(urth) The Trailer of Ink

[Gwern Branwen]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 3:13 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
> In URTH, Chapter XXXIX, "The Claw Of The Conciliator Again", Sev gives the
> new thorn to Typhon's guardsmen, establishing  a one-off timeloop for it to
> come into his younger self's possession a thousand years later.
>
> However, he also says, "Whence comes this unslakable thirst to leave behind
> me a wandering trail of ink, I cannot say" when contemplating a further
> volume of memoirs. This may be another timeloop setup, as in SHADOW VI,
>
> "'Of the trail of ink there is no end,'" Master Ultan told me. "Or so a wise
> man said. He lived long ago—what would he say if he could see us now? '"
>
> Could this be actual textev that at least one of the volumes, or a work that
> quotes a found volume of Sev's manuscript, has come to rest in Ultan's
> library?

Severian's phrase doesn't include the key idea - the endlessness of
writings. (Or at least, in a rather indirect way, with 'unslakeable'.)

I would look instead to Ecclesiastes. It is one of the wisdom books of
the Bible, without doubt read several times by Wolfe, and internally
attributed to a wise man. We read in one translation:

> "By this, my sonne, be admonished: of making many bookes there is no end, and much studie is a wearinesse of the flesh."

(I seem to recall seeing it as "Of many words there is no end", which
is even closer to Ultan's version.)

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net