Father Inire Theory

Ryan Dunn · 04 Dec 2010, 19:48 · from 2010-December.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: ryan at liftingfaces.com (Ryan Dunn)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 14:48:02 -0500
Subject: (urth) Father Inire Theory
In-Reply-To: <8BA6F53B-8C80-413D-B97B-A09BBED5B6F8 at butcherbaker.org>
References: <SNT123-W4856A76223348B95A3427CCF290 at phx.gbl>
	<8BA6F53B-8C80-413D-B97B-A09BBED5B6F8 at butcherbaker.org>
Message-ID: <B79413F0-8CCF-4464-9100-6EA3CA63797E at liftingfaces.com>

Another point. Yes, the hiero's state openly that Severian is chosen for his eidetic memory. But it has to be more than that. Surely in a Commonwealth where a pauper can leap from a bartizan each time we draw breath without affecting the populace in the slightest, there are numerous individuals with photographic memory.

I would have to re-read the books with this in mind, but Sire Inire may not be as implausible as it sounds.

...ryan



On Dec 4, 2010, at 2:40 PM, Son of Witz wrote:

> 
> On Dec 4, 2010, at 9:25 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>>> M. ben Witz: Wait a sec. I JUST finished NewSun again and I can not remember the 
>>> old boatman in any other scenes besides the near drowning at the beginning and when 
>>> we meet him on the Lake of Birds.
>> 
>> That's an interest post to me Witz. Most do not think the boatman at the drowning is
>> the Boatman at the Lake of Birds. I think Borski suggests that the "drowning" old boatman
>> is Maxellindis' "Uncle", who is also a boatman, because they both speak of undines. Actually
>> all three of these boatmen speak of undines. I wrote it as Maxellindis' "Uncle" because 
>> Severian suspects it isn't really her uncle. Thus we have at least two of the boatmen showing
>> a creepy fascination for pubescent young women (some calculate Dorcas' age at 13-14 for her
>> first birth). So maybe add "creepy poppet fascination" to "monkeys", "old and bent" and "obscured 
>> eyes" as marks of a shapeshifter.
>> 
>> 
>> Anyway, at the end of CotA, Severian gets off the Samru and takes a jaunt through the crumbled
>> ruins of old Nessus. He finds Dorcas, apparently in silent grief at the bier of the old boatman
>> from the Lake of Birds. So we don't actually see him die but he is, in appearance, dead.
> 
> 
> Thank you. I forgot this one line reappearance.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>> Ryan Dunn-He is Father Inire and yet not, to my knowledge, a priest. Anyone for Inire as Increate?
>> 
>> Heh! Actually my theory addresses the issue of "Father" Inire in two ways:
>> 
>> 1. Inire can be paired with The Cumaean in a number of diffent ways (her abode, their alien nature, etc)
>> She is also called The Mother. So perhaps the pairing is related to Inire's appelation of Father.
>> 
>> 2. I see flimsy evidence (which only makes sense added together) that Inire, using his longevity, has
>> managed to get busy with a number of women in Severian's family tree when they were young girls. This
>> included Dorcas (as Fechin), Cyriaca (as her cosmicly knowledgable "uncle"), and Agia (as Hethor). 
>> Perhaps Inire (which can be Latin for "sexual penetration") gets his title of Father by siring a 
>> few members of Severian's family.                         
>> _______________________________________________
>> Urth Mailing List
> 
> Far out man! Maybe too far for me, but it's interesting.
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

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