Agilus and Agia

Lee Berman · 03 May 2013, 17:14 · from 2013-May.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 13:14:22 -0400
Subject: (urth) Agilus and Agia
Message-ID: <BLU175-W376B6F4D54F8F38A77CBF9CFBE0 at phx.gbl>

>aaron: It always seemed to me as if Rudesind implies that the House
>Absolute and The Citadel are connected.  There are probably other instances
>of his Inire-y behavior, but I am too lazy at the moment to think of them.

Yeah, that art gallery seems to extend across a very long distance from Nessus
to the House Absolute. I think the implication is that it is a passageway which
does not fully exist in real space-time. Severian does compare Inire's passageways
to the one on Tzadkiel's ship (the one to Brook Madregot).

The other somewhat funky Inire-Rudesind connection is that Rudesind is the one who
brings Severian the letter from Father Inire, soon after he is elevated to Autarch. Inire
is acknowledged to have been in the Ascian jungles to the north, so how does the letter
manage to find Rudesind so quickly. And if haste was necessary why choose old Rudesind 
to deliver it? If Rudesind isn't really an old man and in fact is Father Inire himself,
those questions disappear.

Also is the unexpected and cryptic announcement at this meeting by Rudesind that he is 
the "advocate for the dead". Where does that come from? Pretty mysterious but perhaps
the answer lies in this excerpt from Wikipedia on Dionysus: 

>His cult is also a "cult of the souls"; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, 
>and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.[13]

>Dan'l Dannehy-Oakes: I pronounce it In-EAR-ay.

Heh, me too. Borski identifies Inire as a Latin name, along with The Cumaean, Famulimus and
Barbatus, which I agree does perhaps imply some sort of kinship among these beings. I think
Borski identifies "inire" as a form of the verb meaning "to enter". Personally I don't
think he goes far enough with this, ignoring that a more specific meaning is "sexual
entrance" and is associated with the god Inuus (known for beastiaity), who is an epithet of 
Faunus who is associated with Pan (Pas) and Quadrofrons/Janus who are all associated with 
Dionysus. Add those to "the Green Man" and (the Town That Forgot) Fauna and a couple others 
and you have a nice collection of Dionysian references across the 12 book Sun Series.

(FWIW, inuus is also a species of non-tailed, baboon-like monkeys called barbary apes)

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