Merger

Lee Berman · 31 Jan 2011, 02:54 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:54:00 -0500
Subject: (urth) Merger
Message-ID: <SNT123-W1645563511B38BCB25C8BCFE20 at phx.gbl>

>Andrew Mason: However, I don't think it's clear that the Appian of 'The Cat' is in
>fact Severian's immediate predecessor.

Yep hard to know for sure. Borski argues that the name Appian is evocative of bees 
and some of Severian's first acquired memories are of bee keeping presumably from the
honey steward profession of the old autarch.

Sure would be a funny coincidence for Wolfe to happen to choose the name "Appian". On
the other hand, the bee in Latin is "apis" with one "p". Just checked there is a Saint
Apian as well as Saint Appian. So, I dunno. I think it is probably meant to be him.

>--but also because it would be odd for Wolfe to keep the Autarch's name mysterious 
>throughout the series, and then give it away casually in a short story. The unnamed 
>major characters, and what we are meant to do about them, are one of the ongoing 
>mysteries of the work.

I'm unsure on this. It does seem unfair to bury the answer to a major mystery of BotNS
in a short story. Perhaps it is a way for Wolfe to reward his most loyal fans? Or perhaps
it means the name of the old Autarch is considered a minor mystery, by WOlfe.

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