(urth) Undine's nature

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Wed, 10/19/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:


From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Undine's nature
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 5:49 AM




 


 

From: Lee Berman 


> >she also apparently sleeps with Dorcas, who would be her gran.

 > Correct. I perceive the incest curse to extend across all members of Severian's family.
> This says something about his relationship to Agia and Agilus. (and explains the 
> impossible mutual  sexual attraction Severian and Jolenta feel for each other at 
> Ctesiphon's Cross)

I really don’t understand your obsession with this supposed “incest curse”.  The women Severian is attracted to comprise a remarkably even social, geographic and biological cross-section of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, which as well as being convenient to an author wishing to describe the realm, probably also has symbolic value given that Severian will eventually become Autarch, and then the Epitome of Urth.  That they are all related to Severian – and therefore related among themselves – seems nigh on unbelievable.
 
And *everybody* is attracted to Jolenta.  That’s the point of her.
 

> > Ruling out what most consider the most likely candidate for Severian’s putative sister, 
> >simply because he does not note that he is sexually attracted to her, seems a perverse 
> >reading in every sense of the word.

> This is a perverse story written by a perverse author. If your world/literary view still
> directs you to think of WOlfe as a very chaste and sexually virtuous author after 
> all these years I think that is to your eternal credit and speaks highly of your own
> morally upstanding nature.
 
Perverse it may be, but that doesn’t mean that every perversity imaginable must necessarily be omnipresent in the text.  Extraordinary hypotheses require extraordinary evidence.
 
- Gerry Quinn
 
I agree with Gerry on this one.  One perversity does not imply universal perversity.  Blood calling to blood in the lake of birds is fine, but I never bought the "golden" glow indicating relationship thing Borski brings up for the simple reason that Sev himself has black hair.  
 
The huge socio economic diversity of the women make it impossible for them all to be related to him.  Rather, individual descriptions should show genetic relationship: tall, thin waist but not weak looking, dark hair, pale.  Pia is the only one who matches that description as far as I remember.    The only reason we are looking for Severa is the fact that names like that are usually paired in the common wealth, but one case of incest does not imply ALL cases of incest.  
 
Wolfe blurs identity of one or two characters, but we shouldn't assume that all identities are completely blurred.  Malrubius is not Paleamon, Juturna is not Dorcas.  Inire is not everybody, though he might be somebody, or, with enough evidence, two somebodies.
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