(urth) traveling north

[Adam Thornton]

On Jun 11, 2010, at 5:30 PM, Jane Delawney wrote:

> 
> Have remembered a couple of other points which gave me pause regarding compass directions back when I last read this work. The first was the description of Sev's journey to the Last House and back. He is clearly described as travelling with his shadow before him, a phenomenon which can only be observed in the southern hemisphere when travelling southward. I now realise that at the time I first read this, I assumed that when this happened he had to have been travelling northward ... but in fact this is not the case, since Mannea's map is not compass-direction specific as in fact it could not be since the Last House does not quite exist in normal space. He could have been travelling in any direction at all when he made note of his shadow, since to find the Last House he has to follow the map's instructions (which do not include points of the compass) exactly, and may have been travelling in that direction he had not previously noticed :)

Given the earlier confusion about the sun and the shoulder, I want to go out on a limb here and invoke something else Wolfe is known to have read and liked, and say that it is clear that Severian is travelling in the Land of Oz.

> Also there is the (probably quite small) point of the identity - if any! - in our world of *The Eight*, a constellation which Sev notes consists only of three stars (so the reason for its name is a mystery to him) and which is circumpolar about whichever pole :) he may have observed in his hemisphere throughout his life. Any views on this?

Perhaps they are the stars of the sky of the Tenth Elegy.  Which then, well, I'd hardly be the first to point out that crossing the Deadly Desert might be exactly what it sounds like.

Adam
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