(urth) The significance of Dr. Talos and Baldanders in Book of the New Sun
Jeff Wilson
jwilson at io.com
Sun Apr 1 20:13:47 PDT 2007
Joshua Mattson wrote:
> I recently finished Book of the New Sun for the first time, and, today,
> Robert Borski's Solar Labyrinth. Absent from it was specific information
> on Baldanders and Dr. Talos. These two, to me, are two of the most
> compelling characters in BotNS.
>
> I've heard that Baldanders in some sense is a Satanic/Luciferic figure and
> is aligned with the alien monsters of Urth. But how does Dr. Talos fit
> into the story? Why exactly is Baldanders an alternate candidate to bring
> the New Sun? I thought that only Autrarchs could be candidates.
Within the context of the Book + Urth's cosmology (as I and most listers
understand it), there are no "candidates", only Severian, Who _is_ the
New Sun. The various powers and posers who have imperfect knowledge of
the New Sun's nature of course do not realize this, and they believe it
is possible for a sufficiently powerful person or faction to sieze
divine favor by fulfilling the prophecy, similar to the Nazis trying
manipulate moral authority by seizing the Holy Grail or the Ark of the
Covenant in the Indian Jones films.
So it's not the lack of being Autarch that is holding Baldanders back;
he could eat brains along with the best of them. It is the lack of his
being the Theoanthropos; that is, he's not God.
--
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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