{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/943",
    "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": 943,
    "subject": "Heliotropic Plants",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-07-09T11:09:28+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-10T09:10:15+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0016-0026@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Parmenter",
        "address": "dan at lec.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-09T11:09:28+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Heliotropic Plants",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: m.driussi at genie.com\nRe: Atrium of Time as a time travelling structure.  The usual\ndisclaimers apply: your mileage may very, etc.  John Clute mentions it\nglancingly in one essay on Wolfe (1983) and directly in the famed\nCatherine essay (1986).  Others have mentioned it, I'm fairly certain.\nThe clues are: Valeria's clothing seems out of time; her lineage is so\nancient that it may stretch back to Ymar; the place she lives in does\nnot exist on any maps, nor can it be found from aerial survey or\nreached in any other way than by the one true path through the maze\n(exactly like the trail to Last House); and not the least, we know that\nthe Atrium is not named for the sundials--the sundials where put there\n=because= it is the Atrium of Time."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The only map we hear about is the one at the end of CITADEL.  I always\nassumed that the fact that it isn't there was due to the fact that the\nmap probably dated from a time when the citadel was still a spaceport.\n\n\"...and there were towers on that map that are not in the Citadel, and\ntowers in the citadel that were not on that map.\"\n\nSo it's not just the Atrium of Time that's missing.  But that's only\nthe explanation for the purposes of plot, it doesn't necessarily\ninvalidate what you say.\n\nOf course as far as I know, we never get a clear picture of how big\nthe Citadel is.  It's interesting to note that Valeria herself doesn't\nknow about the Matachin Tower except as a legend (\"the Tower of\nTorment\" she calls it).\n\nD"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0016-0038@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Stephenson",
        "address": "pws at ifh.de"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-10T09:10:15+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Heliotropic Plants",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0016-0026@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Dan Parmenter wrote:\nThe only map we hear about is the one at the end of CITADEL.  I always\nassumed that the fact that it isn't there was due to the fact that the\nmap probably dated from a time when the citadel was still a spaceport."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "That's always seemed obvious to me, at least after I realised the\nplace was a spaceport which took a decade or so, because..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "\"...and there were towers on that map that are not in the Citadel, and\ntowers in the citadel that were not on that map.\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "...that's surely because the `towers' have flown in and out since,\nmaybe carrying passengers to the odd whorl.  (If it's the `Citadel of\nthe Autarch', did it cease its true purpose when the Autarchs came\nalong?  That's quite symbolic.)  So the Atrium of Time doesn't seem to\nfit with the spaceport age.\n\nThe Atrium, and the whole final chapter where it appears, have always\nhad to me a very strong symbolic quality, a Proustian summing up of\nall the themes of time that have gone before --- read the chapter and\nyou'll see the references to everything: night and dawn, the corridors\nof time, Severian's personal journey, the two Severians and their\nfootprints a year apart in the passages (that gives me goose-pimples),\nhis double in some alternative time cycle (or however you look at it),\nhis time-travellings and eventual death, the seasons, clocks and\nsundials, the `time-worn' walls, age (Father Inire), his own `antique'\ntitles, the changes time have made in the citadel... I seriously\ncannot think of a better thematic summary in English prose fiction,\nall in a few short pages.\n\nThe history of the Atrium, at the centre of all this, seems almost\nirrelevant, except that nothing on Urth ever is.  Rather than\ntime-travelling, I would see it as rather more fixed in time, a still\npoint about which time moves, wearing it but hardly changing it.  I\ncan vaguely remember a reference to it, in an episode when Jolenta and\nSeverian are in a boat, that probably helps, but the books, as usual,\nare at home.\n\nTime we both take up our lives.\ncorncrake"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}