(urth) Close Reading: Torturer Chapter II: Severian

[Bruce Hayles]

Severian adopts the fountain, ship volant, and rose as his devices. A couple
of pages ago we were told that
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are
their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges."
The fountain is the New Sun, the ship the Tzadkiel's ship, and the rose new
life on Urth (I think someone has suggested that is love also, or instead).
Severian obsesses about two things
"The first was that at some not-distant time, time itself would stop ... The
second was that there existed somewhere in a miraculous light... that
engendered life in whatever objects it fell upon..."
Why is Severian thinking these things? Obviously this foreshadows what will
happen later, but are we also being told something about the power of
symbols again--that Severian was shaped by the tomb that bore his face? If
so, we were clearly misdirected earlier. The focus is put on Severian's
tying himself to Vodalus when Severian talks about the coin Vodalus gave
him. We are told that symbols shape things, but can Vodalus really be
compared in magnitude to the ship volant, the fountain, and the rose? Yet
Severian directs our attention to Vodalus, not the ship volant, fountain,
and rose. Does Severian see the connection between the symbols graven on his
tomb and what he would later do? It certainly seems Wolfe is at least trying
to tell us they are important, because he gives us the symbol speech. If all
Wolfe wanted us to do was think Vodalus in responsible part for the person
Severian became, is the symbol speech actually necessary? We all know enough
Pop Psychology that we could draw that rather shallow indirect connection.
It seems instead that Wolfe is giving us a rule, and that we can use that
rule to derive the influence of the ship volant, the fountain, and the rose,
despite the fact that Severian does not emphasize them whatsoever. If this
is so, Wolfe is an amazing teacher: he shows Severian instructing us on the
power of symbols yet simultaneously being blind to them (making their power
all the more evident).

On 9/9/06, JWillard <aldenweer at charter.net> wrote:
>
> Paragraph #3: "That first recollection is of piling pebbles in the Old
> Yard."  Casual comment, or something more?  My mind traveled to Sev
> being overwhelmed by the Sand Garden (XIX), and his comment, ""I felt I
> belonged there," I said.  "That I was to meet someone ... and that a
> certain woman was there, nearby, but concealed from sight.""  Don't
> know; probably nothing.
>
> #4: "... they seldom had much stomach for expelling us from our lurking
> places in the cypress groves."  Robert Graves talks about the cypress in
> The White Goddess:  "Thus as the tree of Sunday, succeeding the alder of
> Saturday, it symbolized resurrection in the Orphic mysteries, the escape
> of the Sun-hero from Calypso's alder-girt island, and became attached to
> the cult of the Celestial Hercules.  Cypress is still the prime
> resurrection symbol in Mediterranean church-yards."  Are all the
> torturers being groomed as potential new suns?  And how much of the
> Hercules cult is explored in BotNS: Palaemon is a link to Hercules and
> the White Goddess.
>
> #5: Does the layout of where the different social strata are buried help
> us anywhere else?
>
> #6: "...observing how cruel the women were and how often they exceeded
> the punishments he had decreed..."  Is Wolfe in agreement with Severian
> and Ymar, or is this misogynous comment specific to his characters?
>
> #8: What "great northern clan" does Eata believe he belongs to?
>
> #9:  Crucial paragraph, but I have no new observations.
>
> #10:  I'm stupid: Is the giant fox a lion?  I puzzled over this
> paragraph.  It seems so simple, but it nags at me.  Then the line in #11
> nags me more:  "The decades of a saros would not be long enough for me
> to write all they meant to the ragged apprentice boy I was."  Is this a
> pointer disguised as reminescence?  Is there importance in the
> procession/order of animals mentioned?  (Lion (?), snake, hawk.)  Is
> there some astrological significance here?
>
> #11:  "The second ..." Does the white fountain do more than resurrect?
> Any odd critters out there other than Hethor's?
>
> #14:  Once again, torturers have a disturbing idea of fun, don't they?
>
> #20 and 27:  Two comments specific to Eata:  "Eata guessed, I think -
> before they come too near to being men, boys often have an almost female
> insight," and after Sev's drowning, "I ... thought that some defect in
> my own vision was multiplying Eata's eyes."  Are we meant to think
> something about Eata?
>
> #25:  Why a spoon?  Why?
>
> #26:  Is he in Thecla's cell?  Mother's cell?
>
> #12, 21, 27:  What is it with hair in this chapter?
>
> Dialogue after #28: "Someone in the crowd said, "He shot right out of
> the water!""  It's almost as if Severian *himself* is excalibur in this
> image.
> Someone who's read this recently:  Why does the boatman (Charonus?) have
> "tar-stained clothes"?  I'm sure it's something obvious.
> ""No, no," Roche told him, "There are no women in our guild.""  This
> fact is given special emphasis in this chapter, bookended by the earlier
> reference to Ymar and Roche's response here.
>
> Last paragraph:   "Night atop the khan"  Last chapter we had one mention
> of Erebus; here one of Night.
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