Spiritual and Ecological Succession

Andrew Mason · 13 Jan 2011, 16:26 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:26:43 +0000
Subject: (urth) Spiritual and Ecological Succession
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=5-h+su5wShEFMkpzZJpxtcfTA2teAi2fyzPop at mail.gmail.com>

Jerry Friedman wrote:

> > What evidence do we have that he was that old?
>
> /Lexicon Urthus/ isn't evidence?
>
> That means I hope someone else knows.

I don't believe Severian's age is ever made clear in the text. The
nearest thing is where Hildegrin says that he is a couple of years
older than 'her'. Unfortunately it's unclear whether 'her' is Dorcas
or Agia. Agia claims to be twenty-three (but may be lying). Agia also
estimates Dorcas's age at sixteen or seventeen (but may be lying or
mistaken). Hildegrin may also be mistaken. So in short, we can't tell.

Severian is in any case rather vague about time. There'a a suggestion
that when he meets Eata again near the end of COTA, he _realises_ that
he has been away less than a year, and is rather surprised by it. GW
in one of the appendices comments on the frutstrating vagueness about
time that people in that age seem to have.

Severian does tend to distinguish rather firmly between the time when
he was a  boy (including the opening part of SOTT) and the time when
he was a man, even though only a year or so seems to have passed  I do
sometimes wonder if another year or two went by without his noticing.

Antonio Pedro Marquez wrote:

> How many Urth days does a bluish year span?

I think it's made clear at one point that we don't know. More
precisely, no one knows exactly how the Blue year relates to the Whorl
year, which, being artificial, is presumably based on the Urth year.
They're clearly fairly close, or someone would have spotted the
difference - it's not as if children are reaching maturity at the age
of three, or alternatively thirty-two. This makes sense, as Blue in an
Urth-like planet. But we can't tell precisely.
>

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