{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/944",
    "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": 944,
    "subject": "Scale and Focus",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-09T20:41:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-09T20:41:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0016-0029@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-09T20:41:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Scale and Focus",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Dan Parmenter,\n\nRight, we don't have very clear pictures of the size of the citadel\ncomplex, beyond vague sizes: \"citadel size\" (as opposed to \"town\nsize\"); \"hill size\" (as opposed to \"seven hill size\").  Even in\nTyphon's time, it is a place of derelict ships called the Old Port\n--which implies a \"new\" port, somewhere, presumably the Monarch's\ncapital city (wherever that would be, and whatever it might be named,\nbut there might be hints as to where it was located).\n\nLikewise we know little about Nessus.  Who is the ruler of this\nsprawling city?  I'll bet that few have figured out that it is an\narchon, and that he probably allows each quarter to be run by local\npeople.  But where is the archon's palace, how many are in his court?\nAnd what was the Wall built for?\n\nThen there are other things: what crimes cause perps to be sent to\nthe Matachin Tower?  Political reasons and civil crimes, including\narson, child abuse, perhaps embezzlement, maybe even prostitution . .\n.  so why was monial Catherine hauled in?  Political or criminal?\n(Because it has been pretty well established in the text that\neverybody hauled in has been hauled in for something fairly serious\nbut not necessarily murderous.)\n\nThere are tons of details to sift through.  Values are assigned to\nambiguous details based upon the application at hand.  Something like\nan archeologist assembling a pot from some ancient shards.\n\nSo in the case of the Atrium of Time, as all other cases, each\n\"assigned value\" can be switched over to its antithesis or just plain\n\"ambiguous neutral.\"  The \"pot\" of \"the Atrium is a time structure\nlike that of Inire's Botanical Gardens and Ash's Last House\" can be\ndisassembled until there are just free floating ambiguous elements\nagain.\n\nSuch seems to be the case with those early critics who couldn't see\nwhat appears so blindingly obvious to most of us today: that Dorcas\nis Severian's grandmother.  Well, the text never =says= that she is!\nThe concept is a pot reconstructed of pieces (in this case, very\nlarge pieces found close together, producing a pot with no huge\ngaps--i.e., it holds water, and is aesthetically pleasing).\n\nFor example, people who claim the mandragora is Severian's twin are\nconvinently ignoring the textual facts that the chamber was long\nsealed, covered in dust, filled with oddly old fashioned furniture;\nall of which can imply that nobody has entered in living memory.  Yet\nof course this is arguable--that Severian knows the word key for the\ndoor means that the old Autarch did too; he may well have visited it\nonce or twice, twenty-three years ago, just to put a stillborn twin\nbaby in brandy on the shelf . . .\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}