(urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

[Craig Brewer]

A big mea culpa: I spent a lot of time last night (too much...now I'm so behind on grading) rereading _Urth_ and the synopsis from Sirius Fiction. There are some rather important details about Severian re: time travel that complicate almost everything I've been saying. I'm still not sure that he's "divine" in terms of the plot, although he's certainly loaded down the symbols of divinity. But, at the least, let me say that I'm confused.

Can anyone point to any general consensus in the archives as to...well...what the hell was happening in _Urth_?




________________________________
From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 2:00:58 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)


Craig,
First of all, let me say that I do agree with your ideas here.
everything you put works within the confines of the story. I think your reading is valid and apt.

however, I feel they fall roughly into the category of "plowman's meaning"
do you remember the 3 meanings bit? if not I'll dig up the text (I found txt docs online for searching. I'm a geek, I freely admit)
anyway, The cow by the road is chewing grass. the cow is real, the grass is real. the chewing is real.
all of the religious imagery is cloaked in at least one layer of scifi disguise.

(I'll admit here that I've not read much sci fi OR scripture for that matter.  I'd add, Thank God Wolfe cloaked his SciFi in many layers of dusty medieval trappings.)

The single best post I've found on the Urth list falls roughly into the "Soothsayer's meaning".  it speaks about the world around us, ourselves and the connections between us.
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0011/0069.shtml
which can more or less be summed up with this excerpt: 
"the first 3 and a half books seem to deal with the theme of Severian becoming his own man and casting off other authorities' hold on him.  Every authority that is, except that of the Increate."

and it's here that just about everyone is right about Severian. He's Christ-LIKE. He's picked up the cross and tried to become a good man doing the will of God.
He's shaking off false authorities: Guild, Typhon, Teenage Rebellion (vodalus), Autarch (father figure) etc.
he's also defeating Foes of God: Baldanders (storming the heavens, prometheus, Omega Point), Sorcerers (dark arts aimed at denying God), Zooanthropes (those who would consciously abandon their duty to become fully human), Ascian (godless communists), etc.
He reforms the guild and generally demonstrates mercy at all times when he has a choice.

Great stuff that does not yet put him into the divine category.
All these interpretations are very much there in the symbols, and are as true as the straightforward plot elements.
It's at this level of meaning  that the thing gets really interesting to me.  I didn't really like the books plotting all that much until I started getting a whiff of this. (I loved the writing though)

Most of the stuff I'm arguing for falls into the "Transcendental meaning"
and I think I've argued those points fairly well, so I won't repeat it here.
but it's at this level that it becomes a great story for me.
but that's probably just me. I've always gravitated to the abstract mystic side of spiritual matters. 
it's no surprise that most people don't because it's been almost bred out of us, and Religion has shunted this stuff into the corners with the Sufis, Qabalists, and Gnostics.
the sorts of things that resonate with me about Religion and Christianity in particular aren't for most people. (I'm NOT saying I'm wise and elite and better, understand me please)
it's just that notions of sin and guilt mean nothing to me.  But the idea of being both Human(mundane) and Divine, crucified on the crossroads of Time and Eternity (Kronos x Kairos) speaks DIRECTLY to what I feel in my soul in every moment of every day.  that crossroads is more or less at Christ's heart, not his brain, and most Christian doctrine is from the heart.
That sort of notion is impractical to most people, so a different reading is more useful to them. 
but my heart explodes when I come to understand Christ as ALL MANKIND in that situation, which we all ARE.

Now I've also had my doses of Armageddon fever. (it's been going around a lot this decade, if you haven't noticed).  Millennialism.
I think humanity is on a suicidal course in many ways and I have little faith in us.  sometimes I only find hope in the notion of Apocatastasis. RESET. Wipe the slate clean. start over.
We're in Kali Yuga, and she'll be coming with that flaming sword any day I suppose. It will be flaming death for most of us, but a new Golden Age will be reborn.
So I take the Story of Severian being the bearer of the Sword that Cuts and the Sword that Heals very much to heart.  The deluge of Earth becomes the baptism of Ushas.

If I've sounded like I've been scoffing in my posts, it's because I do find it sort of strange to prefer the mundane answers.
I mean, who the hell cares who Severa is if it doesn't speak to anything besides plotting?
It's nothing personal to anyone here. I'm thrilled that people are excited about these books and parsing them out so thoroughly.
If my propositions are thorny, well, they should be. People look at everything to literally. it's a curse in the age of Mythbusters.  That "Myth" means "false legend" to most people is a TRAVESTY.
but I mean any provocative comments in the best spirit and I hate to think I offend or step on anyones toes.

and since I probably have stepped on some toes, I'll say that I just now realized the quest for Catherine is very interesting in light of the notion of Goddess or Mother of God.
I don't know much about it, but humanity was evidently Goddess worshipping for a long time, and that stuff is like a lost mystery.  If I'm not mistaken Allat, a Goddess was worshipped before Allah, and she is preserved in the emblem of Islam in the Crescent moon.  As far as I've heard the Church tried to minimize the role of Mary, but people would not stop celebrating and worshiping the Mother of God.  (and well they shouldn't I suppose).  So perhaps Wolfe's obfuscation of Catherine is meant to speak to this  Missing or Lost Mother Goddess figure.  Her identity is NOT the mystery, it would seem, but what her Absence implies that becomes interesting. 

anyway, I ramble on.
thanks for engaging my ideas, Craig.

~Witz

On Nov 20, 2008, at 11:10 PM, Craig Brewer wrote:

Son of Witz,

I think our difference may have less to do with "ethics" or "religion"
and more to do with how we see the symbols operating in the book.
You're absolutely correct that Severian is covered with Christ imagery
and is often related to the Conciliator. In other words, I agree with
every citation you made in that post. (Which, by the way, I saved
because you pointed to most of the good stuff...nice to have all that
in one place.)

Our difference seems to be how we understand
those symbols to operate. To me, they stay figurative, i.e.,
non-literal, even WITHIN the plot. Severian's role in the plot
essentially carries out, in literal terms, the trajectory of what the
Conciliator represented symbolically. But does that mean that Severian
*is* the Conciliator who, at least according to Urth's legends, was a
divine figure? Or does he do in a "worldly" sense what the Conciliator
did in a "supernatural" sense?

I've never been convinced that
Urth of the New Sun proves that there was anything supernatural about
Severian. Another way to put it is that there was plenty there that was
"science fiction-y" but not "fantasy," if we take "fantasy" here to
mean supernatural. One can construe the plot in completely
"science-fiction"-y terms that don't rely on divinity at all: The
Hieros created a situation in which humans would evolve to a point
where they, the humans, would create the Hieros (who live backwards in
time...and here I take it that time travel and time weirdness isn't
necessarily a "divine" thing). Bringing about the New Sun is one
complicated pre-requisite for that, and the Hieros needed to know that
humanity was ready, so they tested various "Severians" that they'd
engineered. Our Severian happens to be the best, and so he "saves"
humanity by convincing the Hieros that it's time to dump that
white-hole back into the sun and change the course of human history. (Pardon my likely faulty summary here...it's off the cuff and, admittedly, been at least a year since I last read _Urth_.)

Now,
nowhere in all of that does Severian have to be divine. What he
certainly *is* is living out a story that, in metaphor, tells a story
of humanity's supernatural salvation. But I take it as something very
similar to Silk's epiphany: Silk had a single moment of divine insight,
but everything that happened afterward, while it followed a divine
symbolism, did not actually have supernatural consequences. Learning
the truth did not bring Silk to heaven...it just got him out of the Whorl.
So there were two transcendences: the real one was also the most
symbolic, as in Silk being granted truth from the Outsider. The
transcendence of the story was "worldly", though: he led the people
from their prison in the Whorl and their false gods to something better.

So
did Severian have to be divine, within the context of the story, to be
the New Sun? Or was he doing, in a "worldly" sense, what the
Conciliator did, or was supposed to have done, in a divine sense?

I
have to say that your talk about the LOGOS might in the end be a way of
not having to make the divine/worldly distinction I'm hung up on. And,
for that, I've got to say thanks. (And, to be honest, the more I push this distinction, the less sure I am it's appropriate.)

Craig



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