(urth) Silk corrupted?

[David Stockhoff]

John---

You are exactly correct that the very use of the term "Christ figure" vs "Christ" or even "a Christian" is part of my problem. Wolfe himself in interview does not seem to make a sharp distinction between whether Severian/Silk are Christ figures or men or who are trying to be good or closer to God (as you note), and that's the distinction you'd think would be clearest here. But an author can wave his wand and introduce signs and signifiers and point you on your way, whether clumsily (Neo in The Matrix) or not. (I just noticed Obama in your list---ha!) Mr. Magoo could be "made" a Christ figure. And that's not irrelevant.

I also grasp the usefulness of the distinction between Christ and Christ figure, as you have described---and I have never argued that Severian is Christ, though some here seem to think I have. (Sometimes people take questions as assertions; I don't know why.) But I don't think the distinction is exactly cut and dried, nor, obviously, should it be wielded like a hammer. I wonder, though---setting convention aside---whether even Jesus saw himself, in his own narration of his own life, as a Godhead. And this is a side point regarding the creation of the Christ myth or propaganda: that the historical Jesus vanishes behind the Christ story, whether it is true or not. But the One True Christ remains an 800-pound gorilla. In fact, it is impossible to write about him; much easier to work with his reflections.

You can say, "This was Napoleon," and establish that no literary characters can ever "be" Napoleon, though they can masquerade as him or pretend to be his ghost or echo in alternative-history stories and so on. But you can't pin down a historical Christ so easily, and separate him from his existing echoes. In fact, it's easier to do so if you ignore the "historical" Christ entirely and choose only to see the canonical one---if you ignore history. The writer is free to do so; the critic is not. Certainly, the critic has no right, arguing simply from authority, to silence another critic who chooses to see the other very real Christs and wonder if they are not so easily pushed aside. 

By the same token, ignoring Wolfe's known beliefs would make interpreting his work much more difficult. But let's remember that the author's beliefs are not in the text. They are outside the text, and we shouldn't pretend they are in the text just because we know them well or even share them---perhaps especially so. Again, the critic has the right to ignore them if he chooses. Personally, I want to know a few general things about them, especially those he considers important. Were I reading Milton, I would not reject the treatises on divorce---though I would try to read them after Paradise Lost, not before. But I don't want to know his or Wolfe's whole theology, and I wouldn't force it on another reader. I don't care about Wolfe the theologist---I care about Wolfe the mythologist, who dares to play with---to parody, to juggle, to play-act---the different kinds and degrees of Christ, whether or not they should be seen as valid or as mere failed attempts to understand "him" ("It," really) before the correct interpretation was achieved in 325.

So this is what I was objecting to. 

Anyway, you are exactly and entirely right. I am indeed still stuck with the fact that Severian briefly seems to experience the consciousness of the Increate. I don't see him as Christ, yet, I don't know what else he could be but a very close analog/twin/brother. I don't buy that he can't really be "Chalcedonic" (divine+human) or Nicaean simply because there can be only one of those. I also am not satisfied with calling it a miracle (other than, as you suggest, as a break in the Veil, though surely even such events are the will of the Increate) or calling Severian a demigod---those aren't answers. 

I believe Wolfe was signaling something to us that must have more importance than has been recognized. But that doesn't necessarily mean it is part of a consistent scheme, i.e., a revelation of the Truth. It may simply be that he felt (since TUotNS was his puzzle solution) that he needed to say, Yes, Severian should be considered in the context of Christ. Seems silly now, but I know that was not understood quite as quickly as you'd think when the series came out.



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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:01:44 -0500
From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Silk corrupted?
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
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	<93d4039f0901221401r7d735791rfd7cd1a08c876f60 at mail.gmail.com>
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On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:34 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:


I don't see your argument here, other than the use of the slippery term
"Christs."  If Wolfe is deliberately contrasting what he believes to be the
imperfection of a uni-nature messiah with that he believes to be the
perfection of a dual-nature messiah, then of course his religion is
relevant--primary, even--to understanding his project.

I tend to think that the Eastern concept of *theosis *is at work in Severian
and Silk, but lots of ink and no small amount of blood have been spilled
distinguishing the idea of *becoming a more perfect image of God *from the
idea of *becoming God*.

That distinction is precisely what's lost by using the term "Christ."
"Christ" just means "annointed one" and in that sense of course Severian and
Silk (and Able and Neo and Frodo and Harry Potter and Starbuck and King
David and Barack Obama and Sidney Crosby) are "Christs"--they are annointed
ones, chosen among others for an extraordinary task.  None of them, however,
is meant to be understood as the Godhead incarnate, which is the
natural-language translation of the term "Christ" due to its overwhelming
use as an honorific for the historical/religious/mythological/whatwillyou
figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

Your point is very insightful as to Arian--while Arians, like Catholics,
orthodox, and most Protestant Christians accepted that Jesus was *the
Christ, *i.e., the Chosen One of God, they denied his *divine essence, *unlike
those other groups.  Wolfe, as a Roman Catholic, does not deny the *divine
essence *of Christ and has not, as far as I can tell, created a character
meant to embody the divine essence.  He has, however, created a number of
characters with messianic (or counter-messianic, i.e., Number Five)
functions.

To the extent that these characters' lives follow the type of Jesus's life,
in Wolfe, at least, they are meant as *imitatio dei.  *Wolfe has said
himself that Severian's journey is the Christian journey--by his apeing of
Jesus, Severian becomes more Christ-like (Jesus-like is too ugly a
neologism), while still falling short of divine moral perfection.  Silk
likewise, although Silk is a far better man than Severian (or perhaps merely
a man with far more advantages--a seed sown on good earth, not in thorns).

I think it is a very great error to read Wolfe's "Christ figures" as
representations of the divinity except in a very limited and incomplete
sense.  This isn't because I'm concerned about ideological purity--it's
because I think that a great error in foundational thinking about these
complex texts inevitably leads to other errors.

As for that "limited and incomplete sense", I suppose tremendous things
could be written on the idea of the Divine peeking from behind the curtain
in Wolfe:  the suggestion that gods in the Whorl, when the possess someone,
leave something of themselves behind, for example, or the possibility that
eating the flesh of a higher being raises oneself up a level in the Wizard
Knight.  That stuff, to me, is much more interesting than the idea that a
practising Catholic wrote a story about an Incarnation of the Most High who
rapes, tortures, kills, commits adultery at the first opportunity, lies
regularly and ultimately leads to the near-genocide of the human race.



> >



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