(urth) Father Inire

[Jeff Wilson]

On 12/3/2011 10:20 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
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>>> "saw someone ahead of me sitting (as I first thought) upon a high stool.  As I
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>>> drew nearer, I found that what I had taken to be a stool was a stepladder, and
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>>> that the old man perched on it was cleaning one of the pictures."
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>> Jeff Wilson: That's correct, but Sev affirmitively writes that he was sitting.
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> I don't think he does. He says he "first thought" someone was sitting, implying this
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> was later proved incorrect. So Rudesind was standing but from a distance his shortness
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> made him look like he was sitting.


Perhaps. When diagramming the sentence, it is evident that the 
parentetical could modify either of the previous "sitting" or the 
subsequent "upon a high stool", and the following sentence makes it 
clear that the stool was the mistaken thought since it is a stepladder 
instead. This accounts for the "as I thought" conditional, ergo the 
"sitting" predicate stands unmodified. Rudesinde is sitting on a 
stepladder in the way that a person would be expected to sit on a high 
stool, and in so doing gives the impression that a stepladder is a high 
stool.

High stools typically raise the occupant's head to close to a standing 
height, making their seats about rump high. The smallest practical 
stepladder would be about two 8" steps tall, while they go on up 
indefinitely, but given that when Severian speaks...

> "Excuse me," I said.
> He turned and peered down at me in puzzlement. "Know your voice, don't I?"

Rudesind's head is still higher than Sev's head, so making the "stool" 
shorter makes his standing height taller still. Given that Sev's used to 
being taller than the bulk of non-exultant humanity, the expected height 
of a high stool occupant would be a head shorter than him, while 
Rudesind seems to be at least a head taller.

> But since Rudesind:
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>   "scrambled down from the ladder like an aged monkey, seeming all arms and legs and
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> wrinkled neck; his hands were as long as my feet, the crooked fingers laced with blue
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> veins"
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> he just doesn't seem much like Ultan. Moreover, Severian mentions Ultan's height several
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> times. I would think he would mention Rudesind's tallness in a similar direct matter if it
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> were so.

But he only mentions Baldanders' tallness once or twice despite him 
being very tall indeed.

It may be that Severian thinks of tallness as being outranked in visual 
magnitude by Baldanders' overall hugeness and by Rudesind's gangliness.

But he does mention Rudesind's oversized parts (hands as long as feet, 
disporportionate limbs and neck) but does not mention any parts that 
would make him any smaller overall.

So yes, he's similar to Inire in his simian physique, but he's easily 
2-3 times his size.

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