Five Severians - Severian-as-Clone

David Stockhoff · 20 Dec 2013, 13:19 · from 2013-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 08:19:35 -0500
Subject: (urth) Five Severians - Severian-as-Clone
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On 12/19/2013 11:39 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
> No dia 19/12/2013, ?s 13:47, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> escreveu:
>
>> But where the Atrium is reached by traveling through an underworld, increasing the sense of temporal isolation, the mausoleum is a place Severian visits almost daily that seems well connected to the world by seasons and wildlife. It has a mood of sleepy stasis to it, but then it's Severian's "spirit home" in a way, where he has nothing to do but watch and wait. And of course he remembers everything he ever saw there.
>>
>> The necropolis is after all guarded, though we see how poorly against a determined attack.
> Yet, am I mistaken or no one else, besides Sev, ever drops by the mausoleum? Does any other character show any sign of knowing that the place even exists?
>   
>

I don't think so, but that is after all part of the attraction. There is 
certainly a subtext going on, but it's already been identified, more or 
less.

Since he uses no special "key" (i.e., no secret passage or spell or 
trick) to get in, if only he has access then he himself is the key, 
which would make Severian himself as magical as the hidden mausoleum. 
It's possible that only he can see it, but
(a) there's no indication of or ready explanation for this, nor does 
anything like it ever happen again (though he is often visited by people 
no one else sees, but then he is always alone when this happens)
(b) the wildlife find it easily enough
(c) the Necropolis is a vast, ruined place where no one goes except 
apprentices, grave robbers, and funeral parties.
Finally, there would be no purpose to it. The *plot *doesn't need 
Severian there alive, nor does it need the mausoleum to be a secret. We 
don't know how dead Severians get there anyway (or live clones get in or 
out) and this theory doesn't explain that.

Again, all Severians could be eidolons with no real physical 
limitations. But then the mausoleum itself becomes merely the dream of a 
ghost, and doesn't need time dislocation to rationalize its minor features.

Another point that just occurred to me. We do need to follow Occam's 
Razor. Therefore,
---Any theory that proposes something as complicated as, say, a 
laboratory hidden in time that has cloning and mind-control technology 
and that grows and programs cloned puppets to insert them into 
manipulated time streams is just too complicated.
---A coffin-corpse mausoleum theory only needs to explain how corpses 
get in. A clone-storage mausoleum theory needs to explain not only how 
they got in, but how they will get out. And besides, any mechanism that 
could do both probably would not need clone storage in the first place.
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