Technology as Magic and Metaphor (long)

Daniel Fusch · 02 Nov 1999, 19:29 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: "Daniel Fusch" <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Technology as Magic and Metaphor (long)
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 11:29:18 PST
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0345 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0028/0345.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Carlton:

(snip)
Instead, the idea that they are simultaneously
>scientifically explainable events and spiritual metaphors with real power=20
>creates a sense of destiny and religious meaning in our physical universe.=20
>In TBOTNS every action, object, and interaction reveals some significant=20
>truth about the Increate.  Sev's discovery of a thorn on a (Pacific!)=20
>beach,
>which is at once biological matter, a relic of real physical power, and a=20
>revelation of the divine nature of physical existence, is an example of=20
>this
>principle."

Precisely. There is a technological level, a metaphorical level, a=20
mythological level, and a spiritual level to all these things. I think what=20
whoever-started-this was trying to point out was that the symbolic level of=20
analysis is more important (or higher, to use a Miltonic concept) than the=20
scientific level or analysis. In other words, it is more important that the=20
reader understand what Typhon is doing on a symbolic level than it is for=20
the reader to understand the anatomical knowledge that went into putting=20
Typhon together.

I also agree that there is no "magic" in Severian's world, as that term is=20
usually understood. On the other hand, I don't think that we can gain much=20
by a technological discussion of the possibilities and probabilities=20
involved in sewing Typhon together, in creating Father Inire's mirrors, or=20
in producing a white fountain. If we focus too closely on a literal and=20
scientific reading of Wolfe's work, we risk missing or overlooking the=20
point. If Wolfe had meant for The Book of the New Sun to be a treatise on=20
physics, he would have made Severian a physicist.

I think that we need to accept the following suppositions when approaching=20
The Book of the New Sun:

A) On the literal level, Urth is governed my a future technology that is=20
really a medley of a dozen or so past technologies. We cannot really get an=20
intellectual grasp on how all this technology works, because Severian isn't=20
able or isn't interested in telling us.

B) While it is scientifically possible to create a Typhon, the probability=20
of the matter is really irrelevant; the significance of the Typhon episode=20
lies in the metaphorical and mythological meanings of the text. The same=20
goes for Baldanders, etc. The Book of the New Sun is science fiction, yes,=20
but it is also mythopoeic.

So, while it may be interesting to those engineers among us to discuss the=20
inner workings of the Autarch's flier, we should be aware that such=20
discussions can only take us so far.

--Daniel

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net