(urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

[Craig Brewer]

First, I didn't mean to sound like I was attacking you, which seems to be how you took my post. My apologies for that. And I'm sorry that you felt the need to defend your position with an occasionally mocking and sarcastic tone. I didn't intend anything like that at all.

Second, I'm neither a Catholic nor a Christian, and THAT was actually the source of some of my concerns. I think the book is more than a Christian myth dressed up as sf. To me, that's a limited reading, and that's what I thought you were suggesting. Again, I apologize if I misunderstood your point.

Third, I'm actually much more in favor of the way you characterize your position here as metaphor. I thought, incorrectly it seems, in your other posts that you were suggesting that the book tries to say that Severian was literally Christ or at least "a" Christ, which is something that Wolfe has said goes too far, and I take him at his word.


Fourth, Severian is a "tangible human protagonist." You counter me by listing other characters who obviously aren't "human" or have "human" motivations. My point is that the book just becomes an imaginative exercise if Severian himself becomes a completely other-worldly figure. It's fun, then, but not really meaningful to me because all of the ethical dilemmas that Severian faces aren't "real." They're just part of an alternate universe and its problems. That's all well and good, but, to me, it means that Wolfe is just picking and choosing various things to make an entertaining fiction. Maybe that's all it is. But if it is, then I'm disappointed.

And, once more, I appreciate your speculations and ideas. The fact that I don't agree with them all does not mean that I'm attacking you or even dismissing them.


----- Original Message ----
From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 6:36:04 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

wow.
thorny issue I guess.
yuk yuk,


Ok, first I'm gonna say I think a lot of you are looking at it too closely from a Christian perspective.
No one seems to have a problem saying a charater is Theseus or another character is Daedalus, cause none of us wear mazes around our necks. (few of us I guess)  But say he's an analogue of Christ and watch out.

we're talking about metaphors folks.

I'm not trying to paint Severian as a perfect divine Christ. Nor am I talking about morality. 
I'm saying he embodies symbolic characteristics attributed to Christ.
I'm also not even trying to bring the historical jesus into the picture.
it may be useful to understand that I don't even believe in Jesus, but I believe in the LOGOS.  Is that convoluted enough for you?  
Pull your heads out of the plot and look at the symbols.

When I say he's a hypostasis of the Logos, I'm looking at it in the Greek terms (who came up with the idea of the LOGOS, not the jews) that says (according at least to Fideler -Jesus Christ Sun of God) that a better translation for LOGOS is "Ratio" rather than "Word".  A ratio is that which relates entities. In the Christian story, the Logos reconciles God with Man.
As does Jesus in his 'story'.

so look here:
Sword XXI
""Then his task was to forge a peace between humanity and the Increate, and he was called the Conciliator.""

there you have it.
and here:
sword v 
"I found myself thinking how strange it would be if the New Sun, the Daystar himself, were to appear now as suddenly as he had appeared so long ago when he was called the Conciliator, "

isn't Christ called The Daystar?

and
Claw IV
"Close your eyes. Try to remember that almost everyone who has ever 
lived has died, even the Conciliator, who will rise as the New Sun."

So working backwards, We KNOW Severian is the New Sun, so we know he's the Conciliator.  The Conciliator is the Daystar that forged a peace between Mankind and the Increate (GOD)


Helloooo?

and he raised Triskele from the dead with no Claw.
He's died and resurrected at least a few times in the book.
If he didn't need the Claw for Triskele, did he need it when he had an Avern in his chest? did he have it on Tzadkiel's ship when he died? 
Severian is has power, not the Claw. no one else got these results.
He brings about Apocatastasis, for Christ's sake.



>I guess my real question is this: Doesn't it make the story almost infinitely less interesting if we simply discover that Severian was basically divine all along? If that's what we're getting, then, to put it bluntly, there really wasn't much of a story to tell. Everything was fine from the get go, and any doubt about Severian's success or the coming of the New Sun was just a matter of not knowing all the details. There was never anything for Severian to prove or be tested for. 


Not less interesting for me.
Was Christ divine from the get go, or was it only when he proved himself on the cross? wasn't he the son of God when he was born?
does that make Christ's story less interesting to you?



>I mean, maybe I'm wrong and that's what we're getting all along. But if it is, then what we have is a myth. We don't have a story with tangible human protagonists. Consequently, we shouldn't read the books as a novel about humans interacting with the divine. Instead, we should treat it as a tableau that simply puts images to a theology.

"Tangible human protagonists" are you kidding me?
Baldanders(frankenstein), Talos (humonculus), Dorcas (resurrected grandmother), Autarch (eunuch with 1000's of minds within his) Severian, who as a child plays in his mausoleaum) Inire (an alien) ... need I go on?

Myth is like Archetype.
It is TRUER than the instantiation of it.

I forgot the post I wanted to address,
but Severian as a torturer is very fitting.
Christ says he's come to bring the sword.
Now, I can't get too much into the symbology of revelation and apocatastasis, but I've always taken that in terms similar to the Goddess Kali, the Goddess of Death and Resurrection.  Someone has to bring the Flaming Sword of Apocatastasis.  The slate has to be wiped clean for it to be reborn.
This is Severian the New Suns job in a nutshell. Reset to primordial state.

Now, if you didn't have Urth of the New Sun, I suppose you could doubt all this, but having the proof that he's the New Sun, not just the hope (first 4) seems to make this all very clear.


really.
don't try to perfectly square it up with your Catholicism.
It's a mythic adventure that I find quite inspiring.

~SonOfWitz




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