(urth) Dionysus, the Mausoleum

[Son of Witz]

On Dec 21, 2010, at 10:08 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/21/2010 11:36 AM, Son of Witz wrote:
>> This is getting really interesting...
>> Good post, James.
>> I don't know the Long-Short lineage stuff, so I can't judge yet.
>> This bit you wrote lit my head up, can you elaborate?
>> ""If Severian is understood as somehow directly associated with the myths in the Brown Book, it restores a scattered unfocused unedited brain dump back to a comprehensible narrative."
>> 
>> I would love for that to hold water. How is he related to the book in your view? I really don't know the Classics well enough to spot certain heroic analogies here. What was that about him being Frog or suchlike?
> 
> I believe that Spring Wind in the Story of Frog is Typhon. Some story-teller read the story of Romulus and fragments of the Jungle Books and said, "Oh, these are /obviously/ just a retelling of the story of Typhon's son. These other versions add a little bit of flavor missing from the version I'm familiar with. It even gives the name of Frog's mother and grandmother and a twist on the motive. I'll combine all this into an authoritative telling."
> 
> Mythologists make such cognitive leaps all the time. They always have. "Jehovah is just Dionysus" [Tacitus]. "Jesus is just Mithras". "Merlin is just Odin." Etcetera. Wolfe has imagined this happening the distant future. Typhon has become myth, just as Arthur and Alexander the Great did.
> 
> In The Story of the Student and his Son, I believe the Student is Typhon again. I believe this because Wolfe reminds us of that story when Severian encounters him. Wolfe does a feint, associating Typhon with the ogre. But, then, in a few pages, he tumbles from his castle. This is analogous, in a mythical sense, to the Student tumbling from his castle at the Son's return. And so in a sense, Typhon has become Severian's defeated ogre as well. Very Wolfean, at least in the way I read him.
> 
> But if Typhon is the Student and Spring Wind, /who is Severian/? How can he be Typhon's son, since that is the role he seems to play? I can't get there with Severian going back in Time. Off the top of my head, I can only get there by guessing that Severian is /biologically/ the same person. So that's what I say. Severian is a clone of Frog. Fish is Severian's lost twin that is referenced shortly before Sev reads the Story of Frog. It's possible he has others in the story. But that is one of them.
> 
> u+16b9
> 

I never really got that story. You might be onto something there. I love the idea that Severian is in that book.  I'm not sure about all that stuff about founding the wall and stuff. Somehow I always associated that with Typhon, though intuituively without any reasoning.
I will keep this in mind.