Ymar

Gerry Quinn wrote: ?In BotNS, (unless you include Frog!) there is no

More than that:it seems actually inconsistent with some things in the text. In connection with the antechamber, we are told that before Ymar the autarch himself used to judge crimes committed in the grounds of the House Absolute. Malrubius says that Ymar was the last Autarch, before Severian's predecessor, to take the test. (Technically 'last' can include 'only', but it would be very deceptive. Possibly Malrubius is deceptive, but I see no reason for him to deceive about that.) Also, Typhon seems to be dated several chiliads earlier, by Severian's remark about the Conciliator, that he disappeared several chiliads ago, and by Cyriaca's story - I think she says that the book, which mentions Typhon, is itself several chiliads old. Also by the time it would take to shape all the mountains into figures of Autarchs. Ymar, I think, isn't dated in the text,but in an interview given at the time Wolfe put him just a chiliad before Severian - where in the now canonical dating Typhon seems to be as well, causing much confusion. Besides that, there's the fact that Ymar is a known historical figure, whereas Typhon is forgotten. ?I

I think it may be a bit more than that. Very likely, Wolfe already knew that Ymar had been a torturer, which is why he reformed the guild - thus prefiguring Severian's own life. Palaemon says two torturers had previously left the guild to take up appointments elsewhere; he himself turns out to be one; who is the other? Very possibly Ymar. But this is one of the things that is not made clear enough in BOTNS, and therefore Wolfe brings Ymar into Urth to clarify the matter.

Chronology of Urth seems to me extremely interesting. To add to our discussion some more elements/questions: Silk/Horn "spirits" travel to Urth when Severian is an apprentice. Apparently the interval between their visits on Urth is the same as on Blue, so they came the same year. First time, when they are with Rigoglio, they discuss how much time passed between the departure of Whorl and their visit. Rigoglio was put on the Whorl by Typhon, and the date may be very precise - it is the last year of Typhon rule. There is a traveler who says how much dead part of the city moves during one generation (about one block US sense). There is several leagues between the street where the house of Rigoglio stood and the fringe of Nessus. For the Whorl only 300 years passed, but we understand that it was relativistic "shrinking of time". So it is maybe several hundreds of generations, but not much more if the speed of the city fringe remained constant. Best Sergei

Very good points. I knew there was something wrong with Ymar being a contemporary of Typhon, but I couldn't put my finger on what exactly. - Gerry Quinn

You make a convincing argument that 'Spring Wind' makes a fine designation for 'March'. But not for Mars. Let me again stipulate the pattern set for the other characters from the ancestry of Romulus: * Early Summer = June = Juno [ding!] (Although this betrays a naivety in thinking Juno was originally a season, each name is a reasonable translation of either of the others.) * Bird of the Woods = Rhea Silvia (same thing) [ding!] * Spring Wind = March Winds = March = Mars [buzzer sound] The West wind 'Zephyr' blows in the Spring but he is not equivalent to Mars. That's not even a flat note. It's like a duck quacking in the middle of the Moonlight Sonata.

What's deceptive about that? 'Last' can mean 'at the end of a chain' but it also means merely 'just previously'. For instance, if there were fire in our workplace and I said 'The last time there was a fire in this office..." it is unlikely you would PRESUME that I meant the last of a series of fires. Even when I first read this, I don't recall drawing the implication that you do here.

I wonder whether anyone but Mantis has seen that interview, but I'll accept his reading. Considering the consternation caused the discrepancies between Wolfe's statement (treated as canonical by Lexicon Urthus) and the text of SotL/UotNS, it would have been interesting if someone had asked him how long ago Typhon lived. But what's done is done. At least we agree there is no conflict in the TEXT. Severian doesn't know how long ago the Conciliator lived (that's evident from his answer to Typhon), but there is no reason to believe he knows how long ago Ymar lived either. Everything before Ymar seems to be a mystery to Severian who is barely a man. He doesn't display a lot of knowledge about any autarchs AFTER Ymar either. What struck me as most unlikely was that Typhon would be forgotten at all considering he was the ruler over the Commonwealth (and the rest of the planet) at the time of the Conciliator. And again this might speak of Severian's lack of religious instruction (the equivalent of not knowing who Herod Antipas was). Based positive evidence (that is, evidence we have rather than evidence we think we should have), it seems that after the Commonwealth was formed and the alien powers divided up the rest of the world, nobody received much instruction in what came before. That there are lots of mountain carved? It took six years to carve Mount Rushmore using 1930s technology. Honestly, having Severian encounter Ymar in Typhon's time never caused me to blink an eye, but then I wasn't aware of the interview at the time either. Still, reading the story of Frog with my more recent interpretation, I probably would have expected Ymar to appear well-after Typhon's time since he and Fish floated down a 'stream'. On the other hand...hmmmm. Checking my copy of LU v2, I see that Mantis also considers Frog to be an historical figure although we disagree about when he lived. J.

The chronology based on the Rajan's spirit-travel is pretty dicey. The Rajan is a Time traveler, and if you consider pay attention to when Horn left home, and how long ago Hoof and Hide left, it is clear that the Rajan has been jumping around alot.

I find the chronology overall very confusing but I'm certain it is just as GW intended it, because he didn't have any gun to his head not to make it correct. - Ymar both sounds and doesn't sound like the first autarch - though just as Typhon refers to himself as autarch, commonwealthers may have applied the term to any earlier ruler. - Typhon shouldn't have been forgotten, even if his rise and fall were meteoric - cf Alexander -, could memory of him have been deliberately suppressed? And yet they'd leave him around in his mountain? - How come Cilinia's remains are still in order after so much time, be it a thousand years or 2k? - How come Scylla sounds so childish in comparison to Tartaros if she was older and they were scanned at the same time? These and many more could all be GW's inconsistencies, but why would he be inconsistent when it would cost him nothing not to be? No, I don't think he would introduce brutal incoherence into latter works just because it would be cool to have this or that episode happen. And I don't find the 'it's all different universes' theory satisfying.

I certainly don't like a "multi-verse" explanation for inconsistencies either. But given the Ymar-Typhon inconsistencies and some other stuff, I'm guessing Wolfe was willing to put an inconsistency or two into the story if the narrative gain was deemed sufficient. Who really understands the twists and turns of time travel anyway? I admit that mapping timelines is of far less interest to me than to many other Wolfe fans. To borrow a Gerry line, I'd rather just read the story Gene Wolfe wrote. But I am glad some people take the trouble to do it. It can be helpful. But I am willing to accept that some story elements won't jibe perfectly with others.

As the girl with snake-arms on the ship in RttW? Or when Scylla possesses Chenille in LotLS? I think in Chenille she sounds like a haughty young woman, roughly of Chenille's age. She certainly doesn't sound as young as Cilinia to me. Tartaros does sound older, wiser and world-weary. Maybe, even in scanned form, he has experienced more pain and sorrow than Scylla. Perhaps one can mature as a computer program? I think somewhere it is mentioned that Scylla had her own planet to rule before being put into Mainframe. Then we have the monstrous view of Great Scylla at the end of RttW. Typhon's family is clearly not (like Mr. Million) destroyed by the process of scanning. Cilinia may have died as a child but parts of her seem to have lived on to pursue different futures on the Whorl and on Urth.

The incoherence of introducing Ymar is not all that brutal if one does not try to closely analyse the story as a realistic history. Perhaps Wolfe underestimated how hard readers would pluck at the threads. The Ymar episode is a cool story, and it may be that Wolfe thought its coolness would outweigh the questions raised by the quick succession of Ymar. Or perhaps he felt that the rapid succession of Ymar was plausible. After all, it might not have been all that rapid. Perhaps Ymar only attained the Autarchy in his fifties, after decades of chaos.

By that line I did not mean to mock your intelligence. But ideas like "Ceryx is Inire" do read to me like notions that are transplanted from some completely other book. Ceryx is a clearly human necromancer who appears briefly to challenge Severian the Conciliator in UotNS. At the end of the chapter he appears in, he is killed by a mob. Inire is a clearly alien vizier who works for many autarchs including Severian at a later time; he is overtly present only in BotNS and while he presumably knows many magics/technologies, he is not observed to delve in necromancy. When Wolfe wrote Inire, we can be certain that Ceryx was not in his mind, or it would truly have been a different book! Really, an idea like this needs a lot of justification. Instead, it comes in the very next paragraph after a theory that the Cumaean is Ymar's never-mentioned twin sister is refuted!

That is a strange point about Scylla, certainly. In her Window she appears as a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, and Tartaros tells us that the gods appear to us as they see themselves. I lean to the view that Tartaros matured, while Scylla did not, before or after scanning, or both. I don't see why one should not mature as a computer program. Most of Wolfe's computerised people are embodied in humanoid androids of some kind, and I think there is considerable evidence that they are similar to people in most ways including the ability to change. It is probably more difficult for disembodied programs, and also for god-like rulers, and Scylla and Tartaros were both - but I would not say it is impossible. - Gerry Quinn

Ymar had contacts with Yesod and hierogrammates - he could very well be taken forward in time before he become an autarch? Or after his visit to Yesod? As to Typhon - he was a ruler of the whole Urth, and the last who ruled it all. Even if it was called Commonwealth, it was another state. He was overthrown in a mass rebellion. If we take the empires in our own recent past - destroyed by social movements, revolutions etc. - and new states born, seldom the history of the Empire is studied, rather rejected (except maybe in the state that feels itself its successor). Take British Empire, queen Victoria and India. Or Austro-Hungarian Empire - its history is studied in Austria but not much by Tcheks or Hungarians. Who was their last Emperor? Do you remember? Best Sergei

I think the problem is Wolfe's answer to the Ymar date question in an interview. I suspect he was probably too flippant in giving an answer. I doubt he had thought carefully how long it had been since Typhon/Ymar autarch (just as --over time, based on interview answers-- the length of Time between Severian and Neil Armstrong adjusted in his mind). Additionally, we must remember that no one here (who has said so) has seen the text of that interview in question. If Mantis has a copy of the Thrust issue in question, he has never posted the precise context. He might have been working from memory himself.

I presumed this was true. And the story of Frog certainly leaves that open. Certainly there is a tribulation period between Typhon's 'death' and Ymar's rise from the Guild. He's too young otherwise when Severian meets him, and he has yet done all the things in the Story of Frog.

Right (mostly). As Kypris-in-Chenille said, every time a Whorl god possesses a person and is reincorporated, it takes with it something from that person. The gods we meet are Typhon's family after centuries of this process. We assume that as a person "matures" they become nicer and wiser. Sometimes this happens but often (maybe usually) they become more extended versions of themselves. And who the gods are inclined to possess will determine their evolution as well. I've mentioned before that during a Wolfe Q&A panel someone said "After all, Typhon was sort of on the Whorl as Pas..." Wolfe quickly jumped in to correct him, "No! Typhon was on the Whorl as Pas." In Wolfe's mind, these scans of their personalities are duplicates of the originals -- even if, after tinkering and Time, they change in different ways. As, in the Gaiman novel 'American Gods', Norway Odin told Shadow about American Odin "He was me, but I am not him." J.

I'm really not sure if there exists a more succinct summarization of the legend of Wolfe than in the above quotation. I also bet you would get an agreement from Mr. Wolfe himself on this point. Thanks, Gerry. ...ryan

Rudolf?

Charles I (/Karl Franz Joseph Ludwig Hubert Georg Otto Marie von Habsburg-Lothringen/, English <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language>: /Charles Francis Joseph Louis Hubert George Otto Mary of Habsburg-Lorraine/, /Hungarian/: IV. K?roly or /K?roly Ferenc J?zsef/, /Italian/: Carlo Francesco Ludovico Giorgio Ottone Maria d'Asburgo Lorena, Polish <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language>: /Karol Franciszek J?zef Ludwik Hubert Jerzy Otto Maria Habsbursko-Lotary?ski/, Ukrainian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_language>: /???? ? ????? ?????/) (17 August 1887 — 1 April 1922) was (among other titles) the last ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary>. Sergei

No dia 26/05/2011, ?s 16:45, Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com> escreveu:

I don't like it. I think it's true, but that it applies to more contrived speculation. Then the problem is that each one will have their idea of what's contrived, rightfully or not.

Right on - "autarch" is understood to mean the ruler in charge of a nation - so it gets used for any number of nation rulers, who weren't necessarily THE Autarch, or called themselves that at the time. Like the current interchangeability of king and pharaoh.

It was a pretty remote mountain, and the giant robots still animate in Severian's day may have kept people at a respectful distance in earlier, livelier centuries. By the time of their decrepitude, it was just one more carved mountain among many.

2011/5/26 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>:

"I do not like it. There are too many notes."

Good heavens, no. Everybody knows it was Karl. But we're not talking about the ephemeral last ruler of a long standing empire. We're talking about a major conqueror who founded an ephemeral empire. No dia 26/05/2011, ?s 16:56, DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net> escreveu:

I'm not sure why June is OK for Juno, but March is not OK for Mars. (We're asking what a redactor of the myth might think. What associations the name might have outside the story, what symbolic value Wolfe might give it, is another question.) Regarding the evidence of dates: every bit of it can be answered. Severian may be wrong about the date of the Conciliator. Cyriaca may be wrong about the book - she's certainly wrong about some things. (I was wrong, in any case, to say she says the book was several chiliads old; she says no one has looked at it for a chiliad, though that implies it's considerably earlier than that.) A lot of early autarchs may have had short reigns, which allowed the mountains to be carved quickly. (It's the number of autarchs, rather than the time it takes to carve a mountain, which is the problem.) Thus, Wolfe was able to make Typhon just a chiliad earlier without direct contradiction - its not as if he had made Typhon say 'I was born five thousand eight hundred and forty-three years ago'. But a lot of people get the feel of a much earlier Typhon - all the bits of evidence seem naturally to point to it. and are confused when, in Short Sun, the gap seems to be much shorter. There are, I think, two relevant interviews - one from the time of BOTNS which just makes Ymar a chiliad earlier; the other a later one which makes Typhon a chiliad earlier. The second seems to contradict the most natural reading of BOTNS, and suggests that Wolfe has adjusted his timeline at some point. I suggest that part of that adjustment was to make Typhon and Ymar contemporaries, when they hadn't been before.

Is that relevant, though? The gap the characters are trying to determine is between Rigoglio's departure (Typhon's time) and his return (Severian's time) - both on Urth. What the Rajan's home time is, on Blue, is another issue.

That Tartaros was an adult when he was scanned is suggested by one thing; at Silk's second enlightenment one of his visions is 'a blind god metamorphosised from a blind man [not boy], who remained a blind man, and was struck'. Is it obvious that everyone was scanned at the same time? Preesumably it took some time to load the Whorl, both with humans and with computerised beings. Pas was certainly scanned right at the end - so, therefore, was Kypris, as she was with him at the time, and remembers it. But others may have been scanned earlier.

No dia 26/05/2011, ?s 20:48, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com> escreveu:

And which wasn't at all needed. That's why I find it strange that GW would do violence to his chronology. I like Sergei's idea that Ymar may have been autarch centuries after he was born. Or Ymar the first autarch may not have been Ymar the Almost Just, why should the latter need such a qualifier?

I think so too, but JW liked the opportunity to defend his theory as fact.

No dia 26/05/2011, ?s 20:57, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com> escreveu:

It's the part where someone suggested a year of the whorl, in which all that plus typhon's downfall would have happened.

Well, lots of people have thought, for reasons quite independent of Ymar, that something has changed at some point between New Sun (the original quartet) and Short Sun - and of course there was never a detailed chronology; it may not be so much a matter of positively changing as of making definite things that were previously indefinite.

I think they are the same, because Severian says to Reechy/Ymar 'rule justly, or at least as justly as ciicumstances permit'.

Can you remember where that comes? One thing that puzzles me is where the landers travelling to the Whorl left from. You might expect that they - at least the ones from the 'Commonwealth' area - would leave from the spaceport of Nessus. Yet we know that by the last year of Typhon's reign that had been closed, and turned into a Citadel.

I meant readers suggested it, not the books.

Then they left before that :) I suppose the Whorl took years to be peopled.

Well, if someone could come up with an integrated chronology for all of Gerry Anderson's stuff, it stands to reason that it will be very difficult to prove anything about the evolution of GW's conception of the Sun universe. I don't find it strange that SS is different from LS and both very different from NS, I'd just like to understand why, though there may be no ultimate reason for it.

Good point, but then again Severian's not omniscient either.