Spiritual and ecological succession

Andrew Mason · 14 Jan 2011, 12:34 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:34:35 +0000
Subject: (urth) Spiritual and ecological succession
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=FZm=n63sYoP6B6hH6kx5dAyTFiCy8Ec7NUO0P at mail.gmail.com>

Son of Witz wrote:

> Not by my reading. I think the text suggest it happens in the sequence the book presents.
> In CLAW he recounts the story to Master Ash, in Foila's Request. In the context, Drotte is giving him orders, so Drotte is allready Captain of the apprentices.
>
> ?I was angry because I was the oldest, except for Drotte and Roche, and I thought the younger apprentices ought to have to do the work. I was poking at the clog with my stick when I saw him across the Old Yard. "

Do we know that Drotte was only captain for one year? (It's not a
foregone conclusion that he would be - Eata was expected to be captain
for three).
>
> Severian in the first telling sees himself as a man:
> "I had been a man (if I was truly a man) such a short time; I could not endure to think that I had become a man so different from the boy I had been."
>
> In the second telling he gives that a second thought:
> "I was only a boy, I suppose, though I didn?t think so then."

Regarding the 'boy' thing, by the way, the context where it keeps
coming up is that Severian frequently says he played in the necropolis
'as a boy' - though it ended, it would seem, just a year and a half
before his masking. I guess we have to explain this psychologically,
though. The story of Triskele and Valeria has a self-contained feel,
but all the other events of that winter - the meeting with Vodalus,
Hunna's examination, the capture of Thecla, the library, Drotte and
Roche's masking, the House Azure - are linked in a way that would make
redating very difficult.

>

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