Cumaean???

Roy C. Lackey · 14 Dec 2007, 19:32 · from 2007-December.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:32:50 -0600
Subject: (urth) Cumaean???
Message-ID: <001d01c83e88$206196c0$17c85a42 at rclackey.stic.net>

Eric wrote:
>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?

No, we don't.

>2) Is the Cumaean the heavenly same being that Sev sleeps with in the
>fifth volume, while on Yesod?

No. The Cumaean is a Hierodule, a holy slave. Hierodules need not be of any
particular species. Barbatus and Famulimus were also Hierodules but not, I
think, of the same species as the Cumaean. Apheta was a larval-stage
Hierogrammate, of the same species as Tzadkiel.

>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?

As above.

>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.

Hildegrin was collateral damage when Sev came too close to Apu. When two
versions of the same being come close together in any given time period, the
one native to the time period overwhelms the other and the other ceases to
exist. Hildegrin had no idea who Apu was.

-Roy

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