(urth) Career of Severian as Conciliator
Dan Rabin
wolfe-lists at danrabin.com
Wed Oct 25 14:55:35 PDT 2006
At 2:21 PM -0600 10/25/06, Jack Redelfs wrote:
>I found his on-screen turn as the Conciliator to be quite
>underwhelming. I just expected more. He carreer as Conciliator
>lasted for, 1 day, was it?
I don't think the narrative of _The Urth of the New Sun_ covers all
appearances of Severian as the Conciliator:
1. I recall a couple of references in _The Book of the New Sun_
(spoken by ?Typhon, ?Agia) to the Conciliator having disappeared and
reappeared.
2. In _Urth_, Severian wonders how many of the guests at the inn
where he fights the zombie are him. At the time of his writing in
Ushas, at least, he seems to assume either that he's going to do a
lot more walking in the Corridors of Time, or that more replicas will
be constructed in different threads of the tapestry of time.
...and I just noticed a Wolfean inversion between _Book of the_ and
_Urth of the_: In _Citadel_, Severian becomes the Autarch, "who in
one body is a thousand" (ch. 27); whereas in _Urth_ his one person is
dispersed into a succession of bodies.
Could we have the opinions of our knowledgeable Christian
contributors on how these two details might reflect religious themes?
-- Dan Rabin
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