Ouen and Catherine

Andrew Mason · 21 Dec 2010, 23:52 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 23:52:08 +0000
Subject: (urth) Ouen and Catherine
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=2+dhA8omAk_2LNJR3hiLyc2STTQuvH8jqbocA at mail.gmail.com>

>
James Wynn wrote:

> Severian knew Dorcas before he knew Ouen. They might have even been
> lovers before he met Ouen.
> So why bring up Ouen at all? Well, appearance suggests they /are/
> connected. But another answer to your question might be that Dorcas is
> the /only/ one who is important, and Ouen is her son. And in some sense
> by reuniting the two of them, Severian is reuniting himself to Dorcas.

OK, that explains his meeting with Ouen. It still seems to leave his
speculation about Ouen and Catherine as a totally false trail.

> Again, that's an off-hand supposition. It is worth noting that false
> familiar ties is a staple of Wolfe. The Rajan calls Hoof, Hide, and
> Sinew his sons. He warns Hide that Jahlee (in soul travel and bearing
> the soul of Chenille) could be his "sister or aunt". Resurrected Horn
> accepts an inhumu bearing Sinew's soul as his son. Number Five calls
> Matre his father. This is all very mythological in that gods become the
> children and relatives of each other as told by mythographers although
> historically they were unrelated.

Yes indeed - another very striking one is Mucor as Marble's
granddaughter. But I wouldn't call these links false exactly, just
skewed - not the kind of relationship one would normally expect.
Whereas Severian's relation to Ouen seems to be simply a mistake.
>

> In what way? Remember that the myths are very detailed. And if Severian
> fulfills them, I expect a detailed fulfillment.

I don't think it has to be detailed. When Jesus is said to fulfil
myths, he isn''t expected to follow them in every detail; and the way
in which stories (like Dr Talos's play, or Frankenstein) reflect
reality but in an obscured way is an ongoing theme in the series.
Severian is a twin, his mother was a vrirgin priestess, he was brought
up by torturers, who can well be called wolves, on a site adjoining
graves; the Naked One is in a way like Inire - though in another like
Palaemon. (I don't know about 'The Student and his Son'. Any attempt
to apply it either to Severian's life or to past events has the
problem that the sea-monsters aren't dead.)

 But Time-traveling is
> worse in some ways. You put your finger on probably the most unsavory
> aspect of the Clone Solution. It makes the story not just Deterministic,
> but Super-Deterministic. Severian is not just destined to be the New
> Sun. He was existentially designed for it. That's probably the aspect of
> the The Book of the New Sun that I like the least: The entire race of
> the Hierogrammates. But Time-traveling over-determines, and
> /incestuates/ the story in the same way.

But as Lee said, time-travelling is undoubtedly present - we know of
two journeys Severian made (within Briah) and he tells us he intends
to make more. So I think that is the simplest answer (to the question
of the mausoleum. Not having read RTTW, I can't say how Typhon fits
in.)

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