(urth) Pike's ghost

[Gerry Quinn]

From: Lee Berman 

> > Gerry Quinn: None of that can sustain even cursory scrutiny.  A “wain” is just a 
> > large cart, but that’s beside the point.  The description refers to two of Pas’s 
> > bulldozers which “were still at work upon the whorl”.  They were planting a tree 
> > behind his throne.  If the mountain head were above a throne, a tree behind it 
> > would be kind of invisible, no?  It has absolutely nothing to do with the mountain head.
> > The orgy is on a drape Blood has ordered or acquired to cover the Sacred window in his 
> > rothel.  It is an obscene parody of Campion’s well-known original painting.  Typhon did 
> > not have two penises, or if he had Severian did not mention it.  The two penises in the orgy 
> > painting are clearly created by a painter steeped in the two-headed iconography of Pas the 
> > whorl god – it was painted by someone in the Whorl, and could not have been painted before 
> > Typhon became Pas.  [Campion may or may not have departed with the Whorl.]
 
> Gerry, you are entitled to your opinion though I concur that it doesn't sustain even cursory
> scrutiny. You are reading the text in isolationist fashion, as though it is describing some
> reality rather than being a work of literary fiction which contains allusion, often to the 
> author's own previous work.

No, I’m reading the text in order to learn what the author meant to imply by it, which in this case is really rather clear.  If the text says “Silk went through the door”, we do not have to drag up every instance of a door being mentioned in the text to understand it.  Much the same may be said of erections.

 
> In this case there is a clear, easy to see connection between this painting and Severian's 
> encounter with Typhon.

There is zero connection.  Typhon has an erection when he is excited by the exercise of power.  Porno-Pas has two erections in Blood’s painting.  But these have nothing in particular to do with one another.  Erections are not uncommon in hard-core pornographic images; it is their absence that would be surprising.


> We don't know where it was created, Whorl or Urth, but it depicts 
> Typhon on Urth, where Typhon actually had a throne.

It cannot depict Typhon on Urth.  There is no plausible reason that an artist would represent Typhon with two penises, so clearly the pornographic image depicts Pas.  And therefore it was painted on the Whorl, where Pas rules.

The original, non-pornographic picture by Campion on which it was based also depicts Pas.  Arguably. however, it depicts Typhon also.  Both paintings include both a physical and a non-physical figure (“the vast, dim faces of the spiritual Pas”).  The physical figure in Campion’s original may be intended to represent the Monarch’s creation of the Whorl, where his spiritual self is being enthroned.  The painting is set on the Whorl.  We are told so in the text.


> It does not depict Pas.  
> How does a computer program have a throne, not to mention preside over an orgy?

A computer program doesn’t have a throne, but there is no reason why a painting of one cannot include a throne, or an orgy, or both.  Pas is depicted in many ways by his worshippers (and, as we see, by others).  The content of Campion’s painting is metaphorical for the most part.

And certainly the gods of the Whorl could preside over orgies, if they so wished.  Apparently they do not, but that’s no reason why Blood’s unknown artist, creating a painting suitable for a brothel, should not have imagined it.


> Campion's painting is a cleaned up version of this one, not the reverse.

Yet another reason to rule this out is Blood’s observation, “do you know how much that stuff costs?” which has a clear implication of “a bit but not as much as an antique from before the time of the Whorl”.  Most likely Blood or a previous owner of the brothel had it commissioned.

 
> (Blood's primary association was with Scylla, not Pas, btw)      

And?  Maybe he has Scylla-porn drapes too.  Tentacles everywhere.

- Gerry Quinn
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