(urth) hello, anyone want to talk BOTNS? If so - Jolenta and her Guild?

[Jack Smith]

Isn't it Severian who makes this statement about "the top of our tower"?
Is this the passage you're referring to?

     "Even Jolenta shook her head, and I said, "No.  I've spent my life so
near the middle of the city that the wall was no more than a dark line on
the northern horizon when we looked from the glass-roofed room at the top of
our tower.""   (Shadow, XXXV)

Best wishes,
Jack


On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 9:42 PM, Jane Delawney <jane_delawney at sky.com>wrote:

> Hello? Is there anybody out there?
>
> Just about a third of the way through my fifth or sixth rereading of BOTNS
> and wondering if anyone has any insights to offer on a few things I never
> noticed before (there are always things one didn't notice before!).
>
> On this occasion - when Severian meets up with Dr. Talos's Players at
> Ctesiphon's Cross (even tho' he meant to do no such thing!) Jolenta at one
> point remarks to him regarding the Wall of Nessus that she could see it as a
> line of black on the northern horizon 'from the glass-roofed room *at the
> top of our tower*'.
>
> Now I've read a little more I am aware of the interpretation placed upon
> this by Robert Borski who extrapolates that Jolenta, whose original name we
> are never told, was possibly raised amongst the Witches and may indeed be
> Severian's lost twin sister. Whatever the truth of this, it's certainly
> clear that Jolenta has known a life where she dwelt in a tower high enough
> to view the Wall even from the midst of Nessus, and that in addition, like
> Severian himself, she once knew a fellowship close enough that even after
> some time, during which she has either left voluntarily or been ejected for
> some infraction, she (like Severian, again) still refers to her former
> comrades as 'us'; it is 'OUR tower'.
>
> However this does not afford proof that she was ever apprenticed to the
> Witches; whilst the Witches' Guild is the only one we are told of which is
> exclusively female, Severian is careful to tell us that most guilds (saving
> his own, that of the Beast-Masters and that of the Witches) do admit both
> sexes. So even if Jolenta does remember a childhood in a Guild Tower within
> the Citadel (and there's no suggestion that all Guilds have their
> headquarters in this area, whether within ship/Towers or not, so she could
> have been raised in a Tower outside the citadel, or even within some
> entirely different kind of structure which could none the less have
> qualified as a 'tower' and sported a glass roof of a different sort) there's
> no certainty that this was the tower of the Witches. She could have been an
> upholsterers' apprentice perhaps; or an apothecaries'.
>
> I wonder if anyone on the list has any views on the subject? Asking,
> because as someone who has read BOTNS several times it was really striking
> to me really to notice this phrase for the first time (I'm sure I've read it
> many times without taking in the possible implications).
>
> Apologies to all if this is a simple beginner's question and merely betrays
> that I haven't been following the fandom for some years - this is quite
> true, and I'm currently trying to catch up.
>
> cheers and thanks
>
> JD
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-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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