(urth) Severian's miraculous eclipse

[James Wynn]

Hmmm... I was unsuccessful in separating my message from your HTML format.
That makes me look pretty stupid. Lets try it again.

-----Original Message-----
From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Sent: Apr 25, 2006 3:54 PM
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian's miraculous eclipse

Welcome mr. sharp!

Just so you know, if you send your mail to the list in html format, it
will not be posted to the listserver and viewable in the archives. I
suggest sending it as in plain text. I would have spent more time a
response to you, but my primary purpose is to get your post into
the the archives so other people who only read posts there,
can respond to it. It is included intact below.

For starters, I'll just say that for Tzadkiel's ship to cause an
eclipse, the total *apparent* diameter of Tzadkiel's ship from
the ground (including masts and sails) need only be that of a
penny. That is really to small to differentiate the masts and
sails from the body of the ship without the aid of a telescope,
especially with the sun behind it. If you've ever seen even a
partial eclipse, you know that when the moon gets close to the
sun, it disappears. To the unaided eye, an eclipse looks like
the sun is going out, not as though the moon is blocking it.

If the ship looked much larger than a penny then it might not
have even looked like an eclipse to an observer. It would have
looked like a big thing blocking the sun. A miracle, of course,
but not of the same sort.</DIV>

Aside from that...well, this isn't a very fact-based argument,
but "the moon caused the eclipse" is not a very Gene Wolfe
way of doing things.

 J

>-----Original Message-----
>From: b sharp <BSHARPORFLAT at HOTMAIL.COM
>Sent: Apr 25, 2006 2:13 PM <BR>To: urth at lists.urth.net 
>Subject: (urth) Severian's miraculous eclipse

>Greetings all.  Long time Wolfe fan who recently discovered
>and much more recently finished perusing the archives.
>
>I'd like to address an issue that was discussed in the past which is
>the eclipse which saves Severian from being killed by the
>primitive tribesmen in the early days of Urth.  It seems most
>experts have concurred that the eclipse was caused by
>Tzadkiel's ship.  This explanation doesn't seem plausible to me.
>Vast as that ship might be, I can't see how it could block the
>sun but not be noticible as a manufactured object.  It isn't a
>sphere but rather a forest of masts and sails which I would
>think would have to be visible as shadow as it moves on and
>stops blocking the sun.  Moreover all the descriptions of the
>ship suggest it wouldn't come so close to gravitational bodies
>such as the Urth, moon and sun.  Certainly not to accomplish
>the simple goal of dissuading a few tribal people from
>committing murder, since the hierogrammates seem to rely on
>agents and abilities which could accomplish the same goal so
>much more easily.</DIV>
>
>Wolfe suggests the thoughtful reader could guess what
>opaque body could have been used to block the sun. I feel he
>was being ironic in that it wouldn't take much thought at all to
>deduce the object used was the same one used by
>"A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court" and others in
>similar circumstance; that being the normal cause of an eclipse,
>the moon.  In Severian's time on Urth during the Typhon era
>he demonstrated the unconscious ability to cause major
>catastrophic natural events when he was angry or faced with
>death, i.e. a hurricane and an earthquake.  I have always felt
>this eclipse was a similar event, caused either by stopping the
>moon in orbit or the earth in rotation.
>
>Now it might be argued that Severian did not have access to
>the power of his star/white fountain at this time. It is implied
>because he doesn't seem to be able to travel through the
>corridors of time back to a more pleasant era.  But
>Severian does very casually note that during his
>stay with the primitive people he heals those who are sick,
>both with his learned skills and in the manner he used to
>cure Declan (which was done with star power). </DIV>
>
>I'll leave it at that for my first post and check any feedback you might have  :-)