(urth) Corundum of the Claw

[Son of Witz]

One of the unanswered questions about The Claw of the Conciliator is "How
did the thorn become encapsulated in corundum?"

Nothing I've found in the books gives us a clue to a plot based answer,
but I think I've come to understand the symbolism and why it is there.

The corundum represents the accumulated body of Myth and Legend that has
grown around this artifact of the Conciliator.  It's reality is only dimly
apprehended through this crystal, as even the Pelerines thought that this
was "only a flaw at the heart of the jewel", and our man of science,
Baldanders thought the claw was "Nothing. a fragment of corundum."  All
either really see is the myth, not the reality.  Baldanders is closer to
the truth perhaps, because his act destroys the crystal enclosure and
exposes the naked thorn, just as he know Severian will be the New Sun, and
not just it's herald.  The moment Severian holds the thorn is the moment
that he is truly on his path to becoming the New Sun.  Severian doesn't
know it yet. Of course, but he has broken all of his false allegiances at
this point.

after the Crystal is broken, Severian understands it's ( now missing )
light as "the only light we had."  He finds the shards, and gives them to
the see, literally burying the myth.  After the myth is disposed of, he
finds the real Claw, the thorn, and he waxes philosophical:

"Whenever I looked at it, it seemed to erase thought. Not as wine and
certain drugs do, by rendering the mind unfit for it, but by replacing it
with a higher state for which I know no name. Again and again I felt
myself enter this state, rising always higher until I feared I should
never return to the mode of consciousness I call normality; and again and
again I tore myself from it. Each time I emerged, I felt I had gained some
inexpressible insight into immense realities. At last, after a long series
of these bold advances and fearful retreats, I came to understand that I
should never reach any real knowledge of the tiny thing I held, and with
that thought (for it was a thought) came a third state, one of happy
obedience to I knew not what, an obedience without reflection because
there was no longer anything to reflect upon, and without the least
tincture of rebellion."

There, at the end you have it. He has a happy obedience without the least
tincture of rebellion. He has been put through his tests, and now he is
taking up the mantle.


Somewhere it dawned on me that what Wolfe does, at least as far as I've
read is to write the memoirs of exceptional, legendary characters who
don't know that they are exceptional.  Having only read the Suns, the
Soldiers and the Wizard Knight, this seems to hold up.