South America

Lee Berman · 04 Nov 2011, 13:01 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2011 09:01:37 -0400
Subject: (urth) South America
Message-ID: <SNT123-W598E9D38E9BE241578F0C5CFDA0 at phx.gbl>

>Jerry Friedman: I agree with something David Stockhoff said--we can see the 
>continent as the result of a glance at a map of South America, not detailed 
>study of the map.  I put it too strongly when I said I didn't think we were 
>supposed to connect it with South America, but I still see no reason to connect 
>the mountains with the Andes or Nessus with Buenos Aires.

I wouldn't (of course) argue that the Commonwealth is an exact match to South
America but I don't think you are recognizing how close the match is. The 
Commonwealth has pampas where S. America has pampas. There are the cold islands
to the south.  There is the mention of the large Ouroboros river just where we'd 
would expect the Amazon to be. Gyoll tracks quite nicely to the Rio de la Plata + 
Rio Uruguay. There is even a town named Salto on the route north. There is the 
mention of "the cataracts" in the vicinity of where Iguazu Falls would be. And what 
other mountain range in the world has a lake with floating islands other than the 
Andes? These are not incidental features of S. America but (except Salto) are all 
major, defining landmarks of the continent. 

With regard to Nessus, it does track geographically with Buenos Aires but there is
also the resident blind librarian there who surely can't be dismissed in evoking 
Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges.

The name "Nessus" sounds a bit like Buenos Aires and I'm sure Wolfe was aware of that
in picking it. But I don't think that was his primary purpose. We are told the name
Nessus is meant to suggest poison and this is an ironic twist to the "good air" 
meaning of Buenos Aires.

But I think the primary purpose for choosing the name Nessus and invoking poison was
to focus a laser pointer on the Hercules story. I don't think Wolfe was successful in
this for most of his readers, unfortunately. But I see much in the subtext of Severian's
story which tracks to that myth. But that is a different discussion.

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