Saint Catherine and the Nature of the Flood

Jordon Flato · 14 Mar 2012, 20:37 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: jordonflatourth at gmail.com (Jordon Flato)
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:37:38 -0700
Subject: (urth) Saint Catherine and the Nature of the Flood
Message-ID: <CALvaXC9Bg7Wz90M9JNK9MEinpebXh1KF5mwbXgVG0XfY6RNkgQ at mail.gmail.com>

So, I haven't chimed in for a while (and haven't really had anything
urth-shattering to add in any event), but a few things from recent
discussions have caught my eye and brought up questions for me.

1)  Christianity in the world of Urth
The question has been around a long time, no?  Was there Christianity in
the past of Urth, or is this a universe without Christ?  Is this a universe
which prefigures ours, with echos of the Christian story in it, but without
the physical incarnation of Christ which would enact the salvic effect of
that incarnation?  My question, which I can't recall seeing discussion of,
but doubtless has in fact been picked apart and answered in a number of
ways already, is this:

If the guild of torturers practices a rite central to their mythology and
close to the very nature of their order, a rite which involves a character
named Catherine who's story we can easily and readily track to the real and
actual Saint Catherine of our world, doesn't that strongly indicate the
presence, in the distant past of Urth, of a real Christianity?  The very
existence of saints, and of this one in with details so similar to the
details of the story we know of Saint Catherine, seems to beg the question
for me.  How could you have her story without having first had Christ?
 What sorts of 'close but not identical' circumstances could have existed
to give rise to this exceptionally similar story to our own?

Is this simply a function and artifact of the translation gimmick?  Gene
Wolfe the discoverer of the manuscript attempting to translate
untranslatable elements by placing in terms and whole myths with which we
are familiar?

What has past thinking on this board done with this question?

So, now, and
2)  The Flood:  Is it a spiritual act of renewal/genocide, or pretty much
just a physical by-product of the gravitational effect of the white
fountain giving the sun the ol' hot beef injection?  It was recently
pointed out that in the future of Master Ash, most humans had escaped and
dispersed to the four corners of the universe.  This was, no doubt, a much
better outcome for the individuals of Urth, many if not most of whom could
have gone on to live lives of some meaning and worth.  Better than being
drowned, for sure.  But the Heiro's have a plan.  They want to turn Man
into themselves, they want to uplift us, if we prove worthy.  Severian
passes that test, and man is found worthy, but not *as he is*.  Gather the
wheat and burn the chaff.  If man has been shown to have the potential for
evolving into the next stage, there must be the correct setting for such
(the renewal of the Urth's resources as Ushas) and the removal and washing
clean of all of the habits, traits and declining traditions which brought
Humanity into the negative judgement in the first place, said judgement
having resulted in the black hole sun.

In this sense, I think Severian, and the qualities which have been honed in
him by his magnificent journey, takes on perhaps his most 'christian' role
off stage in the series.  I wish I had the book in front of me, but the few
things he says to the new Humanity on Ushas sound very Christlike to me.
 Looked at as a god, his every word will serve as, at least in part, the
basis for a new moral direction for man.  Urth and Severian have both been
put through the fire, and what is left is metal ready to be tempered to a
finer degree than what was possible before.  So there is a physical and yet
quite spiritual dimension to the flooding of Urth.
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