Urth Net
fully divine and fully human
Marc Aramini · 26 Nov 2008, 01:03
· from 2008-November.txt.gz
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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:03:22 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) fully divine and fully human
Message-ID: <452379.64105.qm at web58208.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
The complexity of Wolfe's symbols are beyond simple categorization. The claw is both a divine relic and an ordinary thorn. Severian is both the conciliator and a dupe of aliens. Time turns our lies into truths.
The church has similar mysteries - three in one, the substance of christ being fully divine and fully mortal, and other paradoxes that can't be explained but can explain other things.
The most basic perusal of the text assures us that terms for God are translated as New Sun - the sun dial for example. The conflation of new son and new sun, as well as the symmetry of all the titles leads us to the obvious conclusion that the narrator is torturer, conciliator, lictor, autarch, and new sun.
This was obvious to me in the seventh grade when I read this as a tale of the parousia, but Severian is more than a revelatory Christ - the text tries very hard to establish credence as divine by the use of saints names, the miracles, contiguous use of water and healing, the triumph over death - but there are diabolical forces at work that mimic the divine. The coin of vodalus is a symbol of the sun, but it is false. Severian is both a fraud and a conciliator, and this is something that I can find only in Wolfe. A false Christ can still get the job done by pretending to be what he wants the people to believe he is.
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