(urth) Jonas

Jeff Wilson jwilson at io.com
Wed Apr 27 21:35:55 PDT 2005


Maru Dubshinki wrote:
> Jonas bother me on several levels.
> First, there is his name: obviously a straight take off of the
> Biblical one right down to the spelling, and there is a commonality of
> livelihood.  But, I cannot see what Jonas' whale is.  Could it be
> Urth, when he and his fellow sailors crashed?  But that is not
> satisfactory.

The biblical Jonah not necessarily a sailor, on his flight from Ninevah 
the LJV has him paying a fare, not joining a crew.  In light of his 
established position and relations to other area personages, he probably 
has a relatively stationary profession like rabbi.

> Second,  Jonas, AFAIK, is, from Apprentice Sev's time frame, from the
> deep past, who has only now returned, many years later, thanks to time
> dilation.  But,  consider:  the only ship we know of, and are given
> strong reasons to believe is in fact the *only* 'ship', is Tzadkiels
> in TUOTNS. All right you say, what of it?  Well, first Sev doesn't see
> Jonas on Tzadkiel's ship, which is fairly suspicious- if such an
> unlikely thing as Gunny meeting her younger self could happen,  how
> much more likely should it be that Sev meet Jonas again, when the
> connections betwixt them are so strong and old?  

It's a big, big ship, and while it can travel through time, not all 
journeys through time have to be the same journey through time. Gunny 
and Burgondofara are likely to meet because Gunny remembers being the 
places Burgondofara is likely to go, they probaly have the same bunking 
preferences, etc. How many other "people" are likely on the ship that 
Severian doesn't meet?  We only see one Sidero for instance.

> It would work
> perfectly from a novelists perspective, since Jonas could easily be
> searching for Jolenta again, or seeking a return to the past.
> The problem here is that we know that Jonas couldn't have been on the
> Tzadkiel, since his ship disastrously crashed when there were no
> facilities to receive them, and the Tzadkiel never crashed.  And it
> could not have been one of the minor tenders and in-system vessels,
> since those could never acheive the relativistic time warping effects
> that plunged Jonas far into his future.

Tzadkiel is not the only craft that traveles between Urth and Yesod; the 
saucer that visits Baldanders' keep is at least one other. There's also 
the portals that lead from the machine planet back into Briah, possibly 
Jonas and some other trial eidolons escaped through one.

But even if it was Tzadkiel, Tzadkiel is plenty big to carry an 
orbit-to-ground craft, it may have some escape pods, etc. and Jonas 
could have been on the losing side of a jibber battle and forced to bail 
out in an something that depended on later technology to work.

> Thirdly, his accent and mannerisms.  He certainly seems to speak as a
> sailor, with the mini-parables, and such.  But Jonas was mechanical,
> but not like Sidero remember. Sidero was a hollow man, and Jonas was
> not.  As well, Sev says that Jonas entire demeanour spoke to him of a
> 'time when they lived in fear, and sought to alleviate it through
> constant joking' (sorry for the paraphrase; can't even remember what
> book it is in.) The sailors on the Tzadkiel certainly don't live in
> constant fear.

The Jibbers and apports might, though.

> So, we have a dude whose is from the past, shouldn't have been able to
> get into the future, who mimics sailors, but is not one, and
> mysteriously disapears to who-knows-where - the mirrors of Inire
> coulda taken him clear to Briah or even more inscrutable times/places
> (remember too that in this relativistic framework, time is space is
> time.  Mirrors which serve to catapult/shanghai one through space can
> also do thus through time), and never shows up again, despite being so
> important.
> As I said, Jonas bothers me.

It's not _just_ relativistic travel, that wouldn't the mirror trick. 
There's at least cyclical time and higher dimensions involved, and the 
magic mirrors are only incidentally mirrored, otherwise there'd be 
apports, monsters, and hiergrammates in every tailor's shop.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >



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