(urth) Abaia and the undines
David Stockhoff
dstockhoff at verizon.net
Fri Dec 12 06:58:09 PST 2008
On the first point, Severian writes this in TCotA before he experiences
and writes TUotNS: Then those who walk the corridors walked back to the
time when he was young, and my own story---as I have given it here in so
many pages---began. The second thing is this. He was not returned to his
own time but became himself a walker of the corridors. I know now the
identity of the man called the Head of Day, and why Hildegrin, who was
too near, perished when we met, and why the witches fled. I know too in
whose mausoleum I tarried as a child, that little building of stone with
its rose, its fountain, and its flying ship all graven. I have disturbed
my own tomb, and now I go to lie in it. Problems: ---He can't yet know
that HD/AP is himself in his own future, as well as an aquastor who
presumably is immortal. Later he is stunned when he finds out. So he
must be another Severian---Sev 1 out of 2, or else a corpse the single
Severian left behind. ---If the man in the tomb is Severian 1, who put
him in it? You can build your own tomb but you can't put yourself in it.
Also, you wouldn't build your own tomb unless you expected to die, and
any Severian who is mature and alive before Severian himself is born
knows he won't ever die, because otherwise, what would he be doing
there? ---If the time-walkers did take him back to the time of his
youth, he would have been dead then, or else he would have been a threat
to the Throne. They would have had to go to the Autarch and say, Build
us a tomb, we have a corpse of a failed god. It's true that Apheta and
Tzadkiel are unclear on Severian's fate if he fails; perhaps Severian
1's fate is to be put to sleep in a coffin, honored and forgotten, in a
time when no one knows him. (Do the coffins preserve bodies somehow? If
so, isn't there a danger of Severian merging with the corpse, whatever
it is? If not, could the corpse be an aquastor corpse?) ---But if the
corpse is Sev 1, he can't also be the Sleeper because the Sleeper is Sev
2. It may make sense that Sev 2 lies in a coffin while the other of the
5 gods do not, but who are the other 2 there and when did he get put in
the coffin? Did the Sevs merge at some time? On the second point, your
theory sounds good. Severian is a god when he returns to Urth. It would
basically be coincidence, then, that his "icons" and his god-self
resemble one another ... but not if you see one as the echo of the
other. ------------------------------ Message: 8 Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008
14:29:49 -0700 From: "Dave Tallman" <davetallman at msn.com> Subject: Re:
(urth) Abaia and the undines To: urth at lists.urth.net Message-ID:
<1bf4dd40812111329j659754f9i9c4727c8374b7f70 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" David Stockhoff wrote:
> > Although I still don't understand the corpse in the tomb where Severian
> > played. And now that I understand that he did not move into a new body on
> > the starsailship but was recreated by Tzadkiel, I don't understand why his
> > face was changed when he returned from Yesod. Valeria recognized him for the
> > first time then.
> >
>
The mausolem is indeed a mystery. One thing we know for sure is that
it is Severian's. "I have disturbed my own tomb, and I go to lie in
it." It contains three closed coffins and two empty coffins. Who could
be in them?
I like the suggestion in Lexicon Urthus that the Sev of UotNS went
back in time and had it constructed for himself when he got old. The
rose, spaceship, and fountain markings on the tomb look like a coded
message about the New Sun. The three closed coffins could be the
remains of Odilio, Pega, and Thais. Perhaps the two open coffins were
for Severian and whoever was his wife in his old age. Perhaps they
were raided by tomb robbers or relic-seekers.
For the face-changing issue, they are talking about how the faces of
rulers are idealized and ennobled in portraits and sculptures. He
didn't look that noble in real life, even on the day he came to claim
Valeria. But now he does -- after his character-transformative
experiences of becoming the New Sun and the Conciliator. Valeria
laughs and cries because now it is too late for her.
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