Father Inire Theory

Lee Berman · 07 Dec 2010, 12:44 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 07:44:00 -0500
Subject: (urth) Father Inire Theory
Message-ID: <SNT123-W53A6C15CCFFB6CB93EE161CF2C0 at phx.gbl>

>Jeff Wilson- Inire and the Cumaean are manufactured creatures or at least of manufactured race, 
>like the rest of the Yesodis. ..... They become bent with age as they struggle to exceed their parameters, 
>but that's it.

If this were the case I'd expect to see something in the text which reflects this. In the Cumaean I think
there may be a hint of weariness in her voice. But quite the opposite for Father Inire. We get two good 
"looks" at him, in the Domnina/mirrors episode and in his letter to Severian. In both cases he seems 
extremely lively, jovial and verbose. A lot more lively than Barbatus, Famulimus and Ossipago. 
No hint of being worn down by his labors.

>...They have no need to split and change shape because they are made to order for their specific tasks handed 
>down by the likes of Tzadkiel...They're the underpeople, the replicants of Yesod, similar to the way the 
>animal-folk are the underpeople of the Commonwealth.

You make very strong statements of fact showing a vast degree of confidence in your own interpretation of the
words of this story. I am more cautious about such things but hey, nothing wrong with rock-solid self-esteem, eh?

I might have some minor quibbles but I don't have huge objections to your theory. What I don't understand is why 
this has to be the ONLY possible theory. why can't Wolfe be read on more than one level? 

You have your alien-based theory which is fine.  But why ignore the angelic nature of Tzadkiel's name and ignore 
the hierarchial nature of angels and deny the possibility of fallen angel analogs? Why insist on only one 
level of interpretation of the text? The Jeff Wilson theory may be exactly what Gene Wolfe had in mind when
he wrote BotNS. But is it the only thing he had in mind?

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