Sea Monsters

Lee Berman · 31 May 2011, 03:25 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 23:25:49 -0400
Subject: (urth) Sea Monsters
Message-ID: <SNT123-w175A6AD530AD4560CEEE0DCF7A0 at phx.gbl>

>James Wynn: 
>[Silk says,] "The gods are immortal, ageless. It's their immortality 
>that makes them gods, really, more than anything else."
>[...]
>[Quetzal replies, ]
>"Echidna told you Pas is dead, and you can't help believing her. I've 
>known it for thirty years, since shortly after his death, in fact. How 
>did he die? How could he?

>And for a being like Pas, death was not necessarily the end.

Thanks, James, for these Silk and Quetzel quotes. They do support my view
of the immortality of Sun Series gods- they can be eliminated or destroyed
in some manner but they always have the potential to come back.

I consider the converse of Silk's statement to be equally important: it is
our mortality which makes us human. This is an important concept in The Bible 
(we get the fruit of knowledge, not life), most mythologies, even in Tolkein.
Mortality is both our curse and blessing. Our weakness is ultimately our
greatest strength (let's face it, the gods and elves just can't breed as
rapidly as we can, and such reproductive power requires mortality).

I think these concepts support my (minority?) opinion that Typhon should be
considered more as god than human. There is name, his psychic power and his Pas 
status on the whorl. But mostly there is his immortality. The guy wasn't just 
parched, he was a piece of leather. But somehow from that he rather quickly 
became a working organism again. Severian couldn't do that for human Little 
Severian.

Severian's apparent immortality calls his humanity into question for me also.
He thinks he is mortal. We think he is mortal. But is he really? Nothing can
kill the guy though many powerful beings have tried.

>The Rajan calls Scylla and Mother "sisters", but I suspect they are in 
>someway the same. If Wolfe thinks he was provided enough clues to know 
>one way or the other, then I missed it. Yet, her ability to absorb 
>Cilinia implies to me that Scylla is not merely a biological creature. 
>Or if she is, then she of some biology that is similar but greater than 
>the Neighbors.

For me, this question has been adequately answered in other discussions. We are
dealing with creatures with the capacity for asexual reproduction but, since they
can take human form, our narrators insist on trying to assign human kinship labels
to these things. Small wonder they are inadequate. 

What is the proper word to describe the relationship between BIG Tzadkiel, human-sized 
Tzadkiel and tinker-bell Tzadkiel? Perhaps as you say, James, "sisters but in someway 
the same."

Thus, I think, the snake associations with both Echidna and Scylla. The MOther is on Blue
Great Scylla is on Urth. Scylla may, in a sense, be Echidna's daughter but they are are in
some ways the same (cloned?) being.

Wolfe deliberately plants evidence to make us think Pas and his family are based entirely 
on a human family. But I see more evidence, including their immortality in the sense 
previously discussed, and those darn sea monsters, that there is more to them than simply 
a legendary human king and his nasty royal brood. I think Wolfe interview quotes about the
realness of mythological gods supports that conclusion.

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