Fish and Cave

Lee Berman · 22 Dec 2010, 16:01 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 11:01:50 -0500
Subject: (urth) Fish and Cave
Message-ID: <SNT123-W450CAF87F38D252500CA82CF1B0 at phx.gbl>

>Marc Aramini: Fish and Frog must be very important, too, though I used it once to argue that 
>Pia was Sev's sister (her description of dark hair with pale features, high cheekbones and a 
>thin waist really mirrors Sevs, and he finds a girl who looks like Pia eviscerated in Baldander's 
>castle) and that one of them was sent down the river, but someone convinced me the river was headed 
>the wrong way or something.

That is interesting. I don't see how Fish and Frog are involved in Pia's story but I'd like to. I'm
interested in James' take on that also.

For me, there isn't too much hesitation in thinking that every sexual partner of Severian's might be a
family member. The stuff surrounding Pia is at least chin-scratching, including the Dorcas resemblance
and the cloning. I tend to think such wrong-flowing river contrivances are not necessary to understand
the general concept of "family connection" that Wolfe is going for. When you have giant asexual and 
sexually reproducing creatures in the mix, our human sense of kin labelling doesn't quite work.

Anyway, the fish theme is strong here. Pia's people worship Oannes, the fish god. The town 
on the shore is named Murene which basically means "Eel". The Lake is Diuturna which is about the same 
word as Juturna. Baldanders seems to want to go "swimming with Undines" there. And of course we have 
Severian eating fish and labelling himself as an Oannes at the end of UotNS. Good fishing indeed!

(shore and island people again as paired opposites, one "good" one "evil". Can we really think that Oannes
and Abaia are different gods in the same lake?)

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