(urth) heartburn was: Re: travelling north

[Jane Delawney]

On 03/06/10 23:21, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> I think it's #2 that gives some people heartburn.
>    
while commenting upon:

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 3:19 PM, John Watkins<john.watkins04 at gmail.com>  wrote:

> >  I think this has been covered, right?
> >
> >  1)  Obviously there are intentional parallels between Severian and Jesus.
> >  2)  Obviously Severian is not a literal stand-in for or equivalent to Jesus.
>    


Heartburn being an understatement no doubt! Regarding this, I feel that 
one of the most interesting passages of all occurs toward the end of 
'The Urth of the New Sun'. [I know there are those who do not care for 
the sequel, but Wolfe wrote it also, to continue Severian's story, and 
so I feel it should at least be mentioned.]

Severian has  traveled via the Corridors of Time to the ancient past of 
the Stone Town, where he has been taken by its people for (what appears 
to approximate to) a solar deity. To the extent that when he attempts 
seriously to leave, they kill him in order to keep him with them for 
ever. The whole referring back of course to the episode in *Conciliator* 
where we first get a heads up that Severian and the vivimancer 
Apu-Punchau are in some sense the same person (or 
Copenhagen-interpretation iterations of the same entity).

Severian wakes up in Apu-Punchau's tomb, with the dead body of his 
'other self' alongside him; he is baffled (as usual!) and frightened, 
but fortunately the white-clad figures of the Hierodules are there to 
explain things to him, or to help him construct his own explanation. 
During the course of this Ossipago offers to take all of them back to a 
'better time'; an offer that is refused. Over the page Famulimus tells 
Severian that if they had allowed Ossipago to do this, he would have 
taken them back to an earlier time and 'That would not have been a 
better place for you, I think.' All this after the two non-machine 
Hierodules have prostrated themselves before the 'resurrected' Severian, 
'the head of his  race and its savior'.

One is left with supposition. Are we to gather that if so allowed, 
Ossipago would have transported the party 'back' in time (using 
Severian's perspective) to another tomb, and another Resurrection? 
Famulimus forbids it, thus preventing this final merging of timelines. 
On this interpretation, while Severian grows and evolves to become a 
kind of savior, the Powers do not allow that final identification of 
Severian with Christ himself. On the other hand, since Severian/the 
Sleeper is now  a practised wanderer of the Corridors of Time, nowhere 
is it excluded that somewhere along the line, with his further internal 
spiritual evolution perhaps, this identification could happen. Maybe 
Famulimus is saying 'Not right now' (that is, Severian's 'now'), rather 
than 'No way that's wrong and always will be.'
>>>> On the other hand, the intended parallels do pile up. To once again
>>>> quote Castle of the Otter/Castle of Days:
>>>> "Many of us have read so often that he was a "humble carpenter"...The
>>>> man who built the built the cross was as much a carpenter too...The only
>>>> object we
>>>> are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a
>>>> whip...Christ knew not only the pain of torture but the pain of being a
>>>> torturer..."
>>>>          
>>> That's a good one, which I'd forgotten.  But it doesn't mean Severian is
>>> like Christ or that he did for his universe what Wolfe believes Jesus did
>>> for ours.  Severian is far from perfect.
>>>
>>> Wolfe also points out a parallel to someone who was presumably not a
>>> savior at all, the carpenter who made the cross.
>>>        
Hmm. To veer off topic a little -  there is another writer - a devout 
Orthodox (big 'O') Christian - who has (to the best of my recollection) 
used exactly this last notion in writing of Christ himself. Nikos 
Kazantzakis in 'The Last Temptation of Christ' has Christ as an 
apprentice carpenter building crosses, instruments of torture and death, 
for the Occupying Power. (I will not comment on this; I'm just relaying 
the information.) Does the Guild of Seekers for Truth and Penitence have 
their apprentices help to build their 'apparatus'?

It *is* off topic of course; but still, since it is many years since I 
read that book please correct me if I have remembered LTOC wrong.

I don't think I have though - It's so unlikely I'd have invented this 
idea myself back then.

regards

JD