(urth) The argument for Intractability:

Son of Witz sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org
Mon Dec 22 10:40:17 PST 2008


I think Ymar is a key here.
yes, he might have come to rule on his own. yes, the Hierodules might  
have already had the situation set, and the idea of a candidate for  
the new sun already in place, but Ymar is a real break from the past,  
from the Age of the Monarch into the Age of the Autarch, and the  
change in the guild.  With Ymar comes NewSun symbology. The Phoenix  
Throne, etc. there is more there, but I can't remember it now.  He is  
inflluential in creating the culture Severian grows into, and it's  
clear that the Conciliator and his actions mean a lot to him from  
their brief conversations in the jail.

perhaps Ymar felt that the Conciliator came to set Ymar on the path to  
be the New Sun and he tried to deal with the hierodules himself.   
Severian didn't say when the New Sun would come, so perhaps Ymar  
thought he was the one.  He's the only other to take the test except  
Appian.

On Dec 22, 2008, at 9:46 AM, Jordon Flato wrote:

>
> David Said:
> <It's also not clear exactly how the Conciliator myth influences  
> events, although that's something that can be understood broadly.>

I think the Conciliator myth is HUGE in influencing events. The New  
Sun is said to be the Conciliator Come Again.
Obviously, he is influential in revolt against Typhon, reformation of  
the Torturers/Jailers, woven into the symbols of the Autarchy, and in  
Severian's own cosmology to have reverence for the notion of the  
conciliator and his childhood hope/belief in a light that would enoble  
the world again.  The myth is also woven into most of the ordinary  
citizens cosmologies.  All of the characters that are against the  
coming of the New Sun are aware of that potential coming because of  
the myth. It's HIGHLY doubtful that average citizens would know about  
a New Sun otherwise. They would know there sun is dying, but they  
generally seem to be ignorant that the Monarch/Autarch has Hierodules  
behind them.


> 1.  Well, for one, Severian would never have been born.  His mother  
> was with the Pellerines, who would not have existed if it weren't  
> for Severian becoming the Conciliator.  I think it's clear Sev's  
> mother ran away from the Pellerines, and again, they wouldn't exist  
> without a succesfull Severian.

only flaw there is I believe it was "Some order of monials" and not  
mentioned specifically as Pelerines.


>
> 2.  The Conciliator and the Guild:  Well, the guild was ruled by a  
> woman when Sev met up with them as Concilliator.  He killed the  
> woman, and seems to have initiated the time of male only membership  
> in the Guild.  His actions led to the destruction of part of the  
> wall of the citadel and the leaning of the witchtower.  Maybe that  
> isnt' part of the intractibility, but it shows that Severian BEFORE  
> HE DROWNED THE FIRST TIME, and thus apparently before the first  
> muddling with his timeline, had effected tha past by having the wall  
> blown up and the witchtower leaning, which shows that when he was  
> born, he had already suceeded as the New Sun.

The wall wouldn't have been broken, yes.  I'm not sure how crucial  
that is, but Severian's Cenotauph would not have existed, which is  
where he did a lot of his musing about the "light that would enoble  
the world"

I really think this "manipulation-free Severian I" is pure speculation  
by Severian, who probably has a limited, linear notion of time at the  
point where he writes that.  As Apheta points out, events in the  
future affect things in the past, it's not strictly linear.     
Severian is spread out in time. He's not merely human in the way the  
other characters are, he's more like a godling. he's some sort of  
principle that gets expressed in various times. While he has a linear  
experience, as all the characters do, the causality seems to be set up  
in such a way that he was ALWAYS there, always the New Sun.   Now,  
this might seem sort of limiting, and "why bother with all of the  
plot?".  As Jordon has pointed out before, the period narrated  by  
Severian is where he forged the integrity of character that becomes  
Conciliator/NewSun .  And, like Jesus, I have a similar question.  IF  
he was always the Son of God, where was the real test?  I don't want  
to invite a lot of specific argument about theology, just that there  
is something preordained about his role, and it is his time as a human  
that is his 'test' the very experience, and he needed to have that  
experience to fully embody his role.  It's about fate & free will here.


On a tangent,
I think I've come to firmly view Book of the New Sun and Urth of the  
New Sun as separate books.
One one hand because Severian wrote Two Books, Not One. The first book  
is BoTNS, and though not named in Urth, he mentions this manuscript as  
another work.
On the other hand, because BoTNS is a nice daunting puzzle, very  
esoteric, and UotNS is the exoteric explanation of that puzzle.
When Sev wrote BotNS, the mystery was still esoteric for him, mostly  
speculation "this seems to be what's going on under all this",  When  
he wrote UotNS, he's been through it all, and understands it in an  
exoteric "this is what went on and this is what it meant" way.
I was determined to reread BotNS to see if it was "all there" in the  
four books, and it pretty much is.  I probably would have been too  
much of a knucklehead to get it without Urth though.  I guess Wolfe  
wrote Urth after seeing how few people actually got what he was  
hinting at.  As if too prove those critics who said that there was  
"nothing in the elaborate puzzle worth working out"  Urth makes it  
obvious that the puzzle is loaded quite nicely.

~witz




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