Father Inire as Dionysus

Lee Berman · 24 Oct 2011, 15:40 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:40:03 -0400
Subject: (urth) Father Inire as Dionysus
Message-ID: <SNT123-W31FFC20AC25DF2EC60B549CFEF0 at phx.gbl>

>Ryan Dunn: Might this suggest that Ultan is Severian's grandfather on the maternal 
>side (Catherine's father), while the boatman is his grandfather on the paternal side 
>(Ouen's father)? Sorry if this has already been discussed.

>To that end, if there is significance to knowing that Ultan is his grandfather, would 
>it be significant to know the identity of the boatman? Or is just being a shopkeeper and 
>lost soul without his lover enough of an identity?

I might be more inclined to agree that Dorcas' husband is just some guy if it weren't for
the fact that there are two other old boatmen who also like to talk about undines. The 
old boatman's association with young teen Dorcas seems to parallel the questionable 
nature of Maxellindis' uncle to young teen Maxellindis.

That particular issue of Ultan has not been discussed much, nor recently. But yes. If
Ultan is a version of Father Inire it probably places him as both maternal and paternal
grandfather to Severian. Ultan is surely presented as a kindly, benign character. But
as has been discussed with David Stockhoff, there are some things Ultan says which seem to
associate him with satanic ritual (not to mention his look of greedy hunger in discussing 
the eating of the dead).

That stuff about Ultan is to be expected if he is Father Inire, who is associated with
pagan gods, fallen angels, gnostic demons, witchcraft etc. Not that these things are 
inherently "bad". They are just dark. The dark which comes before the light.

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