Wall of Nessus

Roy C. Lackey · 11 Jun 2010, 19:38 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:38:23 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wall of Nessus
References: <000901cb080c$a24bd6a0$3dd14a0c@rclackey>	<4C113F93.6080403 at gmail.com><003601cb0922$0df9bdc0$55cd4a0c@rclackey>
	<4C11CC0A.20701 at io.com>
Message-ID: <008601cb099d$ab0f1940$43cf4a0c@rclackey>

Jeff Wilson wrote:
> Do we know for sure that Typhon built the Whorl, or did he appropriate
> it the way he did everything else on Urth when he set up his capital
there?

Yes, he built it. It is mentioned all through LS.

David Stockhoff wrote:
> The flood wall theory does not explain the soldiers (either their
> presence or their location) in Severian's day.

Right. Not to mention that it failed to stop the flood. <g> And what mighty
ruler in the distant past knew of and desired to attempt to thwart a massive
future flood?

> One thing has not been addressed. Presumably there has been social and
> political decay since Typhon's time, as the Commonwealth shrank from
> near-global (correct?) to almost a city-state. This is all you really
> need to know to explain the Wall and the curtain wall, whether one
> approaches it from a rational or a thematic perspective. The identity of
> a few individual enemies is not important; the people and aristocracy of
> the Commonwealth, such as they are, have always been at least potential
> enemies of the state. Typhon was probably at least somewhat paranoid
> anyway.

With good reason. "It was a period of great confusion as well. My
astronomers had told me that this sun's activity would decay slowly. Far too
slowly, in fact, for the change to be noticeable in a human lifetime. They
were wrong. The heat of the world declined by nearly two parts in a thousand
over a few years, then stabilized. Crops failed, and there were famines and
riots. I should have left then." (SWORD, chap. XXV)

And: "This world, the most ancient of all, I made my capital. That was an
error, because I lingered too long when disaster came. By the time I would
have escaped, escape was no longer open to me-those to whom I had given
control of such ships as could reach the stars had fled in them, and I was
besieged on this mountain." (ibid., chap. XXVI)

He was besieged by the common people of Urth, mostly local people. But the
mountain was far north of Nessus and its Wall, so the Wall can have been no
comfort to him there at all.

> The Wall suggests ancient Greece and the Dark Ages and Byzantium;
> therefore it is intended to suggest ancient Greece and the Dark Ages and
> Byzantium, pointing both to Earth's future/deep past and to its
> historical counterpart(s).

Which is, I think, another way of saying, "The Wall is just a Big Dumb
Object", as Jeff put it, in the context of the Urth Cycle.

Gerry Quinn wrote:
> Oddly enough, none of this stuff has been an issue for me - perhaps
because
> I don;t read carefully enough.  in the first place, I totally don't
remember
> the "now" in "powers in the sea", and in the second, I never got the
> impression that the wall was so enormous.  I don't remember seeing any
> figures, but I always imagined it as maybe ten metres thick and twenty
high.

The Wall is improbably huge. See the part where Sev and Agia neared it for
the avern duel (chapters XXV, XXVII).

-Roy

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