the Epitome

Roy C. Lackey · 02 Apr 2005, 01:00 · from 2005-April.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sat Apr  2 01:00:27 2005
Subject: (urth) the Epitome
Message-ID: <001e01c53762$6875cb00$a53ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

Adam quoted Andrew and wrote:
>> Roy says inter alia:
>>
>>> As I've said earlier, the destruction of Urth was largely a
>>> symbolic
>>> punishment; symbolic because Urth was man's ancestral birthplace,
>>> and
>>> mankind was dispersed too far and wide in the galaxy (galaxies?)
>>> for the
>>> Hierogrammates to overcome entropy (135) and hit mankind all at
>>> once.
>>
>> I feel that "symbolic" and "punishment" must both be wrong,
>> somehow.
>
>Agreed. As I read it, the punishment was placing the black hole in the Sun,
>and the New Sun is the lifting of that punishment. Tzadkiel's words to
>Severian at the "trial," and Apheta's words afterwards, make no sense if
the
>coming of the New Sun is supposed to be a punishment.

We three seem to be in agreement that mankind was being punished. The
difference is in the interpretation of the punishment. You see the
punishment as being the wounding of the sun, and I agree. But the "lifting
of that punishment" by bringing the New Sun is precisely what brought about
"the destruction of Urth" that I mentioned. Had there been no black hole
placed in the sun, there would have been no need of a white fountain to fix
it.

>> It must be that Ushas is a necessary part of the Plan. And it must,
>>
>> somehow, be necessary for the victim to consent in the sacrfice, by
>>
>> the assent of Sev as Epitome.
>>
>> I don't claim to know from the text why this should be the case,
>> but if it isn't, I don't think the narrative makes any sense.
>
>Again, I agree.

I agree that Ushas is part of the "Plan" by the Hierogrammates to "shape us
now as they themselves were shaped; it is at once their repayment and their
revenge." (CITADEL, 242) The H's had the power, as I showed in an earlier
quote, to make new worlds and new suns. But they didn't do that. They went
through the rigmarole of sending in a white fountain and washing away Urth
as it was, to make a new beginning, such as happened in Noah's time.The act
was largely symbolic because only Urth would be destroyed, not the tens of
thousands of other worlds on which man resided. The Green Man was an
evolutionary stage of the Plan that would culminate in the H's themselves.

>> (Personally, I find the idea of one person exemplifying the whole,
>> and the idea of a Greater End requiring the death of multitudes, to
>>
>> be quite repellant.
>
>Once more, I agree.

Severian as Epitome is farcical. Most people on Urth would never even have
heard of him. He was groomed, from before birth, to mindlessly obey whomever
or whatever he was taught to regard as a higher authority than himself. When
all the moral and ethical squirming stops, that comes down to 'might makes
right'.

In the space of about six months, Sev went from a journeyman torturer raised
in an artificially insulated corner of the Citadel, where he was woefully
ignorant of just about everything on Urth, to Autarch of the Commonwealth.
The ten years he held that position before leaving for Yesod were spent on
busywork; nothing he did then mattered at all.

As for the "victim" consenting to the "sacrifice", well, yes. That brings me
back to that quote about the "death agonies of the world you know will be
offered to the Increate." I've said enough about that. And as I said on this
list years ago, it was an easy sacrifice for Sev, as Epitome, to make,
because he didn't make it. It cost him _nothing_. He got his face and his
leg fixed. His nascent godling powers were augmented. Oh, he may have felt
bad for an hour or two, about the mess he made on Urth and all the dead, but
he got over it. It must have been awful for him, sitting on the beach on
Ushas, writing his memoirs and watching the native girls adore him as a god
and wait on him hand and foot. Life is tough for a scapegoat.

Just as there was no real "trial", the fight with the sailors afterwards was
a charade, and for the same reason. Tzadkiel had already looked into the
future and seen that Sev would bring the New Sun. He could not die in that
fight if he was to bring the New Sun. Besides, Sev and Apheta had already
conceived the New Sun _before_ the mock trial or phony fight. It was already
on its way to Urth.

The H's had no need or desire for a sacrificial victim; they are not the
Increate. Their continued existence was not in jeopardy, no matter what
happened on Urth, because they lived in Yesod. That stuff I quoted in an
earlier post about "they shape us now as
they themselves were shaped; it is at once their repayment and their
revenge", is moot because _they already exist_. Unless they were just
getting their kicks by exacting "revenge" for wrongs done them in a dead
universe an unimaginable time ago, then they had no reason to be concerned
with Urth.

I know that Apheta says that the H's wanted Sev to succeed because that
strain of mankind born of Ushas might produce the Hieros, which would in
turn shape the H's in Briah. But that doesn't change the fact that the H's
already exist and live in Yesod. There is no practical point in endlessly
repeating what has already been done in universe after universe. That's
where the Increate comes in. They were doing his bidding. The goal was to
improve and transform mankind "by some minute step" in each cycle into
something nearer and dearer to the Increate, just as they themselves had
been transformed by mankind into a race that was "united, compassionate,
just." (CITADEL, 242)

-Roy

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