(urth) Hut/Ultan's Library/Catherine

brunians at brunians.org brunians at brunians.org
Mon Apr 6 13:27:55 PDT 2009


It should be pretty easy to establish whether Wolfe ever met Borges in
South America.






.

> James wynn writes:
>
>>At the time of this event, Severian had not eaten any corpse;
>>so, why did he feel that he himself was dead? I suppose it is
>>not absolutely required, but this pairing seems to imply they
>>were "were dead" for the same reason...
>>whatever it was.
>
> I could go with D. Stockhoff's rather direct explanation:
>
>>Well, they were both underground in a musty place of great age,
>>where data was literally entombed, like the dead. Where the knowledge
>>of the historians that Ultan desires is also entombed; where the whole
>>of Urth is entombed. Who wouldn't get a creepy feeling? The place is
>>symbolic of death.
>
> but also,
>
> I don't suppose all Wolfe's protagonists function as the author's
> avatars but some do, and surely Severian. I can't help but see the
> meeting of Severian and Ultan as part of a fantasy of Wolfe to meet
> with Jorge Luis Borges. Two avatars feeling dead together in a book
> could be the mirror image of two live guys meeting in the real world.
> Perhaps it wasn't just a fantasy and Wolfe really did meet Borges in
> his library in Buenos Aires and that S. American trip provided much
> of the inspiration for BotNS.
>
> ah, I dunno...
>
> -bsharp
> _________________________________________________________________
> Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync.
> http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_allup_1a_explore_042009
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>





More information about the Urth mailing list