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Lee Berman · 14 Jan 2011, 03:23 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:23:04 -0500
Subject: (urth) (no subject)
Message-ID: <SNT123-W41ADA5418C765FB3D9B887CFF30 at phx.gbl>

>David Stockhoff: I have long been trying to figure out specifically what, if anything, 
>Wolfe was trying to get at with his depiction of a man who becomes a god 
>called the Conciliator.

Some really great research David. I do think the aspect of Conciliator in this story has been 
somewhat ignored. My own view is that myth, religion and legend find a number of concilators and
Severian partakes in many aspects of them (though many question Severian's status as a "half-breed").
I generally find Severian somewhere in the mix between Hercules and Jesus, but I think your
analysis pins it down a bit more definitively from a Catholic perspective. Raising of the dead
is another essential theme, which you address.

>(The connection between "lame" and "castrated" is the theory that when a 
>hero in literature is wounded in the "thigh," that really means he's 
>been rendered, er, drastically impotent---or at least that the two are 
>related by proximity. A king who cannot ride and fight may still be able 
>to sire an heir, but he's still cursed. BTW, has anyone wondered why 
>Severian and Valeria never had an heir?)

The mythic connection between lame and castrated is something I've never encountered before. Thank
you David!!!

I have wondered more than once in these annals about the lack of pregnancy in Valeria. I guess we 
could think of it as a pre-castration condition for the New Sun (what if he failed and faced castration;
he can't have already had a child).

I have another rather obtuse interpretation for Valeria's barreness. Severian, following a generic Greek 
hero pattern, is like an anti-Oedipus. There is always at least some tiny clue that each woman Severian 
has sex with is related to him. He is anti-Oedipus because, though cursed by incest, the one female family 
member he doesn't have sex with is his mother.

The exception may be Valeria. Both Andre-Driussi and Borski find suggestion that Valeria may be related in
some manner to Catherine. So, perhaps, if Severian and Valeria led a chaste marriage, it was a way of breaking
the incest curse. Perhaps an unmentioned pre-requisite for Severian to qualify for New Sun staus.

I'll go further on a limb by suggesting that incest can be considered the true Original Sin. It is the curse
of all polytheistic pantheons of gods and goddesses (and the pharaonic dynasties they are patterned after).
Their only alternative to incest was beastiality with humans (commoners). Thus the mantle of moral superiority
and the basis for sexual repression among monotheistic religions, esp. Christianity and Islam. "at least our
God isn't dorking his sister!".

It applies to Adam and Eve also. I argue that the forbidden knowledge they gained from the fruit was carnal
knowledge (hence the fig leaves). We know Adam and Eve's kids had to be incestuous. But Adam and Eve themselves
were the closest of relatives- cloned, identical twins (if we science up the rib story).

Some say there were some other people around for Adam and Eve's kids to mate with, in Nod, east of Eden.. But, 
as Dr. Talos' play implies, that gets into the Nephilim and fallen angel matings and stuff like that, which led 
to a Flood. There ARE some necessary dark sides to Creation and incest is one of them.

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