(urth) Resurrections

[David Stockhoff]

Thecla and Severian, in Severian, experience a rapture that is 
specifically compared to the local version of "heaven." It is temporary, 
of course, but it is not presented as false.

I learned that I had been more to her than I had ever guessed, and at 
last fell into a sleep in which my dreams were all of her. Not memories 
merely—memories I had possessed in plenty before. I held her poor, cold 
hands in mine, and I no longer wore the rags of an apprentice, nor the 
fuligin of a journeyman. We were one, naked and happy and clean, and we 
knew that she was no more and that I still lived, and we struggled 
against neither of those things, but with woven hair read from a single 
book and talked and sang of other matters.

12 THE NOTULES

I came from my dreams of Thecla directly to the morning. At one instant 
we walked mutely together in what surely must have been the paradise the 
New Sun is said to open to all who, in their final moments, call upon 
him; and though the wise teach that it is closed to those who are their 
own executioners, yet I cannot but think that he who forgives so much 
must sometimes forgive that as well. At the next, I was aware of cold 
and unwelcome light, and the piping of birds.



Lee Berman wrote:
>   
>> Jeff Wilson- This could be from duty and from a hope of redemption, that they can
>> continue to serve the cause of Urth, instead of ending in failure. And it
>> could be some projection on Sev's part, relieved that he didn't become a
>> puppet of the dozens of imperious minds of his predecessors. It's his
>> glands that are still real, after all. Something in the process may keep the
>> duplicated personalities amiable to the situation, the way the Casdoe's husband's
>> imprint wasn't upset or particularly concerned about having been eaten or helping
>> the alzabo kill and eat the rest of his family.
>>     
>  
> I think this is a very apt comparison which I haven't seen made before.
>  
> I can't help but think that horror was intended in the scene where Becan is so 
> immediately happy and accepting of his new existence as chunks of chewed meat in the 
> Alzabo digestive system and as a (presumably) temporary neural circuit that he is
> willingly desirous that his family join him in the belly of the beast.
>  
> Yet under similar circumstances we are supposed to interpret rapture instead of 
> horror for the beings living on in Severian? I just don't know. Perhaps it is meant
> to be an individual interpretation. But my impression is that for Thecla and for the
> others in Severian's head it isn't a divine experience. At best they all remain
> lonely and unfulfilled. We don't hear much from them in UotNS. 		 	   		  
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