Conditional Concession to Lee

Lee · 10 Sep 2014, 14:12 · from 2014-September.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee)
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 10:12:04 -0400
Subject: (urth) Conditional Concession to Lee
Message-ID: <BLU175-W18E34FF96AC86139764DF3CFCF0 at phx.gbl>

>Marc Aramini:  Rudesind at one point says that he was "supposed" to 

>tell Severian something but then messes it up.


Yes, he tells Severian he is there to clean Father Inire's painting

but then he remembers that he was supposed to tell Severian about

his own childhood and how there is a painting of him as a child by 

Fechin that he hopes to clean.


The fact that Wolfe bothers to have Rudesind  innocuously correct 

himself is (for me) a signpost that there is a mystery to be

solved here. It is a tough one, but I think the answer lies in some

subtle hints that the Fechin painting of Rudesind as a boy is a 

self-portrait.


>From this I deduce that Rudesind and Fechin are the same person. And from

the twisted, bent, monkey-like appearance I deduce that Rudesind and

Father Inire are, in some sense, the same person.


Similar sorts of clues lead me to the conclusion that The Old Boatman is

also an iteration of Inire. He is small, old and bent. And he says he was

there when Father Inire planted averns in the Lake of Birds. He was indeed.


Dorcas was a young teen when the Old Boatman married her, another clue 

associating him with Father Inire. Consider also how closely the speech

of Rudesind and The Old Boatman match.



>I don't mind the ape associations with Inire at all (how else to describe 

>all those apes just hanging around in weird places?), but geez associating 

>other characters with Inire always rubbed me the wrong way ... even if they

>were described as ape-like.


Marc, in another thread you debated that in a Wolfe work, one word is able 

to completely turn the story on its head and allow it to be seen from a 

completely different perspective. I wouldn't expect such a long-term, 

extremely well-versed Wolfe fan such as yourself to change your views, but

I do think there is one word which does that for BotNS. Coincidentally (or

perhaps not) that word is found in the very Severian-Rudesind conversation

you cite above. 


It refers to the gathering of nobility and aliens, artists and sexual 

revellers at the House Absolute where Dr. Talos' troop is performing. The

word is "thiasus". It is similar to "bacchanal" but it specifically refers to:


>In Greek mythology[1] and religion, the thiasus (Greek thiasos), was the ecstatic

>retinue of Dionysus, often pictured as inebriated revelers. Many of the myths of

>Dionysus are connected with his arrival in the form of a procession. The grandest

>such version was his triumphant return from "India", which influenced symbolic

>conceptions of the Roman triumph and was narrated in rapturous detail in Nonnus'

>Dionysiaca. 


Given that Nonnus' Dionysaica specifically refers to Pan's ability to multiply 

himself, is it such a stretch to consider that the word "thiasus" is a hint that 

Father Inire is a similar sort of being able to accomplish a similar trick?


FWIW, another likely Dionysian/Pan hint is The Green Man:


>Roman architecture sometimes features ornate leaf masks, which are usually taken as showing the close>interdependence between man and nature, and as describing the deities of Pan, Bacchus, Dionysus or>Silvanus, and the mystery religions that grew up around them. A leaf-clad statue of Dionysus in>Naples, Italy, dating back to about 420 BCE, is often considered one of the first Green Men images


>Superficially the Green Man would appear to be pagan, perhaps a fertility figure or a nature spirit,>similar to the woodwose (the wild man of the woods), and yet he frequently appears, carved in wood or>stone, in churches, chapels, abbeys and cathedrals, where examples can be found dating through to the>20th century. The earliest example of a green man disgorging vegetation from his mouth is from St.>Abre, in St. Hilaire-le-grand, c 400 AD.[7]


>To the modern observer the earlier (Romanesque and medieval) carvings often have an unnervingly eerie>or numinous quality.[according to whom?] This is sometimes said[by whom?] to indicate the vitality of the>Green Man, who was able to survive as a symbol of pre-Christian traditions despite, and at the same>time complementary to, the influence of Christianity: rather than alienate their new converts, early>Christian missionaries would often adopt and adapt local gods, sometimes turning them into saints.[8]



http://www.greenmanenigma.com/history.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man

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