the prime calcula/his citadel and other quotes

Marc Aramini · 20 Jan 2011, 20:22 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:22:45 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) the prime calcula/his citadel and other quotes
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W426AB0E49CEBA72E51D5C2CFF90 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <505870.11280.qm at web161808.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 1/20/11, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I guess all I can do is offer encouragement and say I'm
> reading your theories and benefitting from 
> them as I slowly digest them. I would feel a loss if you
> decided to shut up for a while.
>  

I will try not to shut up then.  There are so many ambiguities that are so much less clear cut than some of that stuff though.  I even think there are some weird little asides that tend to support the some of the more clone-heavy theories than mine.

At one point silk says "I suppose so, unless there were two of us."  (Litany 163) and in some dreams the calde's bust becomes the ball of enlightenment, which I tend to associate more with Pas than with Tussah, he sees his mother riding Auk's grey donkey across the sky.

The trees are always described with human qualities even inside the Whorl: "the hushed expectancy of the thirsting trees" (p 82, Litany), "aided by a friendly tree"  and Quetzal thinks "Their parent tree, nourished by his own efforts, was of more than sufficient size now, and a fount of joy to him: a sheltering presence, a memorial of home, the highraod to freedom. ... even in this dounpour the tree was safer, though he could fly  (Epiphany 23)

Also, the loss of Eden: "A god called Ah Lah barred Wo-man and her husband from the Garden ... We seem to have lost sight of Ah Lah ... No one ever asks why the cobra wanted Wo-man to eat his fruit ... in order than she would climb his tree, Patera.  The man likewise.  Their story's not over because they haven't climbed down." (Epiphany 19)

My scheme of man being somehow assimilated into the trees is kind of hinted at here, but its just so easy to kind of ignore it.  Here, man has not yet climbed down from the tree.  

Even in Urth of the New Sun, the branches of trees reach for Severian.  At some point, whether it be in New Sun or in Long Sun, these trees become pretty humanized and sentient in their descriptions.

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