(urth) Father Inire: teratoid
Lee Berman
severiansola at hotmail.com
Tue Dec 14 10:03:54 PST 2010
>David Stockhoff- I think the answer is in the word "teratoid." Teratoid means monster-like---
in other words, RESEMBLING A >MONSTER. What could this be but a"universal" symbol denoting the
presence of monsters and connoting danger? Three pairs of horns >and three sets of tentacles would
do the trick for most people.
I'm okay with that. But here's the thing..the only thing we see coming out of those particular mirrors
is the silver fish-thing in the Domnina story (though I think Inire says there could be more creatures
to come if given more time). Borski has suggested the fish is a "potent Christian symbol" or
something like that.
Our only other BotNS view of such mirrors is the old Autarch's book, in which we see an island-sized
version of angelic Tzadkiel. How can these two mirror creatures be reconciled with the monster association?
I'll toss out what I think is another related phenomenon. On Tzadkiel's ship we are told the apports
are creatures which have been inadvertantly transported by juxaposition of the ship's mirror sails.
We get as crazy a collection of aliens as we'll ever see in a WOlfe book. But, we are told, sometimes the
apports are people, though (from an angelic point of view?) people can be categorized as monsters from
a higher being's perception, or something like that. Apheta explicitly defines Severian as a monster.
How can we encompass all these mirror views with meaningful understanding? Any thoughts?
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