Father Inire Theory

Jeff Wilson · 07 Dec 2010, 17:29 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:29:08 -0600
Subject: (urth) Father Inire Theory
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W53A6C15CCFFB6CB93EE161CF2C0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W53A6C15CCFFB6CB93EE161CF2C0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4CFE6EE4.3010409 at io.com>

On 12/7/2010 6:44 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
> 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?

It's one interpretation *per* *level* of the text. An unaging maid who 
survives decapitation can't be Severian's mother *and* a robot at the 
same time in the same way. So I pick the robot for the literal 
interpretation, and assign the mother identity to the more figurative, 
immediate level of the subtext because other than children they have 
raised, people typically remember lost loved ones as remaining their 
same age they saw them last, and of course they have the same name.

We can then construct from these bases an intuitional, mental step 
ladder to reach up to the more high-falutin', plot foreshadowing, roast 
beef buffet level of the executed mother-maid representing the Mother 
Urth who Severian must kill. But it's still really a robot in the tower 
(which is really a derelict rocket ship) on his day of elevation.

Likewise, your mythopoeic symbol manipulations are a worthy pursuit for 
possible answers. But even if you find an irresistble resonance between 
Severian and The King in Yellow or the Queen of Hearts, he's still 
written as the Man in Black and you're going to have a hard time 
convincing me fuligin is really a chromatic tincture.

 > 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?

There's considerable middle ground between ignoring an idea and 
embracing it as literal gospel. Yesod is figuratively heaven, Tzadkiel 
is sorta-kinda an angel, and Inire and the Cumaean may have fallen from 
the grace of their "cousins" by casting their lots in with Urthly 
humanity. I suppose Inire being a able to be a Pannite anyone anywhere 
is a slightly fresher metaphor than being Argus Thousandeyed, but it's 
too good a solution - it threatens to half-solve all the mysteries in 
the book with the same answer "Inire did it", and leave unanswerable 
"why did he bother?"

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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