(urth) Rudesind, Ultan

David Stockhoff dstockhoff at verizon.net
Tue Jul 27 04:17:01 PDT 2010


"Being around it all the time, they don't see it."

Thus, perhaps, the Look and See phrase carved in the Atrium of Time.

Rudesind's whole speech can be read with three levels of meaning. (1) 
the young people don't think about the past (2) there has been a long 
line of autarchs (3) there have been many "Yous." Severian's response 
doesn't commit to any one.

Jeff Wilson wrote:
> On 7/26/2010 6:19 PM, Jane Delawney wrote:
>> Recently went back to it after 15 years myself. Now reading it *again*
>> and starting to appreciate all those little wrinkles one never noticed
>> earlier. The passage which just struck me today was that regarding Sev's
>> first encounter with Master Ultan: "...Again I seemed to hear bronze,
>> and quite suddenly I felt that he and I were dead, and that the darkness
>> surrounding us was grave soil pressing in about our eyes, grave soil
>> through which the bell called us to worship at whatever shrines may
>> exist below ground ..." Severian proceeds to have a very vivid
>> recollection of the woman extracted by Vodalus's men from her grave, so
>> vivid indeed that for a moment, he perceives that dead face superimposed
>> upon the "almost luminous whiteness" of the speaker.
>
> The burial metaphor appears to be solved in Sev's final encounter with 
> Rudesind in CITADEL:
>
> "...I wanted you to see there has been a lot come before you. That 
> there was thousands and thousands that lived and died before you was 
> ever thought of, some better than you. I mean, Autarch, the way you 
> was then. You'd think anybody growing up here in the old Citadel would 
> be born knowing all that, but I've found they're not. Being around it 
> all the time, they don't see it. But going down there to Master Ultan 
> brings it home to the cleverer ones."
>
> "You are the advocate of the dead."
>
> The old man nodded. "I am. People talk about being fair to this one 
> and that one, but nobody I ever heard talks about doing right by them. 
> We take everything they had, which is all right. And spit, most often, 
> on their opinions, which I suppose is all right too. But we ought to 
> remember now and then how much of what we have we got from them. I 
> figure while I'm still here I ought to put a word in for them. And 
> now, if you don't mind, Autarch, I'll just lay the letter here on this 
> funny table—"
>
>
>> Either Ultan is actually self-luminous (!) or this is one of those
>> places where GW subtly gives notice that Sev is an unreliable narrator.
>> Or both of course.
>
> Sev's not quite at the utterly dark portion of the library yet, 
> there's still some light from the upper floor to which his eyes are 
> adjusting. The "almost luminous whiteness" is attributable to the 
> recently mentioned white beard that reaches almost to Ultan's waist, 
> and is apparently rather broad for Severian to mistake it for a 
> garment. Given that Ultan is about 7 1/2 feet tall, that's a lot of 
> beard, and a lot of whiteness. The shininess of hair would give it 
> some lustre even in the darkness.
>
> And if anyone is an exULTANt, it's Ultan.
>



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