stealing apu punchau

Lisa Schaffer-Doggett · 06 Jul 2003, 20:32 · from urth-v0307.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: Lisa Schaffer-Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) stealing apu punchau
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 13:32:43 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0307-3571 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0307/3571.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Saturday, July 5, 2003, at 08:19 PM, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:

>
> Because I have a hard time envisioning the Claw as either a dumb=20
> object or
> as a mere "focus" for Severian's current/latent power, I tend to think
> (insist) that the Claw is the (hologramic, fragmentary; blood magic)
> presence of the "first Severian" that Severian is referring to in the
> passage: that is, the first Severian who, I believe we are told, did=20
> =3Dnot=3D
> possess the Claw.
>
> In this manner, by granting/denying miraculous powers at various=20
> junctures
> (revive this dead, fail to revive that one; cast a light now; etc.),=20
> the
> first Severian becomes, in part, author of the Severian we see.  Or
> semi-puppetmaster.
>
> =3Dmantis=3D
>

Don repies, and then replies,

I agree with this in general.  Regardless of whether Ymar is the first=20
Severian (and I am unshakeable in my own belief in this) the original=20
"Severian" and his timeline were not eradicated by the coming of the=20
second Severian (or umpteenth "Severian" imho).  His tomb exists and=20
he's in it.  He lived and he died in the same universe as our Severian=20
who has his own separate memorial and who doesn't "die" in the sense=20
that someone finds his body and puts it in a tomb.  He dies and becomes=20
an eidolon of the New Sun but it's still essentially our Severian.  I=20
think that Wolfe intentionally (and brilliantly) confused this issue by=20
having Severian (ours) say "I am not the first Severian."  There is no=20
reason at all that the first "Severian" need go by that name any more=20
than the Second Coming of the Messiah be named Jesus, Joseph, Joshua or=20
whatever.  "A rose by any other name. . ."  Which leads me to wonder if=20
the rose on the Mausoleum is a bit of a pun.  Probably not.  As I've=20
said before, I think there are a lot of "Severians" out there, little=20
Severian, the Mandragora, Palaemon, Ouen, and who knows how many others.

--=20

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net