(urth) the Epitome

[Adam Stephanides]

on 4/2/05 3:00 AM, Roy C. Lackey at rclackey at stic.net wrote:

> 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.

For that matter, the destruction of Urth doesn't cost the aquastors who
fought with Severian anything, since they only exist inside Severian's head.
There are only two real people who fight for the New Sun, and one of these
has been indoctrinated from childhood to make this decision, as you pointed
out.

> 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.

I'm not sure this is quite accurate. I know Tzadkiel at the trial talks as
if Sev's success is certain; but later Apheta says that Tzadkiel "had
examined the future and _found the chance high_ that you would bring a fresh
sun to your Urth" (160; emphasis mine); and the mini-Tzadkiel by the brook
tells Sev "you _have_ not failed. You could have on the ship and later; but
you couldn't die before the test, nor can you now, until your task is
accomplished." (284; emphasis Wolfe's) The implication is that he could have
indeed died during the test.

> 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)

Apheta says: "Your [Gunnie's] race and ours are, perhaps, no more than each
other's reproductive mechanisms. You are a woman, and so you say you produce
your ovum so that there will someday be another woman. But your ovum would
say it produces that woman so that someday there will be another ovum. We
have wanted the New Sun to succeed as badly as he [Sev] has wanted to
himself. More urgently, in all truth. In saving your race he has saved ours;
as we have saved ours of the future by saving yours." (UotNS, 159-60) This
is after the New Sun's coming has been determined, so there is no reason why
she would lie. The most straightforward interpretation of this is that the
Ushas's strain of humanity will produce the "next generation" of
Hierogrammates. Earlier, iirc, you argued that this can't be true, because
the Hierogrammates, living in Yesod, are "outside time" and the
birth-and-collapse cycle of Briah. But, while they can indeed (apparently)
maneuver at will along the "corridors of time" in the current Briahtic
universe, I don't recall any evidence that they are outside time in the
sense that they are guaranteed to exist eternally, or that there can be no
"next generation" of H's.

On the other hand, afaik nobody ever claims that the Increate has ordered
the New Sun to be brought, or Urth to be destroyed: neither Sev or the H's.
If the Increate had indeed given such an order, you would think that the
fact would be important enough for somebody to mention it. It seems
especially odd that the H's would claim that they were killing millions of
people out of self-interest if this wasn't the case.

(Granted, Wolfe deliberately (and pointlessly, to my mind) obfuscates this
by suggesting in other places that the current humanity may produce the
current Hierogrammates. But this complication doesn't affect the point
currently at issue.)

--Adam