(urth) The Typhon-Severian Family Tree
mournings glory
mourningsglory at hotmail.com
Sat Jun 25 14:56:41 PDT 2005
In marshalling his various arguments about the sons of Typhon, cloned or
otherwise, the winsome Mr. Wynn has written "there is still the fact that
[Severian's] crypt is Typhon's family mausoleum." But is this really so? I
for one have always found this assumption to be more than a little troubling
and not just because it smacks of total retconning (I defy anyone to point
out a shred of evidence in support of the linked family tree theory in
either of the first two Sun series), but also because there's a fair amount
of textual evidence that leads me to believe that the mausoleum Severian
visits with Horn & company is altogether different from the one he visits in
the early chapters of SHADOW.
Please bear with me, as I try to make my case.
First to Chapter 19 of RETURN, as Horn tells Severian:
---------------------------
"This girl was a sort of princess here on your whorl. Her name was Cilinia.
Have you heard of her?"
The boy said he had not.
"She died here many years ago--many centuries, I believe. Now she must find
her grave...Will you help us?"
He did, too. He took us to an old stone building where there were lots of
coffins. They were supposed to be up on stone shelves, but most of them were
not, and a lot were empty."
--------------------------
Now then for the necessary followup questions: why would Severian, who has
never heard of Princess Cilinia, assume that she is buried in the little
crypt he has so come to favor over the years? While he is tall and may
perhaps fancy himself the son of an exultant, nowhere that I can remember
does he fantasize about being the lost scion of some royal family. Isn't it
therefore much more likely that he takes Horn and his group to one of the
bigger, fancier mausoleums in the necropolis--one befitting a princess of
some centuries past? If there's any sort of correlation with Egyptian tombs,
we might also expect such a crypt to have been looted over time, especially
in a country where quakes may make sealed doors problematical. Notice as
well the rather unspecific "lots of coffins," most of which are not up on
the stone shelves, and many of which are empty. In Chapter 2 of SHADOW,
however, observe how Severian writes, "Neither the closed coffins nor the
open ones constituted the attraction of the place...Rather, it was the
smallness of the room, the thick walls of masonry, and the single, narrow
window with its one bar, together with the faithless door that remained
eternally ajar." Moreover, "two empty coffins lay on the floor. Three more,
too heavy for me to shift and still intact, waited on the shelves along one
wall." Notice the count here: five coffins total, two of which are empty and
lay on the floor--and yet by Hoof's count, the mausoleum visited in WHORL
contains *lots* of coffins, *many of which* are not on the shelves, and
*most of which* are empty. Given the size of the two respective crypts and
the number of open and closed and shelved caskets in each, clearly they
cannot be the same.
In addition, as I believe Marc Arimani has already pointed out, what does
the device graved on the bronze door of Severian's crypt (the fountain, ship
volant, and rose) have to do with Typhon the Great or his family? Nothing,
whereas all three, as we shall see, clearly resonate with events in
Severian's life.
So then why does Wolfe plant the suggestion that the two families may be
related--an interesting idea in itself and one initially proposed by the
long absent Mr. Andre-Driussi? The same reason he locates a gaint undersea
wall on Blue and has Horn periodically abstaining from eating. For
misdirection, which he loves--apparently as much as red herring.
I may be wrong in this (note to site administrator: the Urth search
functions pretty much sucks in my opinion), but hasn't Wolfe written a short
story about Typhon, yet to be published in Peter Crowther's POSTSCRIPTS,
entitled "Comber?" Perhaps Dr. Nick Gevers could confirm or deny. If so,
perhaps it will answer many of the questions resolving around Typhon--or
knowing Mr. Wolfe's penchant for devilry generate hundreds more.
MSG (no relation to the Glutamates)
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