(urth) Rudesind, Ultan

[Jeff Wilson]

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.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >