Agia's Weapons

Daniel Petersen · 20 Dec 2011, 10:09 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com (Daniel Petersen)
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:09:30 +0000
Subject: (urth) Agia's Weapons
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W3260B174EC1DA4EE5D71FFCFA40 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W3260B174EC1DA4EE5D71FFCFA40 at phx.gbl>
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On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 3:23 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> >Daniel Petersen:
> >"What I was going to tell you was that the existence of that relic seems
> to
> >have given some people the idea that the Conciliator used claws as
> weapons.
> >I have sometimes doubted that he existed; but if such a person ever lived,
> >I'm sure that he used his weapons largely against himself.
>
>
> Great passage quote! I interpret this to coincide with the fact of
> Severian becoming highly
>
> drained and exhausted each time he uses The Claw. Also the recipients of
> Severian's power
>
> find the blue light to be warm (as they absorb the positive energy I
> guess) while
>
> Severian himself feels it to be cold.
>
>
> It may also allude to the pains and tribulations of Jesus, Hercules,
> Oedipus and any other
>
> hero Wolfe may have drawn from in creating Severian. Like Severian, these
> guys had the
>
> weight of the world on their shoulders and suffered much personal injury
> in response.
>

On this note, I want to weigh in on something I've wanted to comment on for
a while.  Surely Wolfe sees all other heroes and legends and divinities and
rites and so on finding their fulfilment in Christ as understood by the
Catholic Church.  He certainly allusively invites us to feel resonances
with Hercules or Dionysus or whoever... but surely these summed up,
centred, and superseded in Christ?  (For Wolfe.  And his fiction.)

(Leslie Newbiggin, a 20th century British theologian and missionary in
India for thirty years, would be a prominent exponent of this kind of
missiology and soteriology - i.e. rather than Christ simply destroying and
replacing all other 'pagan rivals', he fulfills what is best in them.  This
idea seems intimately woven right through Wolfe's works to me.)

-DOJP
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