Urth - Earth links

Antonin Scriabin · 14 Oct 2011, 19:46 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: kierkegaurdian at gmail.com (Antonin Scriabin)
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:46:07 -0400
Subject: (urth) Urth - Earth links
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"So it didn't seem like a far future religious manuscript to you, with the
new sun coming to save the earth from the death of the sun at the end of
mankind?"

There were definitely religious themes towards the beginning, but that
eventually seemed to be because the characters didn't have all the facts
about who the Conciliator was.  As Severian learns and experiences more, the
divine element becomes less prominent.  There are fantastic, but not divine,
reasons for the way things are, and will be.  The Conciliator seems to be a
religious figure of divine origin before it is discovered that he was a
time-traveling pawn of inter-dimensional beings who have a (sort of)
unexplained interest in one small planet, out of many.  That, together with
the fact that it is written as a memoir from a not altogether trustworthy or
nice person made it seem very unlike a religious manuscript.

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
> --- On *Fri, 10/14/11, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
>
>
> I was indeed brought up in a very religious household, with all of those
> things you mentioned; I didn't take the apparent reference to Christ to be
> anything more than a secular adjustment of present-day myths for a
> far-future Urth.  Our entire mythology, Christian or otherwise, is condensed
> to some bizarre miasma in the dying Sun days; whatever resemblance they have
> to present Christianity is the result of cultural evolution.  It seems to me
> that Holy Catherine (sp? I don't have the book in front of me) isn't even a
> religious figure; just a left-over tradition from long ago that the Guild
> retains for tradition's sake.  Despite initial impressions, I think it
> becomes clear that the Conciliator is not Christ (or a type of Christ), and
> when you read what Wolfe wrote about concerning the "translation" of TBONS,
> it becomes further clear that references to saints, the use of Latin, etc.,
> are just contrivances by the "translator" to make the story accessible to
> the reader.  We aren't supposed to think that they are actually referring to
> "saints" as we know them; the word "saint" is just supposed to the closest
> equivalent for the purposes of translation.
>
>
> So it didn't seem like a far future religious manuscript to you, with the
> new sun coming to save the earth from the death of the sun at the end of
> mankind?  There is a cataclysmic ethos in Christianity that begs for the
> return of Christ one final time, to me New Sun is clearly the playing out of
> that apocalyptic and eschatological strain, and EVERYTHING points to a
> religious identity for the conciliator, from the opening, a thousand ages in
> thy sight are like an evening gone, short as the watch that ends the night
> before the rising sun to every sustained symbol.
>
> Can anyone read new sun and say it's NOT a religious manuscript, one
> greatly influenced by the eschatological tradition of the church?  huh.
> Interesting.
>
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