Five Severians - Severian-as-clone

David Stockhoff · 19 Dec 2013, 02:10 · from 2013-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 21:10:44 -0500
Subject: (urth) Five Severians - Severian-as-clone
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On 12/18/2013 6:36 PM, Michael Thayer wrote:
>
> Reread the first and second mausoleum scenes (Shadow, 12-13, 21-22). 
> The passages are pregnant with the concept of time. The door was 
> sprung "long ago," and remains "eternally ajar," and "a moment 
> suffices to describe these things, which I watched for so long," 
> "decades" wouldn't be long enough to write of them, the first thought 
> that obsesses Severian while in the mausoleum is that "at some 
> not-distant time, time itself would stop," and there is little to 
> watch "in the sleepy hours around noon." Shadow 12-13. And again, when 
> he returns to hide his coin, Sev travels over "aged grass" and feels 
> "a proximity in time" regarding the truth of imagined enemies. Shadow 
> 21-22.  Far from conclusive, but these passages perhaps provide some 
> textual support for linking the mausoleum, thematically at least, to 
> the concept of time.

Thematically, yes. Some of those lines suggest merely great age and 
stasis, while others do hint of something more. But he did spend many 
hours there, and the "first thought" about time ending was a thought 
about himself. The mausoleum is the nexus of the various Severians, and 
it is he himself he might see if he looks over his shoulder.

Same for the meeting with Valeria. It is after all the Atrium of Time. 
The dials suggest many different times, not just great age, as though it 
also is a nexus.

Two tangential observations:

(1) Atrium and mausoleum: Eata believes himself to be related to a 
famous family and

Eata, believing himself descended of that family, drew the arms of one 
of the great northern clans on the ceiling above his cot in the year of 
which I speak.


When Severian meets Valeria, she serves him mate, a northern drink IIRC.

(2) The White Fountain and Green: The "second thought" is

The second was that there existed somewhere a miraculous light-which I

sometimes conceived of as a candle, sometimes as a flambeau---that 
engendered

life in whatever objects it fell upon, so that a leaf plucked from a 
bush grew

slender legs and waving feelers, and a rough brown brush opened black 
eyes and

scurried up a tree.


or is this something else? a more generic idea of paradise?
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