(urth) The Outsider

Fri Dec 17 08:02:33 PST 2010

I would argue that it is very important to take anything Malrubius teaches Severian to heart within the realm of BotNS. Here may be the single most important thing Malrubius explained...

"Just as a flower blooms, throws down its seed, dies, and rises from its seed to bloom again, so the universe we know diffuses itself to nullity in the infinitude of space, gathers its fragments (which because of the curvature of that space meet at last where they began) and from that seed blooms again. Each such cycle of flowering and decay marks a divine year.

As the flower that comes is like the flower from which it came, so the universe that comes repeats the one whose ruin was its origin; and this is as true of its finer features as of its grosser ones: The worlds that arise are not unlike the worlds that perished, and are peopled by similar races, though just as the flower evolves from summer to summer, all things advance by some minute step.

In a certain divine year (a time truly inconceivable to us, though that cycle of the universes was but one in an endless succession), a race was born that was so like to ours that Master Malrubius did not scruple to call it human. It expanded among the galaxies of its universe even as we are said to have done in the remote past, when Urth was, for a time, the center, or at least the home and symbol, of an empire.

These men encountered many beings on other worlds who had intelligence to some degree, or at least the potential for intelligence, and from them—that they might have comrades in the loneliness between the galaxies and allies among their swarming worlds—they formed beings like themselves.

It was not done swiftly or easily. Uncountable billions suffered and died under their guiding hands, leaving ineradicable memories of pain and blood. When their universe was old, and galaxy so far separated from galaxy that the nearest could not be seen even as faint stars, and the ships were steered thence by ancient records alone, the thing was done. Completed, the work was greater than those who began it could have guessed. What had been made was not a new race like Humanity's, but a race such as Humanity wished its own to be: united, compassionate, just.

I was not told what became of the Humanity of that cycle. Perhaps it survived until the implosion of the universe, then perished with it. Perhaps it evolved beyond our recognition. But the beings Humanity had shaped into what men and women wished to be escaped, opening a passage to Yesod, the universe higher than our own, where they created worlds suited to what they had become. From that vantage point they look both forward and back, and in so looking they have discovered us. Perhaps we are no more than a race like that who shaped them. Perhaps it was we who shaped them —or our sons—or our fathers. Malrubius said he did not know, and I believe he told the truth. However it may be, they shape us now as they themselves were shaped; it is at once their repayment and their revenge."

(Citadel of the Autarch, c.34 - "The Key to the Universe")

With the entire obliteration of a universe, we cannot assume that pictures of astronauts from Earth carried over from one divine year to the next. This universe is, at best, a refined mirror image of Earth, but in this Urth, there were once astronauts very like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. One would stand to reason there is a God (Increate) and a Christ figure (Conciliator?).

Whether Urth is in a divine year before or after Earth is a different question all together, but Wolfe clearly outlines that a divine year includes the death of one universe and the blossoming of another.

...ryan

On Dec 17, 2010, at 7:52 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:

> I think it is unnecessary to study too closely the question of incarnations and universes. Seems to me that the question of how many incarnations can fit into the multiverse depends far more on one's sense of a "universe" than on one's theology. Lewis is bound to think differently from Wolfe, and so on. At one point we discussed this on the planetary level (specifically, Wolfe's Christmas story set on another planet).
> 
> Recall that "universe" was once commonly  taken to refer to our galaxy alone; now we know how much bigger the universe is than we thought a mere 100 years ago. And theories of its construction have advanced tremendously as well.
> 
> After all, even if we objectively observe several "universes," how do we know whether these represent subdivisions of a universe, or additions into a multiverse?
> 
> We don't. The "Author" has the final say, and can therefore hand out the incarnations as he sees fit.
> 
> On 12/17/2010 6:52 AM, Andrew Mason wrote:
>> Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> 
>>> (I don't think most people, including Catholic theologians, would be shocked
>>> by the notion of Incarnations on differnet planets of our universe
>>> either...)
>> That is the basis of the (in some circles) well-known Christmas hymn
>> 'Every star shall sing a carol', by Sidney Carter.
>> 
>> On the other hand it is firmly rejected by C.S. Lewis, who seems OK
>> with the idea of different incarnations in different universes.
>> 
>> None of which, of course, proves anything about Wolfe. I agree that
>> your reading is the simplest; it fits in with the fact that Severian's
>> world has a past very (incredibly) like our own, and the clear
>> existence of a Christianity-analogue there. These can be explained in
>> other ways; but to insist that they must be seems to me to turn on a
>> theological assumption that it's not clear Wolfe shares. I'm inclined
>> to share it myself; but manifestly not everyone does, so I don't
>> insist on it as a principle of interpretation.
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