(urth) The Outsider

[Son of Witz]

On Dec 18, 2010, at 8:45 AM, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Witz said:
> 
>>> This is a book that seems soooooooo important to Severian that he  carries it 
>>> through the entire BotNS. It is plausible that this is a  truly random event, 
>>> but NOTHING else about >>Severian's life, or the tasks  he's assigned, seems 
>>> random at all, so it is just as likely, perhaps  more likely, that Ultan has had 
>>> a hand in shaping him.
>>> 
>>> This book is treacherous.
> 
> Allow me some total speculation. You've been warned.
> 
> Ultan, of course, talks about the The Book of Gold, and the circumstances in 
> which to-be-apprenticed librarians is a mystical, mysterious experience. It 
> initiates their initiation.
> 
> And he uses the word "christening," which can hardly be a careless use on 
> Wolfe's part, I'd imagine:
> 
> "The child, as I said, in time discovers The Book of Gold. Then the librarians 
> come - like vampires, some say, but others say like the fairy godparents at a 
> christening. They speak to the child, and the child joins them. Henceforth, he 
> is in the library wherever he may be, and soon his parents know him no more. I 
> suppose it is much the same among torturers."
> 
> So we've got the imagery of dying (vampires) from one life and being reborn into 
> another (vampires, again, and the christening, as well as one's parents not 
> knowing one anymore). And there's also the sense that, after you find the book, 
> you're always in that new world, no matter where you are.
> 
> The point: it's very much a conversion story. And it's a conversion story 
> centered on finding a book. 
> 
> 
> So here the speculation begins: in what sense in Sev's Brown Book perhaps his 
> own Book of Gold? (Does he ever call it that later? I can't recall exactly, but 
> I thought he might.) But it's also brown, rather than gold. We know it's myths 
> that are true but also corrupted. So in what sense does the Brown Book serve as 
> a kind of true-but seen "through a glass darkly" revelation to Sev of truer 
> things?
> 
> And when Wolfe also admits that he knows many people have seen New Sun as a Book 
> of Gold itself, it seems to fit: it, too, is telling true myths in false ways.
> 
> So it seems like we have a very Christian (if slightly less Catholic) notion of 
> a book being a guide to revelation. But we also have the very Wolfean idea that 
> the book misleads in all kinds of ways.
> 
> It still seems right, as Witz said, that the book should shape him in a TRUE way 
> (apart from the Hiero-folk manipulation). Metaphorically, at least it works. 
> Maybe that's just obvious, though...
> 
> 


I dig all that. It truly is his book of gold and his initiation into the myths of Urth's past. Severian himself wonders if his memoir will be someone's Book of Gold. I think it is an apt reading. This scene is definitely an initiation into Urth's intellectual history for Severian. I love that he goes into total darkness before Ultan shows up like a glow worm or something. Recently I watched an excellent animated film, The Secret of Kells, which has had me thinking a lot about how crucial books are during dark ages.  This is huge for Sev, moreso because he ends up drowning the library. This makes his re-telling of the stories into his own even more significant.  
~witz







>