Who's Right?

Lee Berman · 04 Dec 2010, 11:05 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 06:05:18 -0500
Subject: (urth) Who's Right?
Message-ID: <SNT123-W653ED99C1B98AA08F8DCDDCF290 at phx.gbl>

>Jeff Wilson: The Jungle Sorcerer's wear visible, ostentatious claws to frighten 
>and impress so they don't have to fight. Agia's are concealable, intended to pass 
>unnoticed until they strike an unaware victim.

Jeff, I had an exhausting debate on this issue a couple years ago I wouldn't want
to repeat. So please take the following as an explanation of my own thinking and not 
at all attempt to change your thinking on the matter.   

In the course of my interest in Agia's weapons and that debate I have excruciatingly 
sought out and parsed every sentence to be found on those two claw weapons. My conclusion
is that the text absolutely allows for them to be identical and suggests they probably are. 
Agia's lucivee weapon is described as a metal bar with rings for thumb and fourth finger. 
The attached blades are concealed in the palm when the hand is cupped. But when the the hand is
opened for a slap, the blades serve as a palm weapon.

My debator (who was Mantis and the last thing I wanted was to debate with him) insisted that
the Sorcerers' claws were more like Wolverine (X-men) claws.  And I agree, Severian's first
view of them was probably like that. But Agia's lucivee would look like that if the hand was
not cupped or flat but fisted. Then the claws would extend from the back of the hand instead
of the palm. The weapon can work either way.

Consider this passage regarding the Sorcerer's claws:

>"Showing no sign of fear, the painted man walked up to me and extended hands. The steel talons
>emerged from between his fingers, being fastened to a narrow bar of iron he held in his palm"

The extended hands had to be palm-up or Severian wouldn't have seen the iron bar. The rings for 
the fingers aren't mentioned but in every other way, these claws seem identical to Agia's weapon. 
The Sorcerers do use their claws to fight, in a battle where intimidation wouldn't be a factor- 
against the slug. I suspect they used the fist method rather than the slap method to avoid 
touching it.

In the spirit of Witzkid, I would not haggle over such minutiae if there weren't an important 
principle or theme at work here. This is one I see repeated in BotNS numerous times as part of 
Severian's unreliable narrator role.  Severian is always comparing things to each other and finding
similarities. Thus when two things are nearly identical and he doesn't notice it, it is a clue to 
the reader, "notice this!" Another example might be his lack of notice that The Boatman's 
description of Father Inire could apply to himself. Another might be his failure to notice the 
similarity of medical apparatus in Typhon's chamber, Baldander's lab and perhaps the Witches Tower.

So, for me, the signifcance of Agia's claws are that she is associated with the explicitly anti-New 
Sun Jungle Sorcerers though she does not appear in that scene. It helps answer the question of why a 
cold-weather city girl would be familiar with and drawing a jungle demon at a crucial time in her life.

(btw- Severian does mention both Agia's claws and the Sorcerer's claws in UotNS but in a way that again
suggests they are different weapons, though they probably are not)

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