travelling north

Jerry Friedman · 03 Jun 2010, 22:15 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 15:15:25 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) travelling north
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----- Original Message ----

On 6/3/2010 2:56 PM, James Wynn wrote:
>> On 6/3/2010 2:54 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 12:49 PM, James Wynn<crushtv at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>> Wolfe has said that Severian is a "Christ-figure".
>>> Actually, Wolfe has specifically _denied_ that any of his heroes are
>>> Christ-figures, and prefers the term "Christian figure."
>> Well, even more so then.

Here's the quotation (or one version).  The "you" is James Jordan.

"And as you've said in your letters, I don't think of
Severian as being a Christ figure; I think of Severian as being a
Christian figure. He is a man who has been born into a very
perverse background, who is gradually trying to become better. I
think that all of us have somewhere in us an instinct to try and
become better. Some of us defeat it thoroughly. We kill that part
of ourselves, just as we kill the child in ourselves. It is very
closely related to the child in us."

http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html

> On the other hand, the intended parallels do pile up. To once again quote Castle of the Otter/Castle of Days:
> "Many of us have read so often that he was a "humble carpenter"...The man who built the built the cross was as much a carpenter too...The only object we
> are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a whip...Christ knew not only the pain of torture but the pain of being a torturer..."

That's a good one, which I'd forgotten.  But it doesn't mean Severian is like Christ or that he did for his universe what Wolfe believes Jesus did for ours.  Severian is far from perfect.

Wolfe also points out a parallel to someone who was presumably not a savior at all, the carpenter who made the cross.

Jerry Friedman

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