Five Severians - Severian-as-Clone

Michael Thayer · 19 Dec 2013, 03:33 · from 2013-December.txt.gz

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From: michael.o.thayer at gmail.com (Michael Thayer)
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 22:33:30 -0500
Subject: (urth) Five Severians - Severian-as-Clone
Message-ID: <CAHS3GWe0v5uRgVJzdf9HXnEc66Kpr_mCDYc3CHhLEVzGdf_pyw at mail.gmail.com>

>David Stockhoff:  The mausoleum is the nexus of the various Severians, and
it is he himself he might see if he looks over his shoulder.

I don't disagree with this statement at all (in fact I'm very fond of it),
and I certainly think you and I are on the same page (and not just
literally page 12 of Shadow!) -- but isn't it a bit fuzzy?  In what way --
in terms of plot mechanics -- is the mausoleum the nexus of the various
Severians?

The assumption behind the statement is that there are five various
Severians, one for each coffin, right?  But surely these various instances
of Severian do not walk the same time-strand/universe.  Instead, they exist
in alternate time-strands/parallel universes.  We know this, textually,
because we are expressly informed of at least two such alternate/parallel
Severians --  "then those who walk the corridors walked back to the time
[the first Severian] was young, and my own story . . . began" Citadel, 406.
 The mausoleum suggests strongly that there are five such Severians (we are
told of two of the five (Citadel 406), just as we are told two of the five
coffins are open/empty (Shadow 12)).  But why would the mausoleum in the
second/narrator Severian's necropolis house the five coffins for five
alternate/parallel Severians if four of the five Severians do not exist in
his universe/time-strand?  Given the two alternate time-strand Severians we
are told of, the two of five open coffins in Severian's mausoleum, the
Botanical Gardens, Master Ash's Last House, and the numerous references to
time in the mausoleum scenes (Shadow 12-13, 21-22), I think we should
seriously consider the possibility that the mausoleum is dislocated in time
and may be entered from all five alternate universes.  I don't know if you
meant it this literally, but, as you say, "the mausoleum is the nexus of
the various Severians."
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