Father Inire as Dionysus

Lee Berman · 23 Oct 2011, 02:20 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:20:19 -0400
Subject: (urth) Father Inire as Dionysus
Message-ID: <SNT123-W558A8CA4333FD74E1467A0CFEE0 at phx.gbl>

This post is for David Stockhoff to whom I promised an answer

to his question on what benefit Severian might have for keeping

Father Inire in such difficult to penetrate disguises.

I think this question was carried on the assumption that Severian

hoping to hide his and his family's incestuous nature was sufficient

grounds to keep his family members hidden, to various degrees of

difficulty.

I could answer the question about Father Inire in similar terms. As

a Greek god analog he is incestuous by nature. It is he who brings

the embarassing curse of incest to Severian's family and keeping him

in disguise is sort of a reflex. Mentioning him as royal vizier is okay

but admiting he is Dorcas' husband, Cyriaca's uncle and certain others

would be too revealing in the incest department.

I could also answer that he is a cacogen, a sort of being which is held 

in some disgust in the Commonwealth. Perhaps Severian doesn't want to

disgust his readers by admitting any closer association than necessary.

Those answers are okay, though not completely satifying. But a recent insight

suggested there may be more to it, if we consider another level of literary

interpretation. Together, the two levels might be a good answer.

David, in the past we've had discussions about the literary theme of "God is

to universe as author is to story". And we I think we agreed that a 

religious scholar like Wolfe is insightful enough to consider that an author

is more properly considered as a demiurge than god. 

Actually I'd like to digress and add to that discussion for a paragraph or two. 

The demiurge is the all-powerful creator of the material world and all that is

in it. Where the demiurge is incomplete is that he lacks participation in the

spirit. (and free will is a component of the spirit, so a demiurge cannot fully

control a conscious human being).

So, in literature, the author is the demiurge. He can control anything and 

everything in his story except for one thing. The spiritual component of a

story, which is the reader. The author can influence but cannot control how each of 

his readers chooses to understand and interpret his stories.

Anyway, there is a famous anecdote that I can't fully place just now. It was in some

lecture where some person of note in the lupine universe surprised Wolfe with the 

question, "can we assume that the name of Number 5 and Maitre is Gene Wolfe?" Caught

by surprise, Wolfe blurted out "yes!". But this admission of metafiction and veiled

autobiography is not something Wolfe is prone to admit. That may be the only example.

It isn't something new for analysts to suggest Gene WOlfe puts himself into his stories.

Number 5, Weer, Severian, Ouen and Horn (not sure about Silkhorn) are oft noted candidates.

We have discussed how Father Inire can be seen as a demiurgical figure to the Commonwealth

as Tzadkiel is to his ship, as Typhon-Pas is to the Whorl and how The Outsider is to the

universe of Briah.

Wolfe has stated that Severian can be considered an aspect of The Outsider.  If Wolfe recognizes 

his role as demiurge in creating the Sun series, is it possible he has put himself into 

the story AS The Outsider? This recognizes Severian as an aspect of himself but also makes

Father Inire (and Typhon and Tzadkiel the Angel of Judgement) as aspects of himself. 

Could this be the reason Severian is so reticent about Father Inire? Does Wolfe make him do this

to hide (but also provide a clue) that Gene Wolfe is lurking in various disguises throughout this

story. Afterall, creating such human-form agents to accomplish their goals in the world is

something that demiurges are prone to do.

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