Serpents and Undines

David Stockhoff · 31 Jul 2010, 18:03 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:03:01 -0400
Subject: (urth) Serpents and Undines
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W60A3BA68B6F64EC2BF06CACFAA0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W60A3BA68B6F64EC2BF06CACFAA0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4C546555.9020108 at verizon.net>

I wonder, given the way Vodalus talks, if his path isn't almost the 
better one. He speaks of the sun hiding the stars that are our proper 
heritage, of how his masters wait until humanity is purified, and how 
vile are the actions of the Autarch.

So although, yes, one side is nominally "white" and the other nominally 
"black" (as Vodalus himself puts it), the outcome seems pretty win-win, 
or equal parts lose-lose. Is it surprising the undines help Severian and 
Erebus/Abaia don't kill him? Doesn't Vodalus win when Severian is on the 
throne, and is not the Commonwealth thus defeated and occupied?

Lee Berman wrote:
>   
>> Jeff Wilson- I think it's a mistake to strongly link the Cumaean to the leech or 
>> Ceryx on the basis of their resurrection fixation - essentially *everyone* and 
>> *everything* in the BOTNS - including the title! - is connected to death and 
>> resurrection in one way or another half-dozen. Personal resurrection, the 
>> resurrection of habits and customs, of races, and of Urth herself.
>>     
>  
> Perhaps I should have been more clear. I perceive that the story presents two
> sorts of resurrection. One is pure and good and is associated with Pelerines and
> gems and white (or is it doppler blue?) light and angels and, perhaps, faith.
>  
> The other is dark and evil and associated with secret knowledge, potions and 
> seances and human body experimentation and so on. I think we are expected to
> identify which approach to resurrection the various characters in BotNS gravitate
> toward and to recognize the connections. The Cumaean and witches are associated
> with Vodalus, as is the Old Leech. We must wonder about the source of the old'
> Autarch's alzabo-like pharmacon, also. Baldanders and Typhon appear to rely on
> machinery rather than potions and witchcraft to achieve their biological goals
> but it seems to be in the same sort of vein of evil to me.
>  
> I don't know if this dark stuff is supposed to represent satanism or demon worship
> or gnosticism or some amalgam of all of it. Perhaps the religious scholars can make
> better sense of that than me.
>  
> I guess the fact that Severian seems to need both the dark arts to become Autarch and
> the light of the Claw/White Fountain to bring the New Sun means something. Perhaps that
> God/The Increate finds both necessary to achieve His goals. But we are still supposed
> to choose good whenever possible...aren't we? 		 	   		  
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
>
> ---
> avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.
> Virus Database (VPS): 100730-1, 07/30/2010
> Tested on: 7/30/2010 6:25:36 PM
> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2010 ALWIL Software.
> http://www.avast.com
>
>
>
>
>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net