Five Severians -- Severian-as-Clone

Michael Thayer · 17 Dec 2013, 15:16 · from 2013-December.txt.gz

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From: michael.o.thayer at gmail.com (Michael Thayer)
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 10:16:12 -0500
Subject: (urth) Five Severians -- Severian-as-Clone
Message-ID: <CAHS3GWdjeCUC0D2pPc1mbHDu+qeW5RZ74Dzpb13gMKXVAF3NuQ at mail.gmail.com>

>Lee (severiansola at hotmail.com): Personally, I find the five coffins in the
mausoleum to be impossible to plausibly understand at just a narrative
level. I find it to be most essentially autobiographical in the manner of a
puzzle in its referent, The Fifth Head of Cerberus. . . . I first posted
these ideas on this board a number of years ago, so perhaps there is a
chance this is what you were looking for Michael?

Thanks, Lee - this is certainly a component of what I'm looking for.  I
agree that in order to understand tBotNS or tFHoC, we need to take account
of Wolfe's propensity for autobiography, self-reference, etc., and I think
your thoughts (which I certainly do recognize) shed a lot of light into the
shadowy mausoleum.  But the five coffins -- *two empty, three closed* --
should work not only on the level of authorial symbol, but the level of
narrative as well, shouldn't they?  I think this meticulous author and his
meticulously plotted book deserve the benefit of that doubt.  Severian
tells us:  "Before you assume that I have cheated you, read again . . ."
(Citadel, 405).

*New theory (? - or maybe you've heard it before - is there anything new
under the New Sun?).  **Five coffins, two empty, three closed.*  In
Citadel, Severian our narrator tells us of a second "first Severian."  What
if Severian is, like the narrator of tFHoC, a clone?  One of five clones,
each initially housed in the mausoleum, which is dislocated in time like
the house of Master Ash or one of the botanical gardens?  At the time our
narrator Severian is leaving Urth for his trial, two of the clones have
left/been released from the mausoleum (narrator-Sev and the "first
Severian" who came before).  If the mausoleum is dislocated in time, then
it is possible that each one of the clones would exit into a different
strand in the "tapestry" of time.  Perhaps whoever constructed the
mausoleum and put the five Severians there was/is planning to release them
one by one until one of the clones successfully brings the New Sun?

*Clones in the text.  *I remember reading in a Wolfe interview that the
prostitutes in the House Azure, the "khaibits," are in fact clones of the
Chatelaines.  I think we need to entertain the idea that Father Inire --
"alive so long beyond the span of his short-lived kind" (Citadel, 405) --
who seems (to me) to be many places at once, is not a single person but a
multitude of clones (reminded of Borsky's Palaemon as Inire theory,
Wright's Ceryx as Inire theory (AD 84), and all the "bent" "crooked" or
"small" men who show up cowled or masked in the text -- servitor who
confers with the Autarch and escorts Sev to the Green Room (Claw 338), the
masked medicine man escorting Sev in the jungle toward the end of Citadel).
 tFHoC certainly alerts us to the clone as a Wolfe convention and plot
device -- could it be a key as well?

Could a Severian-as-clone theory explain the baffling scene involving the
grotesque homunculus who addresses Severian as "brother" (Citadel, 388)?

If this theory has any legs at all -- a dubious prospect! -- we would need
to account for a sixth Severian, the natural born man, son of Ouen and
Catherine, grandson of Dorcas, etc., who was cloned five times.

Thoughts?

Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2013 10:48:13 -0500
From: Lee <severiansola at hotmail.com>
To: "urth at urth.net" <urth at urth.net>
Subject: (urth) Five Severians
Message-ID: <BLU175-W2411168E0A6AD4248F13D5CFD80 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

>Michael Thayer: Druissi's eight Severians theory is a bit opaque.

I agree. Driussi is usually fairly circumspect in injecting his own
interpretations onto Wolfe. But now and then, as in this case, he
demonstrates an ability to go off on his own tangent with almost Borskian
intrepidity.

Personally, I find the five coffins in the mausoleum to be impossible to
plausibly understand at just a narrative level. I find it to be most
essentially autobiographical in the manner of a puzzle in its referent,
The Fifth Head of Cerberus.

I think most here are aware that Wolfe once (remarkably) admitted that the
solution to the puzzle of figuring out Maitre's name in Fifth Head of
Cerberus
is: "Gene Wolfe".

I don't find this to be mere literary cleverness and sleight of hand. I
think
this is Wolfe's way of saying that much of the mystery of his work can find
its solution in autobiography.

I find the title "Fifth Head of Cerberus" itself to be a similar puzzle
(Aunt
Jeannine suggests that it is). What are the "five" heads? We have Mr.
Million,
his first clone, Maitre and Number Five. So only four in the sequence. Who
is the
fifth?

I think the answer is the person who came before Mr. Million and who
created him
as a character.  I think the fifth head is Gene Wolfe (the author) and only
by
catching that can you understand the title of the book and thus a main
intended
self-referential auctorial theme of the book.

So for me, the five coffins in the mausoleum are a direct reference to the
earlier book title and a way of saying, "once again I, Gene Wolfe as
author, am
an integral part of this story and my character Severian is a
clone/extension
of me in some ways". Naming Severian's father "Ouen" (Welsh form of Eugene)
may
also make a similar point.

I find Driussi's essay on the similarities between Wolfe's and Severian's
lives to also be relevant to this general idea.

Explaining why two of the coffins are open is a bit tough, but my best guess
is that Wolfe is saying he has "cloned" himself into two of his previous
novels, those being Fifth Head of Cerberus and Peace.

Interestingly, Daniel Otto Jack Peterson has recently posted a link to a
review of
Peace which mentions its autobiographical mysteries and the self-awareness
of the
author as he creates the story and its characters.

FWIW, I first posted these ideas on this board a number of years ago, so
perhaps
there is a chance this is what you were looking for Michael?
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