Severian as a student

Dave Tallman · 31 May 2008, 23:55 · from 2008-May.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 17:55:18 -0600
Subject: (urth) Severian as a student
Message-ID: <4841E566.7090005 at gmail.com>

The feat of reconstructing the entire "Book of the New Sun" from memory 
is sufficient to prove to me that Severian had a photographic memory as 
he claimed. Nobody would even attempt such a task without one. If they 
did, it wouldn't read like something carefully written; it would be full 
of mistakes and backtracks.

But when he left the guild, Master Palaemon tried to give him advice for 
the road. Severian missed it because he wasn't paying attention. 
Palaemon said, "Now you must do without it, but doubtless you would have 
forgotten everything anyway."

At first it may seem strange that Palaemon regarded him as having a poor 
memory.  But there is a simple explanation. Early on, Severian must have 
learned that it was a poor strategy to be a teacher's pet in a school 
filled with other boys trained in the art of excruciation. He learned to 
act the part of a poor student. This is similar how "I, Claudius" had to 
act the part of a fool to survive.

"I had lied often to Master Gurloes and Master Palaemon, to Master 
Malrubius while he still lived, to Drotte because he was captain, to 
Roche because he was older and stronger than I, and to Eata an the other 
smaller apprentices because I hoped to make them respect me."

Here's an example of how it worked. "Outside, feigning ignorance, I 
asked Master Palaemon who Vodalus of the wood was." Severian got a 
rebuke for listening to the words of a client, and another for keeping 
his hands in his pocket (a deliberate act to deflect the Master's 
anger). Just as he intended, he got Drotte to tell him about Vodalus 
without revealing that he already knew the name.

They say it's more difficult to lie than to tell the truth because a 
liar has more to remember. Severian wouldn't have a problem with that. 
Then also suggests that discrepancies should be harmonized where 
possible instead of treating them as signs of lies. Severian should be 
most consistent when he is lying. If this book was a rewrite from memory 
he got a second chance to fix any mistakes.

The hand-off of the gun from Vodalus to Hildegrin or Thea is easily 
reconciled. Hildegrin said he couldn't use it, so it was clearly with 
the approval of Vodalus that Thea took it next. Thus he "gave the pistol 
to his mistress" even though he handed it first to Hildegrin.

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net