Malrubius' ghost

Chris · 18 Jul 2003, 21:42 · from urth-v0307.mbox · original

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From: "Chris" <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Malrubius' ghost
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 21:42:18 +0000
Message-ID: <urth-v0307-3696 at digest.urth.net>
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Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Palaemon would have been used in its=20
place. I suppose what I'm saying is that one's affection for a "favorite"=20
tends to be at the expense of that favorite's peers, and you can be more=20
indifferent to the "2nd best teacher" than to a particularly interesting=20
stranger. Not stating that as a rule, but it's true often enough and I had=20
thought (perhaps incorrectly) that I had picked up some genuine indifferenc=
e=20
on Sev's part toward Malrubius (the living one that is).

The last paragraph is definitely an interesting thought. Although, with=20
Valeria, you can somehow see her importance to him through his omissions=20
even at the beginning; I did not notice anything similar with Malrubius, bu=
t=20
that could just be a failure of my reading. But in general, your statement=20
about Sev's silence about things close to his core brings some comparisons=20
to mind. You have Valeria, who you find out very little about. Then there i=
s=20
Thecla, who you hear a good deal about, though Severian seems most=20
comfortable speaking of generalities and is very grudging when it comes to=20
details. And just to set the opposite end of the scale you have Agia, who=20
Sev is very open about nearly from the beginning- does he wax poetic about=20
her from his very first description, or is that an error in my memory? You=20
could throw Dorcas into the mix as well. Where do each of these people stan=
d=20
in relation to his core?

But this is a discussion unto itself.

>Now hang on, there: the unalterable reason why Malrubius was chosen over
>Palaemon is the fact that Malrubius is already dead, in the timeframe, and
>a logical candidate for a ghost is needed.  Palaemon is not even a
>candidate.
>
>The ghost is to Severian as a fairy godfather is to a hero.
>
>Not to defend the old "Malrubius is the basis of the ghost" line, but
>still, there was a certain poignancy in the notion that a person who wasn't
>so influential when alive would be a source of wisdom after his death.
>That magical thinking wish that unknown ancestors would give us hints about
>the silly world around us: the more prosaic understanding about how the
>dead communicate to us through their words and actions in the past, whether
>we lived through that timeframe and did not perceive their wisdom at the
>time, or whether we were born long afterward.
>
>Another thing is this: the closer in one gets toward Severian's core, the
>more silent he becomes.  We know next to nothing about Valeria, yet he says
>he has written too much!  So in this light it would make perfect sense that
>Malrubius was important enough to have little written about him.
>
>=3Dmantis=3D
>
>
>
>--

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