Severian's lies

Ori Kowarsky · 08 Nov 1999, 21:59 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: "Ori Kowarsky" <orik at sprint.ca>
Subject: (urth) Re: Severian's lies
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 21:59:50
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0436 at digest.urth.net>
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While these lists of inconsistencies are interesting, they don't seem to
justfy calling Sev a liar.  The closest I can come to a model where Sev is a
liar about something important (and I hesitate to bring this up, I really,
really do) is whether he is making up or fudging certain
spiritual/mystical/religious experiences in the text in order to buttress
his claims to having supernatural powers associated with the New Sun.

(I should point out my personal leanings towards an interpretation of BOTNS
which says that there is nothing which Severain or "Increate-assisted
Severain" is capable of doing (raising the dead, altering the Sun) which
hasn't been shown, through history or experience, to be do-able or
replicatable by the Hierodules and their masters, neither of whom are divine
as I understand that term).

If Severain is a liar at all, then the lie is a big lie, namely that he is
divinely ordained to effect certain changes on the Urth, when he knows that
those changes are actually effected and controlled by an alien civilization.
Whether Sev is a liar under the suppositions outlined above is therefore
determined by whether he is a)  genuinely a believer in his own power or 2)
cynically manipulating the reader's understanding of events to push her/him
into an understanding of those events which works in Sev's favour.

Ori

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