Original Sin and pagan gods

don doggett · 08 Aug 2006, 06:45 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: kingwukong at yahoo.com (don doggett)
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 23:45:26 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Original Sin and pagan gods
Message-ID: <20060808064526.11219.qmail at web32408.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi all, 

Sorry about the last post. I hit send instead of
delete. Ah well, here's what I meant to send

--- b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:

 Ah well, they say all
> successful religions are based on 
> contradiction.

That and ambiguity, something Wolfe takes full
advantage of.

(much snippage)

> Take for example, Dorcas.  Severian has sex with his
> own grandmother.  Is 
> that sort of incest an evil act or not?  It has to
> be an evil act by any 
> cultural defintion, yet we really don't blame
> Severian do we?  He didn't 
> know at the time, and Dorcas was the most right and
> good thing ever in 
> Severian's life.

I am still not convinced that Dorcas is Sev's
grandmother. Perhaps I'm just blind and stubborn, but
it doesn't feel right to me at all. It makes no plot
sense, no mythic sense, no moral sense, and it hinges
on such an obvious and ham handed revelation. It's
just a dud to me.

  (I'll note that I think Severian
> did know Valeria was a 
> family member and his consciously celibate marriage
> to her was a step toward 
> his/humanity's salvation, but I mustn't get ahead of
> myself).

Yes. I am eager to read your take on Severian's family
tree. I myself see Typhon and Ymar somewhere at the
base of it but I've never been able to make it take
root and grow.

> 
> Peter Wright, (if I understand him) in his godless,
> Marxist, socialist glee 
> ;-) takes that last part to mean that God (if he
> actualy existed) is just as 
> evil, self-serving and manipulative as Lucifer and
> Severian is caught in an 
> evil web, pulled from all sides, too complex for him
> to see.  I don't think 
> this is Wolfe's view.

Godless is right on the money. His argument is
basically that Sev is being cynically manipulated by
the Hierogrammates into believing he is a religious
savior. To Wright, god has no place at all in BotNS,
and all of the side stories, Eschatology and Genesis
included, are simply funhouse mirrors of the
narrative, pointing it back in on itself. It's a
pretty bleak and, to me, unconvincing argument.
Attending Daedalus is, however, a well written book. 

Don

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