Ymar

James Wynn · 25 May 2011, 22:34 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 17:34:06 -0500
Subject: (urth) Ymar
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTik+mU7OOwr4yf+Tn=9DEs=4bY5PJw at mail.gmail.com>
References: <BANLkTik+mU7OOwr4yf+Tn=9DEs=4bY5PJw at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4DDD83DE.6000702 at gmail.com>

>> Except that his name, "Spring Wind", makes no sense as a designation for
>> Mars.
> Andrew Mason:
> It makes perfect sense to me. 'March winds' is a well-established
> phrase, enshrined  in  a nursery rhyme.

You make a convincing argument that 'Spring Wind' makes a fine 
designation for 'March'. But not for Mars. Let me again stipulate the 
pattern set for the other characters from the ancestry of Romulus:

* Early Summer = June = Juno [ding!] (Although this betrays a naivety in 
thinking Juno was originally a season, each name is a reasonable 
translation of either of the others.)

* Bird of the Woods =  Rhea Silvia (same thing) [ding!]

* Spring Wind = March Winds = March = Mars [buzzer sound]

The West wind 'Zephyr' blows in the Spring but he is not equivalent to 
Mars. That's not even a flat note. It's like a duck quacking in the 
middle of the Moonlight Sonata.

> Andrew Mason:
> Malrubius says that Ymar was the _last_
> Autarch, before Severian's predecessor, to take the test. (Technically
> 'last' can include 'only', but it would be very deceptive. Possibly
> Malrubius is deceptive, but I see no reason for him to deceive about
> that.)

What's deceptive about that? 'Last' can mean 'at the end of a chain' but 
it also means merely 'just previously'. For instance, if there were fire 
in our workplace and I said 'The last time there was a fire in this 
office..." it is unlikely you would PRESUME that I meant the last of a 
_series_ of fires. Even when I first read this, I don't recall drawing 
the implication that you do here.

> Also, Typhon seems to be dated several  chiliads earlier, by
> Severian's remark about the Conciliator, that he disappeared several
> chiliads ago, and by Cyriaca's story - I think she says that the book,
> which mentions Typhon, is itself several chiliads old. Also by the
> time it would take to shape all the mountains into figures of
> Autarchs. Ymar, I think, isn't dated in the text,but in an interview
> given at the time Wolfe put him just a chiliad before Severian - where
> in the now canonical dating Typhon seems to be as well, causing much
> confusion. Besides that, there's the fact that Ymar is a known historical figure,
> whereas Typhon is forgotten.

I wonder whether anyone but Mantis has seen that interview, but I'll 
accept his reading. Considering the  consternation caused the 
discrepancies between Wolfe's statement (treated as canonical by Lexicon 
Urthus) and the text of SotL/UotNS, it would have been interesting if 
someone had asked him how long ago Typhon lived. But what's done is done.

At least we agree there is no conflict in the TEXT. Severian doesn't 
know how long ago the Conciliator lived (that's evident from his answer 
to Typhon), but there is no reason to believe he knows how long ago Ymar 
lived either. Everything before Ymar seems to be a mystery to Severian 
who is barely a man. He doesn't display a lot of knowledge about any 
autarchs AFTER Ymar either. What struck me as most unlikely was that 
Typhon would be forgotten at all considering he was the ruler over the 
Commonwealth (and the rest of the planet) at the time of the 
Conciliator. And again this might speak of Severian's lack of religious 
instruction (the equivalent of not knowing who Herod Antipas was). Based 
_positive_ evidence (that is, evidence we have rather than evidence we 
think we should have), it seems that after the Commonwealth was formed 
and the alien powers divided up the rest of the world, nobody received 
much instruction in what came before.

That there are lots of mountain carved? It took six years to carve Mount 
Rushmore using 1930s technology.

Honestly, having Severian encounter Ymar in Typhon's time never caused 
me to blink an eye, but then I wasn't aware of the interview at the time 
either. Still, reading the story of Frog with my more recent 
interpretation, I probably would have expected Ymar to appear well-after 
Typhon's time since he and Fish floated down a 'stream'. On the other 
hand...hmmmm.

Checking my copy of LU v2, I see that Mantis also considers Frog to be 
an historical figure although we disagree about when he lived.

J.

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