(urth) Green is Urth Redux

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Tue, 1/11/11, Jane Delawney <jane_delawney at sky.com> wrote:

> From: Jane Delawney <jane_delawney at sky.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Green is Urth Redux
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 5:27 PM
> On 11/01/11 15:35, Marc Aramini
> wrote:
> > Wolfe will not elaborate on it, probably with anyone
> now, but when I say the rules it is clear the TEXT sets the
> rules for astral travel, and I did not have a way to
> reconcile the passage of time since Rogoglio had been there
> with the time they arrived on Urth, but I knew time was
> involved.  (ie - it was later than he left, but way way
> way earlier than the present of the text).
> >    
> I think I see what you are driving at Marc, forgive if I
> get this wrong.
> 
> To me there's no problem with Silk/Horn et al astral
> travelling to Severian's Urth - it is probably their
> 'present time'. The Whorl has been around 300 subjective (to
> the inhabitants) years in transit; but for at least a part
> of that time it has been moving at relativistic velocities
> and would therefore have been subject to time dilatation.
> It's entirely feasible that an interval which seems to the
> denizens of the Whorl to have been 300 or so years might in
> fact have been 1000+ years (ie. approximately the interval
> between Typhon's reign on Urth and Severian's time) in
> 'reality', 'absolute time' or whatever one cares to call it:
> time as it progressed outwith the Whorl. Therefore it's
> entirely possible that Rigoglio's and Silk/Horn's party have
> travelled astrally to the Urth of Severian's youth which is
> happening at the same time as Silk/Horn's odyssey on Blue
> and Green.
>

yes, in general, the obvious conclusion is that the whole book is taking place in the present when sev is just about to start his journey, but my convuluted reading requires that point on urth to be way in the past, I just didn't have a mechanism before (ie- Rigoglio was on Urth at a certain time, if they were clearly going through time they SHOULD have ended up at the time he left, but they didn't, they ended up much later, but at I time I feel certain is not the "Now" of the text.  And the Rajan showing up in that ladies past seems to indicate he can do stuff like that).

I don't think it can be proven, and unfortunately the burden of proof is on my weird reading, but these asides from the narrator make me firmly believe that this is a thematic, symbolic, and literal equation between green and urth, and that either we have to accept Wolfe lied in his interview or lied to his biggest fan, a Catholic fascist to boot :( .  He never defended or retracted the statement to me, only later asked me to not tell anybody after the Gevers incident had already occurred and he had confronted Wolfe disbelievingly.  He needn't have worried, even these spoiler types of statements can't spoil a wolfe book.  I just can't fathom nobody else buys it.  Nobody questions Weer is dead.  How can a dead man talk to us?  That guy in the colorless cloak with the stiff bird-legged walk on Green is sure familiar.