(urth) vanished people=Hieros

[Lee Berman]

"Awake, for the Morning in the Bowl of Night, has flung

the Stone that puts Stars to Flight"

 

>David Stockhoff: Venus is the stone, that last star which precedes the sun. 

>I have no idea really, but if Venus is love and God is love---facts which 

>do not escape the author of Long Sun---well, then ....

 

Aw, c'mon, 'fess up! This is bending over backwards and twisting sideways

to avoid the unavoidable conclusion that Wolfe means the passage to refer

to the sun like so many other sun references in BotNS (not BotNV).

 

I'm not arguing (at this time) that Kayaam meant the sun in his stanza. I'm

arguing that WOlfe interprets it as the sun and that's why Severian/Apu Punchau

gets that passage sung to him at this crucial time. He needs to be reminded

he is the sun (which is the source of his power and his salvation from the

depths of human history).

 

Anyway, Wolfe has specifically chastised his readers to not fall into the 

pop culture trap of calling Venus a goddess of love. "She was a sex goddess".

God is sex?  Not sure that works as well. (and Kypris was the consort of Pas

not The outsider)

 

>I wouldn't put much weight on Lucifer's later identity as Satan though, 
>just its meaning of Light-Bringer (Sun-Bringer?). And there you go.

 

I certainly wouldn't! And that's because a certain David Stockhoff made the

importance of the distinction clear in this very forum A number of months back. 

And I appreciate that!

 

Since you suggested the possibility, I did a quick Lucifer/sun search and found 

counter-evidence. The light Lucifer brings is associated with starlight. Light

amidst darkness, outshining even Jupiter and Saturn (an apt myth metaphor) but 

only until the sun arrives (an apt Christian metaphor) then it/he is vastly

outshone.

 

 

Kypris/Venus and Lucifer DayStar are surely referenced in other parts of the Sun Story

but not here, I think, where the story is so intensely focused on Severian as a

Sun god.