Cumaean???

Eric Ortlund · 14 Dec 2007, 15:46 · from 2007-December.txt.gz

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From: eortlund at briercrest.ca (Eric Ortlund)
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:46:03 -0600
Subject: (urth) Cumaean???
Message-ID: <4E82554550FE5149AD4B30A4FEA22492BFB7C4 at xchange.briercrest.ca>

Dear Friends,

I must once again call upon your collective wisdom and hope that I'm not
causing irritation by treading over old ground too much by asking a few
questions about the final chapter of Claw.  I'm having that maddening
sense that more is going on here than I'm picking up on!!!

1) How do we know for sure Merryn and Sev are twins?  It would make
sense, if Sev's mother was pregnant, that the boy would go to the
torturers and the girl to the witches.  But do we know this for sure?

2) Is the Cumaean the heavenly same being that Sev sleeps with in the
fifth volume, while on Yesod?  (By the way, has it come up in the
discussions that Yesod means "foundation" in Hebrew?)  I seem to
remember from my last reading of Urth of the NS that Severian implies
that he fathers himself in that encounter.

3) When Merryn is telling Severian that all time exists, the Cumaean
tells them that, although Apu Punchau (=New Sun, right?) lived ages
before her, there is a "mind" which existed in his time and which still
exists . . . on the Red Star called the Fish's Mouth.  What the heck is
going on here?  Which star is this, and which mind?  Is this referring
to Yesod?

4) The description of the Cumaean during Severian's vision - a reptilian
thing with eyes - makes me think of Tzadkiel.  Is this on the right
track?

I guess I essentially get this episode: Hildegrin (and Vodualus through
him) are trying to stop the return of the New Sun; Hildegrin struggles
here with Apu Punchau = the man Severian sees etched into the wall of
the grave house he played in as a boy = himself.  

Also, I'm struck by how comments made in the last chapter (e.g., there's
no magic, only knowledge) mirror exactly - in thought, if not in
explicit echo - what Severian says at the beginning of Shadow about how
symbols create us, we don't create them.

Thanks and apologies (I'm just trying to catch up here),
Eric

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