{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/865",
    "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": 865,
    "subject": "Digest urth.v015.n004",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-27T18:48:30+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-27T18:48:30+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0029@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "al at interport.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-27T18:48:30+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v015.n004",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "James,"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Thanks for the responses so far, although I'd still like some information\non the homunculus.\n\nAs for my not 'getting' the Little Severian sequence: I originally read\nparts of tBotNS when I was far too young to understand it properly. I\ndid, however, remember how Little Severian died.\n\nThis sequence is, IMO, one of the simplest uses of shock in tBotNS, not\nfollowing the usual methods of foreshadowing or retrospective\ninevitability.\nLittle Severian's death seems to be unusually timed, part-way between\nleaving him a bit-player and expanding him to a secondary character. So,\nwhen I reread this knowing when he would die, it fell flat."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Thanks for bringing this up again because I have a little theory about this\nthat I forgot to post last time.  We've often discussed the \"other\"\nSeverians and how many there are of them (his seeming deaths and\nresurrections, Apu-Punchau etc.) Well, it seems to me that Li'l Sev is a\nkind of spare, a just-in-case. If Sev had touched that ring first, the child\nwould have somehow grown up to be him. Baldanders, too, has a \"spare,\" whom\nwe meet only for an instant (it seems to me far more likely that the giant\nbaby is a \"spare\" than a catamite, though he could be both).\n\nAs for the homunculus, he seems to me to be a tribute. First to Goethe, who\nhas a memorable homunculus in a bottle (he escapes) in \"Faust Part II.\"\nSecond, to Eliot, who heads \"The Waste Land\" with a Latin quote that,\ntranslated, reads, \"Yes, I myself saw at Cumis the sybil hanging in a cage,\nand when the boys cried at her, 'Sybil, sybil, what do you want?\" she\nresponded, \"I would that I were dead.\"\n\nThis comes from Ovid. I looked it up once for mantis, but was too dumb to\nscribble the citation into my Eliot (mantis, are you there, can you help?)\nand I don't have time to do it again now, besides my Ovid seems to be\nmisshelved. But the story is the old one of the mortal who asks for\nimmortality and forgets to ask for eternal youth. Eliot being another of\nthose pesky converted Catholics, it probably has several meanings for\nhim---he's at least as tricky as Wolfe.\n\nNote a nice link, therefore, between the Cumaean--the sybil who leads Virgil\ninto the underworld, as Virgil will lead Dante--and the homunculus. I have\nanother theory that our Cumaean may turn out to be an inhumus! But I'm sort\nof kidding there. (Not entirely.)\n\n-alga-"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}