Merger

Gerry Quinn · 31 Jan 2011, 23:21 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:21:26 -0000
Subject: (urth) Merger
References: <SNT123-W66A7C0992B48933890315CFE20 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <D3AE9575370B4911B5EB827F9C92AC55@jill>

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>

> I think "unmanning" (they never say "castration" but c'mon..) was 
> necessary not for
> the purposes mentioned by the characters. As elsewhere argued, a simple 
> vasectomy
> would have prevented an Appian dynasty. But Wolfe needed more than just a 
> sterile
> male for this story. He needed an androgyne. Why?
>
> It is my argument that the story needed an androgyne to point to the 
> subtext which is
> never openly spelled out:  a Dionysus-like demiurge has created all we 
> see. The god
> Dionysus was androgynous and we see his echo in the old Autarch. Also in 
> the Green Man,
> in Tzadkiel and perhaps in the two-sided male/female coin which is 
> Inire/Cumaean.

If in a book of a thousand pages, a relatively minor character is an 
androgyne, it hardly points to anything in particular, any more than another 
character being half-man, half-robot.  And Dionysus was hardly the only 
deity with androgynous aspects. But that is beside the point::

The autarch is *not* an androgyne, although Severian mistook him for one 
when they first met.  He is neuter.  Those are quite different things.

Is there a lot of other androgyny in BotNS?  Hardly.  A woman with a deep 
voice or a man from the future with a high-pitched voice are hardly 
indicators. There are two cacogens of different species who have made their 
hoimes on Urth; one is male and the other is female - and that's supposed to 
be a pointer to androgynity?  I could walk down a street of any city today 
and spot more androgynity than this lot.

Where is the evidence for a Dionysus-like demiurge anyway?  Presumably every 
cosmic cycle was created by the same entity, including that of Urth and our 
own if it is different.  This entity is known on Urth as the Increate or the 
Pancreator.  No special characteristics are ascribed to him; in particular 
there is no suggestion in the text of androgyny.

The BotLS has a new pantheon. Apart from the gods of Mainframe, we have the 
Outsider, whom it seems clear is identified by Wolfe as the god of 
Christianity under another name.  [In the lists of characters, we can even 
find the three aspects of the Trinity delineated.]  It's also suggested that 
Ah Lah is an alternative name for the Outsider.  It can hardly be doubted 
that Increate and Pancreator are also alternate names.

You could perhaps find a suggestion of androgyny in Silk hearing the 
Outsider talking in two voices, a man's and a woman's - but I think he 
suggests that in fact he has more voices than two.  Top candidates for 
symbols of androgyny on the Whorl appear to be Incus and Titi - but it is 
hard to argue that their presence indicates anything more than an attempt at 
a naturalistic spectrum of characters.

In RttW Dionysus is referenced, and Silk agrees that he may also be the 
Outsider.  But why not - this is known to be the case for Allah and the 
Increate!  Although wine is involved, the symbology invoked/evoked by Silk 
on Blue appear more Christian than Dionysian.

Finally, why link Dionysus to the concept of a demiurge?  Are they 
classically identified?  Is the universe of Urth especially Dionysian in 
aspect?  I don't see anything especially Dionysian about it at all.

- Gerry Quinn

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