{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/871",
    "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": 871,
    "subject": "Homunculunculus",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-29T08:42:25+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-29T08:42:25+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0035@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Stephenson",
        "address": "pws at ifh.de"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-29T08:42:25+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Homunculunculus",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Just to start off away from the main topic:  if Thecla, Dorcas and Agia\nare some combination of substitute wife, mother, sister, then presumably\nlittle Severian is a substitute son?\n\nI skimmed forward a bit in Goethe's Faust part 2, which I've been finding\nrather heavier going than part 1 as it all seems rather inconsequential,\neven after reading the notes.  Anyway, the following comment of the\nhomunculus there seems to be pretty central:\n\n  Natuerlichem genuegt das Weltall kaum;\n  Was kuenstlich ist, verlangt geschloss'nen Raum.\n\nLoosely translated to keep the verse form:\n\n  The world's too small for those of natural race;\n  The artificial needs a closed-in space.\n\n`The universe is hardly big enough...' would be more accurate.  This\nseems apposite for Severian before his trip `beyond the candles of\nnight'.  Further, the mandragora in Citadel dwells on its own\nnon-living quality, and when Severian --- even when tempted as Thecla ---\nrefuses to break the glass it seems to put natural life in the driving\nseat.  Perhaps only Wolfe can be sinister and life-affirming at the\nsame time.\n\nI think there's a retrospective aspect, too.  The Cumaean reference\nseems spot on: the mandragora lives in a jar, has strange mental powers,\nand wants to die.  Probably Wolfe knows the quotation from Eliot's use,\nlike most of us.  So it's a kind of postscript to Severian's journey across\nthe wasteland of the old Urth. `Shall I at least set my lands in order?'\n\nYou could probably milk this link for all its worth.  Phoenician sailors\ndrowned by undines, Jolenta in the hyacinth garden, the Chapel Perilous\nof Master Ash, the Gyoll's tent is broken...\n\nHey, perhaps there's even a link to the seventies Dr Who story, `The\nMask of Mandragora' ...\n\nShantih,\ncorncrake\nor should that be cornflake?"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}