The significance of Apu Punchau

David Stockhoff · 24 Dec 2008, 14:01 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:01:03 -0500
Subject: (urth)  The significance of Apu Punchau
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Witz:

So as far as plot is concerned, Apu Punchau is likely to be way in OUR past. It makes sense he would be the Inca sun god because of proximity, although really he should be ALL sun gods, which would make him very busy. (Like Santa Claus will be tonight.)

And if it's true that AP has no other plot role outside the Stone Town episode, then he is best understood symbolically, as you say: he is the Old Sun and just another incarnation or emanation of the Eternal. And that's why he's in TUotNS.

You'd think the various emanations would not need to "be" one another, so it is geographical proximity that leads to their merging. Had Severian been landed in Persia and bumped into Ahura Mazda, presumably he would have caused a proximity explosion then, and had he then run back to Zarathustra's time, he would be Ahura Mazda. Except the Persians burned or chopped up their dead, so that might not have worked out so well.

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Plotwise, Apu Punchau is a sun god from ancient prehistory of Urth.  Of Course, the name comes from the Incan "Apu Punchau", (aka "Inti"), "Head of Day" or "Leader of Day". He is a Sun God. He is The Sun. 

On one hand, very simply, if this story is a parody or allegory for a Solar Redeemer, like Christ, or like the other Sun Gods,  then that Severian is Apu Punchau & the Conciliator & the New Sun speaks to the idea that the various incarnations of Solar Deities are incarnating the same Being.  One consciousness is literally every Solar God mentioned in the microcosm of the book.  That works fairly well at a basic plot level, I suppose.  That it maps to an Earth culture's Ancient Sun God is probably a metanarative device to indicate this.  Of course, it speaks interestingly to the notion that Christ is analogue to the other solar gods prior to him.

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