(urth) heartburn was: Re: travelling north

[Allan Anderson]

It's a wonderful, evocative place, "off topic a little." Your bringing
up The Last Temptation of Christ has reminded me of Judee Sill's
often-covered "Jesus Was A Cross-Maker":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFQcfiPv6wg&NR=1

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 8:03 PM, Jane Delawney <jane_delawney at sky.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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