Severian's skin color

Chris · 23 Jun 2005, 13:44 · from 2005-June.txt.gz

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From: rasputin_ at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: Thu Jun 23 13:44:45 2005
Subject: (urth) Severian's skin color
In-Reply-To: <26729413.1119542917310.JavaMail.root at wamui-sweet.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <BAY102-F15627A52B8C418ED69F0CC86EA0 at phx.gbl>

Crush said:
>Thematically, I consider it very important.  Tussah=Typhon means that
>Tussah;s and Pas's murder that happened at about the same are
>connected so far as the story goes. Much has been made of Pas's
>possible intentions for Silk. It shows that Pas' original plan did not
>include Silk. Silk came later, after things went awry. If Silk is 
>genetically
>Horn's son, then the fact that the Rajan is simultaneously Silk, Horn, and
>Horn the Neighbor builds on the theme of rationalizing the Holy Trinity
>which Wolfe takes at many levels in The Short Sun.

This is the kind of thing I was talking about, and I do think there's a very 
big thematic problem here. You are suggesting that Wolfe is "rationalizing" 
the Holy Trinity by deriving it from Typhon, who is on several levels *the 
Demiurge*. Perhaps you can justify this, I don't know, but any attempt to 
work this into the theme changes the implications of the entire series from 
top to bottom - and, as far as I can tell, not for the better. It seems like 
you'd be left with nothing but a sort of Gnostic pamphlet piece.

This isn't the only way the clone angle can be explored, of course, but it 
seems like many of the Clone Interpretations that have been proposed tend to 
center the theme on this one aspect at the direct cost of turning other 
aspects into mere farce, or simply discounting them.

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