Abaia and the undines

James Wynn · 06 Dec 2008, 03:47 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 21:47:28 -0600
Subject: (urth) Abaia and the undines
References: <W217641043543611228522617@webmail32>
Message-ID: <50CD1F046692403FB2C540234BD53C56@GATEWAY>

> Does anyone thing a Believer in Christ would write a story this full of 
> Christian
> symbolism just to yank the rug out from under you and say "sucker, you're 
> faith is all a lie"?

I'd be curious to read a point-by-point detailing of all this supposedly 
explicit Christian symbolism in "The Book of the New Sun". I'm usually 
pretty good at this sort of thing. But I don't find it especially 
overwhelming.

I seem to recall that in an interview with James Jordan, Wolfe balked giving 
any place to Severian a stand-in for Christ. He explicitly corrected Jordan 
by stating he was a "Christ-figure". Well, Christ-figures are a 
dime-a-dozen. Raymond Shaw in "The Manchurian Candidate" is a Christ-figure. 
Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Christ-figure.

Yes, there's the who Mediator thing, but that always struck me as more of 
the Gnostic symbolism rather than Christian (don't get mad Gnostics, you 
know what people mean by "Christian"). If I were going to designate 
Severian/Conciliator as something Biblical, it would probably be Elijah or 
John the Baptist (who was also Elijah in a sense, so Jesus said) or, better, 
*Adam*.

I meant to ask Wolfe in Chicago--but I completely didn't get around to it, 
but I did mention it to Nigel--what he would say to someone who stated that 
his entire Sun cycle of stories is to Gnosticism as The Chronicles of Naria 
are to Orthodox Christianity.

J.

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