{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/557",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 557,
    "subject": "razors here 'n' there",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-10-28T17:39:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-10-28T17:39:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0009-0009@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-28T17:39:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) razors here 'n' there",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Odd detail re: the razor of Silk's father, potent and mysterious\nartifact.  It reminds me of a detail from the Jonas/Miles engima in\nTBOTNS, when Severian asks the reanimated soldier if he carries a\nrazor.\n\n\"I mention this trifling incident because it was the first thing I\nsaid to him that he seemed to comprehend.  He nodded, then reaching\nunder his hauberk produced one of those little blades that country\npeople use, razors their smiths grind from the halves of worn\noxshoes.  I ... asked if he had soap.  If he did, he failed to\nunderstand me, and after a moment he seated himself on a rock from\nwhich he could stare into the water\" (IV, ch. 3).\n\nThis scene contains much.  That the soldier stares into the water\nlike Narcissus is one thing, but that it later turns out he somehow\nlooks like a male form of Jolenta (Severian shows him his face in a\nmirror and asks him if it is like the one of the most beautiful woman\nin the world; \"Miles\" says yes; then Severian tells him Jolenta is\ndead [ch. 6]) is an additional puzzle piece which I don't think has\never been addressed.  (Is the body \"Miles\" therefore literally the\nbrother of Jolenta?  Or is this another case of mirror magic\ntransformation--that the Briatic creature who steps into the mirrors\nreturns looking something more like the beloved: so that the cat\nof \"The Cat\" goes in like a cat but comes out like a miniature\nSancha?)\n\nBe that as it may, the point of this post is the apparently heavy\nweight carried by \"razor\" but not \"soap\" in the mind of the risen\nsoldier.  This sure seems to be significant, and it even seems\nfamiliar--but of what?  Something in Tarzan?  Certainly there was a\nscene in \"Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan\" (if I got the title right\nand the scene right) involving the naming of razor, but nothing like\nthat in the book Tarzan.\n\nIs it something slight and oblique, like \"razors are made of the\nmetal iron; androids are made of metal and named after iron;\ntherefore the Jonas in Miles remembers razor (which might presuppose\nthat Jonas was riding in Miles before the death by fever, instead of\nstrictly after the death by fever)\"?\n\nHard to say.  This razor connection isn't nearly as strong as the\n\"scarf of entrapment\" which appears directly in both TBOTNS and\nTBOTLS.\n\n=mantis=\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}