The Severian Behind Curtain #3

b sharp · 16 Jun 2008, 12:55 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: bsharporflat at hotmail.com (b sharp)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:55:52 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Severian Behind Curtain #3
Message-ID: <BAY103-W1F4188A9009BF69952B2BD7A90 at phx.gbl>

Dave Lebling says: 
>Severian is not actually /the/ Conciliator. The Conciliator, as should 
>be obvious to anyone who knows Wolfe's religious background, is Christ. 

I'm pretty convinced that there has never been a Jesus on Urth (and that is
a major underlying theme of the series). Hence the Norse name "Urth" and
the many allusions to pre-Christian gods and monsters ruling Urth long after 
the equivalent time period of Jesus on Earth.  The occasional reference to roods
or Bible verses can be attributed to souvenirs brought from a more spiritually 
advanced univiverse (Yesod?) to Briah by people (mostly Father Inire) able to 
make such travels.

Dave Tallman writes:
>I prefer to call him "SevN" instead of Sev2. It is clear that his life 
>was rewritten multiple times.

I lean against accepting the SevN concept because I think iterations of Severian 
are finite- tied to the 5 coffins in Sev's mausoleum. Two of them open means 
two have been released, with three more to go, if needed. Was Sev1 Ymar? or 
Severian in a different time-line or universe (Abaddon?). 

I admit this is a literary interpretation, not scientific. I think Wolfe puts avatars of 
himself in his work and much of the most difficult stuff to decipher comes from his 
own personal experiences and thoughts, distorted and veiled. I see the mausoleum
as a 5HoC reference....Number 5 and Severian seem very similar to me.....maybe
Wolfe at the time of writing BotNS figured 5 literary avatars of himself would be 
enough.
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