Typhon, Sev, Silk

Matthew Weber · 13 Mar 2003, 23:56 · from urth-v0303.mbox · original

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From: Matthew Weber <mweber at library.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Typhon, Sev, Silk
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 15:56:28 -0800
Message-ID: <urth-v0303-3079 at digest.urth.net>
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At 06:10 PM 3/13/03 +1100, you wrote:

>Perhaps Wolfe's point may be that men (even paragons like Severian) are
>bound by the evil choices of fallen humanity; and Christ's sacrifice was a
>unique act of compassion by God, not to be repeated. To be a Peter is the
>practicable summit of human aspiration. Or something.

I think this hits closer to the point:  however far Severian has come in=20
his Bildung, he has so far still to go!  If anything, including this kind=20
of episode so close to the end of the narrative emphasizes that Severian is=20
*not* intended to be a Christ-analogue.

>Maybe he would take a view that the important lessons for humanity in
>Christ's day were compassion & a degree of selflessness, qualities which I
>believe Wolfe in some interview rightly asserted as being  lacking in
>conventional ethics pre-Christ. Sev's society on the other hand is quite
>emphatically post-Christian, IMO: it is rough & tough, because of resource
>constraints, but moderated in many ways by something like a Christian ethi=
c.
>The Byzantine strand in the underpinning of the fictional world shows
>through: the society "feels" like Byzantium under one of the more
>enlightened, military emperors, not the hell-on-earth which was the
>pre-Christian Roman empire. Such a (potentially, partially) "redeemed" wor=
ld
>needs struggle against evil, more than a spectacular act of love like
>Christ's.

Well, there are justifications for this in Catholic and Reformed theology,=20
usually in terms of war or the state power as an ordination of=20
God.  Augustine had the just-war theory, and Luther took "render unto=20
Caesar" to mean that the secular power should be complied with even if what=20
it required was sinful when undertaken under a person's own volition (the=20
exception, of course, being when you had a religion to reform  ;)).  I'm=20
not all that familiar with the theology of violence, though, and I'll let=20
someone else address the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of Wolfe's putative views.

>But I find it easier to believe that Wolfe simply views active struggle
>against evil, where possible, as morally superior to passive resistance.
>Expressing that view in a story paralleling Christ's arrest & execution is
>the kind of thing which IMO lifts Wolfe out of his genre.

As I said above, my impression is that the parallel is there for the sake=20
of contrast.  And I do think it matters for whose interest the action is=20
undertaken:  e.g. it seems more in line with Christian morality to take up=20
arms to prevent someone else from being oppressed rather than in self-defen=
se.

>It also, of course, raises doubts about his orthodoxy. In 1st C Jerusalem,
>would he have been a Zealot, or a Christian?

The apostle Simon (Zealotes) was both.  I can't recall whether he was ever=20
really rebuked for his Zealotry.

Matthew Weber
Curatorial Assistant
Music Library
University of California, Berkeley

Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further:  and here shall thy proud waves=20
be stayed.
         The Holy Bible (The Old Testament):  _The Book of Job_, chapter=20
38, verse 11

--=20

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