(urth) Who's Right?

[Ryan Dunn]

On Dec 2, 2010, at 2:25 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:

> Now of course nothing I've said proves that Inire does not in fact go around in disguise behind the scenes, manipulating everyone and everything, in addition to his apparent role as a kind of Grand Vizier and advisor to the the Autarch.  But to believe it, I need evidence, and convincing me takes stronger evidence than somebody seeing a monkey in the jungle.  Because you know, even in a book by Gene Wolfe it could have been just a monkey!

But we do know that Inire appears in disguise at least once, right? Why not more than once? I know you seek evidence, but because some evidence isn't 100% spelled out, does that mean it is not noteworthy, or not worth exploring unless it can be definitively proven?

I think Wolfe has various shades of clue overtness in his books. Some more confirmed within the text (Dr. Talos as robot, for instance), some evidently laid out for us to conclude (Dorcas as Severian's grandmother, for instance), and some more obtuse (man at drowning at Gyoll as Dorcas's husband, for instance). Those clues also have various shades of significance, as well.

Is Agia as robot significant? Well it may be, but the clues I have dug up in trying to test that theory are not extensive enough at this point to shed enough of an aureole of light on the matter. :)

My perception of the BotNS, in my readings, leads me more down the "we're watching you," premise, where others may not feel that is as central to the story. I think Severian's entire journey is foreordained, and it's not just Famulimus, Barbatus and Ossipago (and the hiero's in general) doing the watching. I believe Severian and Inire (both proven time-meddlers) are also involved in shaping the Severian we follow into the New Sun. Are they in cahoots with the hiero's? Are they motivated by saving Urth? Urthlings? This is what I seek to understand. The religious undercurrent, the mythological parallels, that's all incidental to me. Novel, but only useful if they help reveal the turns of the novel itself.

When you take this view, of course finding any possible evidence that Severian and/or Inire are watching/testing Severian ±3 is significant. The Autarch checks in on him throughout, right? The whole journey just feels staged to me, like The Truman Show, and that is significant as well. So when Severian takes time out in his tome to tell me that a red, wizened monkey is watching him from the jungle canopy, and that were it not for his arms he would think it human, yes I take note.

An example of inferred clues from SotT, after he knocks at the door in the Atrium of Time...

"There is really no describing the sensation of being watched. I have heard it called a prickling at the back of the neck, and even a consciousness of eyes that seem to float in darkness, but it is neither - at least, not for me. It is something akin to a sourceless embarrassment, coupled with the feeling that I must not turn around, because to turn will be to appear a fool, answering the promptings of baseless intuition. Eventually, of course, one does. I turned with the vague impression that someone had followed me through the hole at the base of the dial.

Instead I saw a young woman wrapped in furs standing before a door at the opposite side of the court."

So here... am I alone in deducing that Severian the Apprentice senses Severian the Lame at his back, about to knock on that door in the future? Forgive me if these theories are old hat, but either way they relate to the point I am trying to make. To compliment the previous passage, at the end of CotA, here is the part where Severian the Lame revisits the Atrium of Time...

"I had feared I would have difficulty in squeezing through its narrow crevice, but if the present Severian was somewhat larger of bone, he was also leaner, so that when I had worked my shoulders through the rest followed easily enough.

The snow I recalled was gone, but a chill had come into the air to say that it would soon return. A few dead leaves, which must have been carried in some updraft very high indeed, had come to rest here among the dying roses. The tilted dials still cast their crazy shadows, useless as the dead clocks beneath them, though not so unmoving. The carven animals stared at them, unwinking still.

I crossed to the door and tapped on it. The timorous old woman who had served us appeared, and I, stepping into that musty room in which I had warmed myself before, told her to bring Valeria to me. She hurried away, but before she was out of sight, something had wakened in the time-worn walls, its disembodied voices, hundred- tongued, demanding that Valeria report to some antiquely titled personage who I realized with a start must be myself."

A chill had come into the air. Okay, just a chill in the air? Or did he walk past/through Severian the Apprentice? The dead leaves carried in a high updraft, or by Severian the Apprentice as he hurried up through the hole? The disembodied voices, maybe just Atrium antics, but there is a clear connection to him crossing and tapping on the door, when contrasted with Severian the Apprentice's sensation of being watched. Severian the Apprentice even goes so far as to assume someone had followed him through the hole.

:)

...ryan
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