(urth) interview questions

[Lee Berman]

>Jordon Flato: I'm intrigued by this notion you're playing out Lee.  I'm not completely on
>board, but I really like the idea of the loss of purity in the human strain,
>so to speak.  Especially what you bring up about Dr. Talos' play......In terms of the role of 
>demons, and how they relate to the Hiero's and hierogrammates, for me the theme that resonates 
>more with this (and I fin this particularly true with the Inhumu/Human chain), is the idea of a 
>lower life form being raised to a higher state by a higher form.  So, as we become
>'higher' in taking the blood of Christ, so the inhumu become higher by taking the blood of man.
 
I think you are right on track Jordon. What bothers many about my view of BotNS is that it involves
Severian being the product of alien/fallen angel types and humans mating. Too Creepy! Scientifically
impossible! etc. etc. This doesn't bother them reading a story about Hercules or Gilgamesh or 
other giant demi-god folk heroes. But when it comes to SEVERIAN, well!
 
(consider American folk heroes such as Paul Bunyan and Joe Magarac. They are also in the tradition of 
"Nephilim" giants, "men of reknown", but their origin remains secular as befits our Constitution, and 
their heroic exploits were related to construction and natural resource exploitation as befits US history).
 
Wolfe tried to open up awareness of cross-species mating with his pairing of Severian and Apheta, 
largely to no avail. His words on the subject in the James Jordan interview:
 
>JJ: But here you have an angelic being takes him for the night. What is going on there? Is that 
>an idea of a celestial marriage between heaven and earth?
 
>GW: I think that the ideal of the higher being trying to raise the lower being to a greater height 
>perhaps. And also the attraction that the lower being at least properly should feel toward the higher 
>being.
 
We are creeped out by the possibility of Severian's being partially inhuman because the story is told
in first person. He is SO human to us, in contrast to Hercules or Gilgamesh. Severian himself is so creeped 
by his alien heritage that he lies or feigns ignorance and refuses to openly discuss the creepier aspects of 
his being, hinting to us only with labels like "Father" Inire. (Inire does not call himself that).
 
For example:
 
We know from mythology that the mermaid's "kiss" confers the ability to breathe underwater. We have Juturna's
word during an erotic interlude that she can give Severian this ability. We have Baldanders with strange
scars on his neck, an association with Juturna and him breathing under water.
 
Then, at the end of UotNS we have Severian encountering Juturna again a couple times. We have Severian able
to swim for hours or days underwater. We have Severian mistaken for a fish god. But never does he admit
"kissing" Juturna. *Come clean Severian!!!* What are you not telling us??? You screwed the undine and you have
gills. Your being is partly from Fomalhaut in the constellation Pisces. 
 
Wolfe expects us to figure these things out, despite his lying narrators and the counter-evidence he places to 
fool the casually skeptical who value "evidence" over gestalt vision. Wolfe knows such skeptics are likely to be 
atheists; that's why I once asked Gerry Quinn if he believed in God. I could ask Roy C. Lackey, Tony Ellis or other
professional skeptics here the same question and I think I'd get a similar answer.