(urth) The Pelerine (COTA 8)

[Jeff Wilson]

On 9/12/2010 6:05 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
>
>
> In the discussion I was speaking of, four characters weigh in on the idea that it is the
> humanity of Urth/Ushas that gives rise to Hieros. Malrubius doesn't know. Severian says
> "perhaps". Apheta, at the end, says "I believe it to be so". Tzadkiel implies he was an
> acolyte of a Conciliator/New Sun "in a creation now vanished" which could mean Briah or
> could mean some other universe.

The constraint "in a creation now vanished" would limit it to some 
previous incarnation of Briah, since only Briah is spoken of to have 
by-gone, inaccessible existences.

The only real Issue I see is to what extent the human race of the 
previous incarnation of Briah is the same race as that of Severian's 
Briah, for the purposes of determining what kind of intervention they 
need or deserve. It's the old "kill baby Hitler" question writ large: if 
the Urthlings of Severian's time have the same numerical identity as the 
Urthlings that cruelly wrought Tzadkiel's race, then severe intervention 
in their course of history is easily justified. If they are not, then 
they arguably deserve a chance to make their own mistakes.


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >