Rudesind, Ultan (was: Re: Rudesind / Inire / Lunar Picture)

Jane Delawney · 26 Jul 2010, 23:19 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: jane_delawney at sky.com (Jane Delawney)
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:19:19 +0100
Subject: (urth) Rudesind, Ultan (was: Re:  Rudesind / Inire / Lunar Picture)
In-Reply-To: <BLU142-W26A682C8D609BCBA950233C9A60 at phx.gbl>
References: <BLU142-W26A682C8D609BCBA950233C9A60 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4C4E17F7.9090903 at sky.com>

Hello Edward, great (as a fellow newb) to read you on list.

On 26/07/10 19:45, Edward cotton wrote:
> Forgive me if I am going over old ground but I am a first time user of this forum
> (after hanging about for a year or two) and I have just started a re-read of the
> New Sun after a long break.
>    
Recently went back to it after 15 years myself. Now reading it *again* 
and starting to appreciate all those little wrinkles one never noticed 
earlier. The passage which just struck me today was that regarding Sev's 
first encounter with Master Ultan: "...Again I seemed to hear bronze, 
and quite suddenly I felt that he and I were dead, and that the darkness 
surrounding us was grave soil pressing in about our eyes, grave soil 
through which the bell called us to worship at whatever shrines may 
exist below ground ..." Severian proceeds to have a very vivid 
recollection of the woman extracted by Vodalus's men from her grave, so 
vivid indeed that for a moment, he perceives that dead face superimposed 
upon the "almost luminous whiteness" of the speaker.

The speaker is Master Ultan, of course, of the Guild of Curators 
(Librarians' branch). Questions that occur to me on reading this passage 
now would include (i) why does Ultan's voice resound like a bronze bell? 
(ii) why does this sound give Sev such a vivid and nightmarish sensation 
of being already dead and buried and (iii) how come Sev can suddenly see 
in the dark?!! It's pretty clear from surrounding descriptive passages 
that this part of the Library is *utterly* dark - dark enough that the 
darkness presses upon the eyes like grave-soil - yet Sev's vision of the 
woman extracted from her grave is superimposed in his eyes upon an 
'almost luminous whiteness' in front of him.

What is he seeing? Is the figure of Ultan somewhat self-luminous? A few 
paragraphs later it has been demoted to merely 'dim'. Yet if there is 
even a 'dim' figure perceptible here, Sev must be overstating the depth 
of the 'grave like' darkness he has reported a short time before.

Either Ultan is actually self-luminous (!) or this is one of those 
places where GW subtly gives notice that Sev is an unreliable narrator. 
Or both of course.

Either way, this passage makes me think that Ultan is possibly a 
stronger contender for 'cacogen' status than Rudesind. Though I don't 
think there's any immediate reason to assume that either one of them 
being a 'cacogen' means that they are therefore to be identified with 
Inire.

> The use of ?your blue Urth? makes me strongly believe Rudesind
> is a Cacogen and possibly Inire.
>    
Have to admit I'd always taken 'your blue Urth' as a figure of speech. 
Had not grokked at all that 'your' might have a specific meaning here, 
ie. 'yours not mine'; but having re-read the same passage just now I 
have to admit it's possible.
> I also wondered if this is something he(if it is Inire) does to all potential
> Autarchs / Concilators. Show them an early image of the Earth lit by the
> sun ? fresh as the Autarch?s fish. He mentions that he has cleaned
> this image 2 other times in the past and I wonder if the vague times he gives
> could correspond to the rise of the previous two Autarchs.
>    
Do you mean the only two other Autarchs who have either dared, or 
thought it appropriate to, go to Yesod in quest of the New Sun? Those 
would be Ymar himself, and also Appian (if this identification is 
correct - the Old Autarch to whom Sev proves to be successor). None of 
the others (and we are told explicitly, several times over, that there 
have been hundreds of them; men, women, even children) took the Test - 
and Sev himself provides a more than adequate explanation for this, 
which is that more than likely they saw their immediate duty to the 
Commonwealth as paramount.

[Duh. Given the importance of the 'fish' symbol later on, it just now 
occurs to me that perhaps there's even more to the remark about 'fresh 
as the Autarch's *fish*' than appears on the surface. But perhaps I'm 
just getting carried away here.]
>
> Well, I apologise for the quality of my English ? I have no excuse apart from lack of education.
>    
I wish I could write any other language as well as you do English - I'd 
assumed you were a native speaker until I read that last sentence!

BTW please excuse me for altering the header when responding, it's the 
only way I can get my ISP's mail server to return my own list posts to me.

regards

JD

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