lots of stuff

Lee Berman · 12 Jul 2010, 19:11 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:11:59 -0400
Subject: (urth) lots of stuff
Message-ID: <SNT123-W55C05233F67B511EFB7F50CFB80 at phx.gbl>

James Wynn, I liked your previous post about names. I
also think A.P. Marques raises a legitimate concern about a Fenrir
origin. Other authors are likely to distort to disguise a mythological 
name but Wolfe seems to prefer retaining the orginal name and distorting
the character for disguise. So we probably need a real version of "Inire"
to understand the meaning/origin of the name.

I was remembering that Borski observed that Hiero-types are given Roman
names while maybe monsters get the Greek names or something like that. I
was doing a search to refresh my memory and bumped into this description of
Inuus-

>In ancient Roman religion, Inuus was a god, or aspect of a god, who embodied
>copulation. The evidence for him as a distinct entity is scant. Servius says
>that Inuus is an epithet of Faunus (Greek Pan), as were Fatuus and Fatulcus,
>named from his habit of intercourse with animals, based on the etymology of
>ineundum, "a going in, penetration," from inire,[1] "to enter" in the sexual
>sense.[2] 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuus

I'd seen the "to enter" meaning of "inire" mentioned before but not so much 
that it might be a specifically sexual reference. The mention of mating with
animals is rather intriguing to me since I am exploring the possibility that 
Father Inire has sexually acted on his attraction to young girls to the point
of mating with most/all of the female members of Severian's family, including
his own daughters. Perhaps "mating with animals" does not mean the same thing
to a hiero race being that we would take it to mean.....

On the other hand, considering the man-apes in the cave and the dog-men guarding
the gold wagon, maybe it does.

I am thinking the connection of Inuus/Inire to Faunus and Pan/Pas (the pas version
being the origin of "pastoral") might be even more interesting for you. 

Who was it that was recently suggesting Severian could be a version of Inire recently?
That seemed pretty far fetched or even tongue-in-cheek. But I think the idea that Silk
is a cloned version of Pas is reasonably well accepted maybe? 

(I always wondered which of Typhon's heads was Typhon and which was Piaton.  
Silk cloned from Pas would answer that, based on hair color).

Anyway, so if Typhon=Pas=Inire, then the idea of Severian as a some version or 
offspring of Inire becomes....possible? Either way, I must think all this suggests
the "Inire" epithet for Pan becomes a very good candidate for the origin of the 
padre's name.

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