants, eager to exhibit their tolerance and bathe in a notoriety that
> was without hazard.
>
> > At the dying Chatelaine's cry, all turned to look at her. And all saw,
> as did I, that upon the snowy counterpane [bedspread] covering her withered
> body there had appeared the dark pawprint of some animal, and beside it a
> thing not unlike a doll. This was no longer than my hand, and yet it seemed
> in each detail a lovely child just become a woman. Nor was it of painted
> wood, or any other substance of which such toys are made; for when the
> physician pricked it with his lancet, a ruby drop shone forth.
> >
> > By the strict instructions of Father Inire, this little figure was
> interred with the Chatelaine Sancha. Our laundresses having proved
> incapable of removing the stain left by the creature's paw, I ordered the
> counterpane sent to the Chatelaine Leocadia, who being of the most advanced
> age was even then but dim of sight.
> >
> > She has since gone blind, and yet her maids report that she sees the
> cat, which stalks her in her dreams. It is not well for those of high
> station to involve the servants of their enemies in their quarrels.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net <javascript:;>
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 19:33:14 +0000

The other issue is that if Inire has done something to get the cat back
that costs the good part of her soul and innocence, it makes Inire truly
a diabolical figure. His strict order to bury the doll with her lead me to
speculate it is her callous action of throwing the cat that might have done
the damage to her innocence, because she is peri-like before Inire ever
meddles with her. A very ambiguous mystical description.

Do we view Inire as diabolical?
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 19:37:17 +0000

That darkness and gloom of creation Gwern mentioned is evoked is because
this is a Halloween story dressed as sf/fantasy, for what it's worth.

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From: Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 19:40:30 +0000

On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:
> The other issue is that if Inire has done something to get the cat back that
> costs the good part of her soul and innocence, it makes Inire truly a
> diabolical figure. His strict order to bury the doll with her lead me to

Inire is an ambiguous character all along; remember he is not human,
and is partially responsible for the destruction of Urth and murdering
millions/billions of people for the sake of a higher goal.

The sort of scenario I had in mind is Inire tells Sancha she has done
something irreversible, and Sancha angrily demands that Inire do
*something*, she *loves* her cat above anything, and Inire asks
whether she's willing to pay the price and she says something like
(how many stories or movies or novels have we seen this scene in? the
ill-considered statement to the wizard/magician/god/fae...) 'I don't
care whether it costs me my childhood, bring back my cat!' And so he
does.

> '"The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads," answered the priest, "knew more about fairies than you do. It isn't only nice things that happen in fairyland."
> "Oh, bosh!" said Flambeau. "Only nice things could happen under such an innocent moon. I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come. We may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon or such a mood."
> "All right," said Father Brown. "I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous."'

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

---

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 19:46:10 +0000

> this is a Halloween story dressed as sf/fantasy, for what it's worth.

That's an out-of-universe reason for the setting yes, but look
carefully at Odilo's introduction: he tells us it's Halloween and he's
heard silly false stories:

> I heard such recountings of larva, lemures, and the like as would terrify every child in the Commonwealth-and make every man in it laugh most heartily.

But even though those stories of larva and lemures are false, there
still are dark powers and things in the universe, and Odilo has
witnessed them. To let people think that dark stories are false is
itself a failing:

> And do not such idle tales as I heard by the fire but serve to paint yet blacker that gloom through which we grope?

So Odilo has a responsibility:

> As every thinking man acknowledges, mighty powers move through this dark universe of Briah, though for the most part hidden from us by its infinite night. Is it not every man's duty to record what little he has glimpsed that may give light to it?...I am therefore determined to set down here, for the enlightenment (as it may be) of my successors and whoever else may read, the history, whole and in entire in so far as I know it, of a series of incidents that culminated (as I believe) this night ten years gone.

And so he tells us the story of Sancha and her brush with the dark
mighty powers hidden by infinite night (but reachable through
mirrors).

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

---

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 19:49:40 +0000

So is "hooking" that golden fish dangerous?  I always wondered if this was
related to the new sun, though the fish is considered a minor mirror
dweller. Inire might be literally closer to the larva and lemurs mentioned
at the start of the tale than a figure from faerie. I haven't read the end
of new sun in perhaps fourteen years - I need to this week.

On Tuesday, August 26, 2014, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> that
> > '"The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads," answered the priest,
> "knew more about fairies than you do. It isn't only nice things that happen
> in fairyland."
> > "Oh, bosh!" said Flambeau. "Only nice things could happen under such an
> innocent moon. I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come. We
> may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon or such a mood."
> > "All right," said Father Brown. "I never said it was always wrong to
> enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous."'
>
> --
> gwern
> http://www.gwern.net
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 19:51:28 +0000

I don't think the larval- lemur talk is a silly tale.  I think it
references the hieros and hierodules.  Odilo just doesn't know about that.
On Tuesday, August 26, 2014, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > I heard such recountings of larva, lemures, and the like as would
> terrify every child in the Commonwealth-and make every man in it laugh most
> heartily.
>
> > And do not such idle tales as I heard by the fire but serve to paint yet
> blacker that gloom through which we grope?
>
> that may give light to it?...I am therefore determined to set down here,
> for the enlightenment (as it may be) of my successors and whoever else may
> read, the history, whole and in entire in so far as I know it, of a series
> of incidents that culminated (as I believe) this night ten years gone.
>
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 20:12:08 +0000

The parallel between Inire and mr smith in a solar labyrinth seems apt.
That solitary child lost in the maze at noon when the maze itself
disappears ...

On Tuesday, August 26, 2014, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, August 26, 2014, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','gwern at gwern.net');>> wrote:
>
>> > And do not such idle tales as I heard by the fire but serve to paint
>> yet blacker that gloom through which we grope?
>>
>> > As every thinking man acknowledges, mighty powers move through this
>> dark universe of Briah, though for the most part hidden from us by its
>> infinite night. Is it not every man's duty to record what little he has
>> glimpsed that may give light to it?...I am therefore determined to set down
>> here, for the enlightenment (as it may be) of my successors and whoever
>> else may read, the history, whole and in entire in so far as I know it, of
>> a series of incidents that culminated (as I believe) this night ten years
>> gone.
>>
>> To post, write urth at urth.net
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From: Jeffery Wilson clueland.com <jwilson at clueland.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 03:21:03 +0000

On 8/26/2014 12:45 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:
> between Father Inire's two great mirrors, and move candelabra to
> opposite ends of them.

I believe there are a couple of mistakes here.

"'I was thirteen, Severian, and I had a friend named Domnina....'"

Thecla was thirteen, Domnina's age is not given.

"'You must take my word for it that at one place in the Hall of Meaning 
there are two mirrors.'"

The mirrors here are never referred to as Father Inire's. Indeed, 
Domnina's sighting of a liminal being in them surprises him and his demo 
takes place at the many-mirrored chamber,  so it is unlikely the two 
mirrors in the Hall of Meaning are specially associated with Inire any 
more than any other feature of the House Absolute is.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >
A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab
< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >

---

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 05:52:51 +0000

Thanks I will look it over again.

On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 8:21 PM, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com <
jwilson at clueland.com> wrote:

> mirrors in the Hall of Meaning are specially associated with Inire any more
> than any other feature of the House Absolute is.
>
> --
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 06:00:44 +0000

Do you think my assessment of the problematic timeline in The Map is
accurate? It's been years and years since I read New Sun - going through it
again now.  Ironically I know New Sun perhaps more poorly than any other
work by Wolfe at this point in time.

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From: Lee <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 06:29:26 +0000

>He takes her to his specula, where beings can be materialized from 

>ethereal waves

After being tossed in, is this cat alive or dead? I can't help but

think some of this story is a veiled nod to Schroedinger.

>to tell her some tale of the worlds beyond Dis?

>or circumfused to the border of Briah.

Father Inire is an alien, but we are never told (openly) from which

ship he arrived on Urth. I think both these lines hint at Tzadkiel's

Ship.

>I found the thing 'not unlike a doll' to be quite mysterious when I

There is another character from BotNS who has a thing for "dolls" or 

"paracoita" or "scopolangia" or "genicon". Hethor uses all these terms.

I'll go out on a limb, but not too far, to suggest that Hethor came from

Tzadkiel's ship. He admits to being a mutineer and Severian sees someone

who looks a lot like him among the "jibers" on the Ship.

Given that Father Inire and Hethor are the two "mirror masters" and if both

came from Tzadkiel's Ship, I find a suggestion that these two characters may

be one and the same (perhaps in the way that Zak and "tinker bell" are the 

same as Tzadkiel.

It is usually assumed that Hethor is a fellow assassin with Agia. But if he

shares the purposes of Father Inire, perhaps his actions are not truly

murderous but rather for the purpose of observation and testing of this

immortal demi-god on Urth who doesn't quite know who he really is (yet).

Earlier, Hethor seemed very admiring and worshipful of Severian and it seemed

sincere.

In his letter to Severian, Father Inire mentions being up north with the 

Ascians and by this and other clues, some think the Jungle Shaman is an 

appearance by Father Inire. Is it a coincidence that Hethor happens to be 

there too?

---

From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:13:19 +0000

On 26/08/2014 20:33, Marc Aramini wrote:
> The other issue is that if Inire has done something to get the cat 
> back that costs the good part of her soul and innocence, it makes 
> Inire truly a diabolical figure. His strict order to bury the doll 
> with her lead me to speculate it is her callous action of throwing the 
> cat that might have done the damage to her innocence, because she is 
> peri-like before Inire ever meddles with her. A very ambiguous 
> mystical description.

It seems to me that *something* came back, but (like Domnina's friend) 
it was not exactly her cat, and it held on to a piece of her soul somehow.

My first thought was that it needed that to keep it on Urth, but that 
doesn't really work, as somehow it attached itself to Leocadia, by way 
of the unremovable pawprint on the counterpane.

One other thing: in old age Sancha developed a disagreeable odour, which 
she countered by burning sandalwood.  Any significance?

- Gerry Quinn

---

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 15:22:26 +0000

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
> One other thing: in old age Sancha developed a disagreeable odour, which she
> countered by burning sandalwood.  Any significance?

Hard to say. It could be a reflection of her age and old-person smell:
sandalwood is an old perfume and scented smoke source, but it also has
some medicinal uses including as a fumigant, but it also has a lot of
religious connotations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandalwood#Uses)
with neopaganism apparently considering it good for exorcism &
purification. So it *could* be there to block the cat spirit,
explaining why the cat doesn't seem to make itself known during the
second stay at the House Absolute.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

---

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 15:27:23 +0000

Well, it does a little bit, because aude complains nobody told her the
chatelaine had a pet.

On Wednesday, August 27, 2014, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> she
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