(urth) Hut/Ultan's Library/Catherine
Jeff Wilson
jwilson at io.com
Tue Apr 7 02:43:38 PDT 2009
James Wynn wrote:
> Hmmm...I searched the archives and nothing about dwarves or barrow
> wights came up.
The catacomb part was a few months ago:
> Much of the Citadel complex is underground. In particular, the art
> galleries run as far as the House Absolute, which is entirely
> underground, and Hypogeum Apotropaic can be read as "underground
> bunker". It is very likely that Severian meets Master Ultan in a tunnel,
> possibly a stretch of catacomb repurposed to house books instead of bodies.
the part after "also" is my current addition, reflecting on Ultan's
appearance - there is a similar, though unfriendly encounter between
Thor and a Dvergr in the Poetic Edda, mentioned here under "skin color
and hair color"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_dwarves
Ultan's no dwarf, but he does share some of the creepy color scheme and
habits of the other earth-dwellers.
> Anyway, I'll require a lot more convincing. If the catacombs lent out
> their corpses, I'm not aware of it.
I think that was largely reserved for relics, though numerous catacombs,
tombs, and ossuaries have liberal browsing hours.
> I'm sure barrow wights did not abet
> such practices. And if Ultan *were* intended to be analogous to an
> animated ward of a grave, that would put Severian in the position of a
> treasure hunter...not a corpse himself.
He *is* there to get some goodies, but I think it just the general
creepiness that give him thoughts of being dead and buried; indeed the
3rd paragraph before the end of the chapter includes "To the upper
levels of that place I returned several times, but I never again entered
that tomblike cellar, or ever wished to."
--
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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