Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers

Lee Berman · 14 Aug 2010, 18:41 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:41:13 -0400
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers
Message-ID: <SNT123-W3357051532538312747CC7CF990 at phx.gbl>

>Gerry Quinn- But again - verisimiltude!  Would Pas's engineers and quartemasters have 
>used strings of numbers, or a panoply of teratoid icons?  I expect that 
>somewhere in Mainframe is a big list of what all vaults on the Whorl 
>originally contained, indexed by number.  In a more controlled 
>disembarkation, instructions would be passed down regarding which were to be 
>opened.

Gerry, thanks for the entropy explanation. I understand what you mean.

Still having trouble with your verisimiltude. We understand that Wolfe shows us certain
symbols that Severian or Silk is incapable of understanding.  My gut feeling is still that
if Wolfe wanted to depict a number sequence that WE also cannot understand then he would
describe it that way: "He saw the Seal of Pas and it had a block of incomprehensibly organized 
numbers". From this description we just as easily can figure out they are vault container 
index numbers or whatever.

By actually giving us the numbers, organized in sequence, I feel Wolfe is expecting us to be
able to figure them out, even if Silk can't. In similar fashion I don't think Severian really 
knows what teratoid or gnostic symbols are. But WE can interpret that they mean there is 
something akin to monsters in Father Inire's wing of the House Absolute and that Witches deal
in mysterious, arcane knowledge. If he called the symbols an ankh or a swastika, I think
we would be expected to come to different conclusions.

As the numbers are organized into 9 groups of four digits, and each group of four digits adds
up to a number which is less than 27, my best guess is that it is a cryptogram. Perhaps it
lists the initials of the 9 gods of the Whorl. Perhaps the cryptogram solves to the 9 letters- 
Typhon-Pas. Or perhaps it spells out the 9 letter name of the true monarch and creator of the 
Whorl, GENE WOLFE. We need more hidden wolves in Long Sun, don't we?

But since I can't figure out a cryptogram from it that makes any of these work, I must defer to 
your explanation as the best working hypothesis we have going (that I know of).

5553 8783 4223 9700 34
2221 0401 1101 7276 56
SEALED FOR THE MONARCH

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