(urth) Sev's family tree

[Lee Berman]

>Son O' Witz: Yes, I think there are a lot of pink herrings. That's a good coinage. 
>I think that is his M.O. It gets your imagination working.
 
It does seem he prefers an actively engaged reader.
 
> This would seem to parallel Borski's theory that the adjective "golden" is a marker for Severian's family.
> 
>Pft!
>I think the reason Dorcas has "golden" attached to her at several points is that it is an alchemical metaphor.  
>She is Gold, weighed down by Lead. 
 
The gold and lead connection is a good one! But why the need for "pft!". Is each metaphor restricted to one
meaning only to the exclusion of all others?
 
Consider how the Cumaean continually refers to Jolenta as "Red-Gold". Is it so impossible this is a pointed
reference to old and new sun while also hinting at her ancestry?
 
(We have red, gold and dark-haired haired characters suggested by Mr. T. as possible family members. Why can't
hair color be a guide to the relationships? Agia has chestnut hair= red + dark.)
 
 
>Severian revives her, and she casts out the lead.  At that point she seems to come out of a confusion that found 
>her following Severian as a lover and she goes on a search for her true lover. 
 
Shades of Mamelta! ;- )
 
 
>I think you are putting way too much into these imagined gender confusions and homosexual guesses..If they meant 
>anything, they would reverberate through the subtext. I'm sorry, but I do not detect a homsexual subtext.
 
I think the vernacular term is "gaydar". Different people have different levels of it. How is yours?
 
I think "bisexual" might be a better term. Didn't you ever wonder why Typhon had an erection in front of Severian
and demanded tribute of both sexy males and females and why Dorcas and Jolenta got it on and why the green man's 
voice is so feminine or...welll never mind.  I'll just say that if you don't want there to be any gender
confusion in BotNS, you should probably ignore all discussions mentioning Dionysus.

>Dunnoh, but I think while you are sniffing for clues, you might be missing the extremely potent symbolism on display 
>in regards to Casdoe's house.
 
Are you saying you found this "potent symbolism" without "sniffing for clues"? What's with the condescension?
 
>He has just DECENDED across an enormous swath of geologic time when he scales the cliff and arrives at a symbol of the 
>most basic form of human existence...THIS is the example of the humanity he wants to save, of a life he might like to have 
>lead.
 
Not to mention that the cliff he descended was full of archaeological levels of civilization. I think this is a very 
good line of thought. By why does a good line of thought mean that there is nothing else possible to read into a particular 
scene? Isn't it possible there are multiple intended layers of meaning in the Casdoe's Cabin scene? Multiple meanings for 
every scene, every character? How simple/complex is Gene Wolfe, really?