(urth) Father Inire-Hethor

[Gerry Quinn]

From: Lee Berman 

> Ryan, we've discussed the issue of whether Severian is actively lying or is truly ignorant
> about some issues that we readers can discern about him and his life. I think there is one
> thing Severian is in true self-denial about, so much so that it becomes almost equally 
> difficult for us as readers to believe it. That thing is:  SEVERIAN IS IMMORTAL. 
> (and yes, that implies he is a god).

He certainly becomes effectively immortal - or at least he regenerates, like Doctor Who.  He becomes the Conciliator – I wouldn’t call the Conciliator a god as such, but he certainly has godlike aspects.

I wouldn’t say immortality necessarily makes one a god.  If it did, wouldn’t amoebae be gods?  That Severian is in denial about his nature may be tenable but I don’t think we are forced in that direction.  He tells us about his hypothesis that he is the first Severian, and after that he doesn’t talk much about his nature.  Like all such Wolfe heroes, he takes his cue from Jesus Christ and says things like “So you say” or some other such studious ambiguity when questioned about the matter.  (He is trying to be a Christian figure!)


> Someone recently asked about the significance of Severian pondering his own skull after Urth 
> has been flooded to Ushas.  I think it is a Hamlet-Yorick reference of course as Severian
> ponders his own mortality. But it might also signify that he was able to live after the flood
> and breathe underwater because he was another eidolon and that power was within himself, not 
> because he finally allowed himself to be seduced by the mermaid/undine kiss which grants the
> power to breathe underwater (as Baldanders experienced).     

If he had lived a life underwater, his skull would have moved, instead of staying where he drowned!

Also, Baldanders needed no mermaid’s kiss.  When Severian shares a room with him, he notices the strange scars on his neck.  Baldanders knows he will have to move to the water at some point in the near future (even now he can only get about on land with the aid of an antigravity belt), and has already equipped himself with gills.

- Gerry Quinn


 





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