Typhon's Confidence (plus some other questions)

Marc Aramini · 31 Jan 2014, 16:57 · from 2014-January.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 09:57:23 -0700
Subject: (urth) Typhon's Confidence (plus some other questions)
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I have always felt that the symbols in New Sun were a bit more shifty than in some of his other work - Severian's ironic thoughts of the conciliator at a costume party, healing of the sick, stumbling three times in the cataract at Thrax from the weight of the sword as he heals, the Typhon temptation running almost line by line with the temptation in the wild, ... And yet sev not even being the one put on trial, not actually saving pretty much everyone we meet in the narrative but instead somehow contributing to their watery demise. The coin of Vodalus being fake, with all it import and weight, has always disturbed me - since it resonated as a symbol of the sun- why fake? more than just trust in vodalus' path being false faith, i think. The hell green turned into really does make a lot of that conciliator talk seem like conscious rhetoric on Sev's part meant to seem unconscious - a ruler insinuating but never stating divinity (in the first four volumes, anyway)

The biggest surprise to me on the first read was that the conciliator was not actually contiguous with Christ, because the rhetoric in shadow certainly suggested it- the texts Severian looks over as a young man with their saints and halos clearly catholic or orthodox in nature. 

 Certainly Christ shows up in Silk's "enlightenment", though (which I think ultimately has a physical cause and is once again a man imitating another divinity and in so doing serving It)The voice of the outsider can speak through another man's voice, or through a man and his lover as he sets up his heir to follow out a plan that ultimately will not come to fruition as he (typhon/pas) intended. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 31, 2014, at 9:26 AM, "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 8:37 PM, Darrell Burgan <darrell.burgan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I know Severian is broadly considered to be a Christ figure, but to me that symbolism goes only so far. Severian is also capable of acts of considerable violence and other deplorable acts, things that the Christ would never do.
> 
> "We say Jesus was a carpenter, but the only thing we are told he actually made was a whip."
> --Gene Wolfe
>  
>> Ironically I find Silk to be much more of a Christlike figure in that regard.
> Silk is more of a Moses figure... 
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