historical/literal or figurative consistency in the Urth cycle

Jonathan Laidlow · 29 Apr 1999, 11:54 · from urth-v0026.mbox · original

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From: "Jonathan Laidlow" <LAIDLOJM at hhs.bham.ac.uk>
Subject: (urth) historical/literal or figurative consistency in the Urth cycle
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 11:54:47 GMT
Message-ID: <urth-v0026-0055 at digest.urth.net>
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The recent discussion about the presence of Christianity in BotNS has=20
been very interesting. I think it is correct to draw on textual=20
evidence over and above evidence from Wolfe the author - authors are=20
notorious for changing their minds and changing their intentions.=20
What Wolfe says and thinks of the BotNS now may be very different to=20
how he thought of it both before it was written and after. This also=20
makes it interesting to look at 'Long Sun' as a reworking of some of=20
the themes of BotNS.

On a more serious note - the debate has centred on making Urth into a=20
consistent fictional world by attempting to locate our own history=20
into an early stage of the time frame. This posits a realist=20
interpretion of the book which I cannot agree with. I have always=20
read the Urth sequence as a kind of metafiction - a book about=20
stories and the way stories are told. Last month Robert Borski=20
pointed out in an 'Undine' post that the tales from the Brown book=20
are all conflations of familiar stories. The same is obviously true=20
of the sequence as a whole, with Christian mythology as another 'old'=20
story that is part of the fabric of Urth.

I feel that the SF Encyclopedia is right to suggest that Wolfe is=20
some kind of modernist writer - one of the effects of Severian's=20
narrative stance (his supposedly infallible memory) is to point out=20
the unreliability of narration to actually create a realist world.=20
Sev is a storyteller, and the Urth cycle is, in the words of Clute/=20
Nicholls and the other Encyclopedists, ' a fabulation is any story=20
which challenges the two main assumptions
 of genre sf: that the world can be seen; and that it can be told. We
 have chosen to use the term "fabulation"' [And a note against=20
confusion - this doesn't mean that Wolfe is some kind of=20
post-modernist who doubts everything - as a modernist Wolfe perhaps=20
believes that the world cannot be adequately reproduced in textual=20
form in any literal sense]

I don't believe that Urth can be seen - it is not a realist narrative=20
in the sense that it creates a realistic image in your head - I don't=20
believe I can picture Sev or anything else from the cycle in my head=20
in any pictoral sense. What it does is play with old narratives,=20
conflating them and changing them to present something new. Perhaps=20
what I'm saying is that Sev's world is figurative rather than literal=20
- it represents something, it does not present something.

What that something is, to my mind, changes every time I read it. I=20
noticed two days ago the passage in Urth where Sev as Autarch reminds=20
us that his name is 'Legion'. We have here conflation at work - for=20
Sev is also the Conciliator - a christ figure, but he is in some way=20
also a devil and a destroyer. While this cannot map exactly onto any=20
strict Christian reading of the text, we have instead a reminder of=20
two of the major figures in Christian theology, where Sev is put into=20
similar textual positions to both Christ and Satan, without being=20
either....
As Nick Gevers said last time, 'Sev is a reiteration of a messianic=20
pattern encountered previously on Urth or Earth'. I would add that=20
the whole cycle is a reiteration of the stories (history, myth,=20
fiction, theology) of Earth.

So, the discussion over whether Christianity every existed on Urth is=20
to me, a non-starter. Urth is never presented as a literal=20
continuation of Earth history, but a post-historical, mythological=20
point where Earth's stories retell themselves in exciting ways.

Jonathan
Visit Ultan's Library - A Gene Wolfe web resource
http://members.tripod.co.uk/laidlow/index.htm
Jonathan Laidlow
University of Birmingham, UK

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