(urth) Urth-Earth links

[Antonin Scriabin]

Ah, thank you.  I remember that part of Long Sun now.  In reading these
books, it seemed more that the Outsider was reminiscent of Christ (the
Outsider being the "real" god in the midst of a number of fake ones) than
Severian.

I guess I am thrown off by the term "Christ figure" because it seems to be
overly allegorical.  The savior hero archetype existed before the historical
Christ; I guess I just think in those terms instead.

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com
> wrote:

> >
> > When does Silk see Jesus?  I vaguely remember something like that;
> perhaps
> > in his meditations on the Outsider he comes to such a conclusion?
>
> The clearest evidence is the statement that in one of his
> enlightenments he saw a man riding through a city where people were
> waving fronds. The man on the scaffold, and the child lying in straw,
> which he sees may well be Jesus as well, but that's less certain.
>
> >
> > The Severian-as-a-type-of-Christ stuff isn't as obvious to me.  Severian
> is
> > not divine, and not in charge; he gives the appearance of both of these,
> > however, only because as the Conciliator he is wrenched forward and
> backward
> > in time by entities more powerful than him.  He is used as a pawn to
> usher
> > in the New Sun at the expense of (presumably) most of the life on Urth,
> but
> > this seems a decidedly un-Christlike salvation to me.  There are
> superficial
> > similarities between Christ and Severian (male, human yet more than
> human,
> > prophesied, etc.) but there differences enough that I see treating
> Severian
> > as allegorical to Christ as a desservice to the complexity of his
> character,
> > and the story.  Rather, Severian seems a sort of perversion of what we
> > consider Christ-like and heroic; Severian is decidedly flawed, mundane,
> and
> > unaware of himself in time, his role, and his powers for the majority of
> the
> > story.  When he becomes an amalgamation of the past Autarchs and Thecla,
> he
> > doesn't even retain a singular identity anymore; this is also very unlike
> > Christ.
>
> There are some rather clear correspondences between Severian and
> Christ; for instance he turns water into wine, and one of his deaths
> and resurrections - a death which, unlike most of the others, is
> torturous - is accompanied by an earthquake.
>
> On the more general question of whether he's a Christ figure, it
> depends just what you mean by the term. In a literary sense I would
> say that he is, because what he does parallels what Christ does in
> some way, but that is certainly compatible with his being flawed.
> (Harry Potter, for instance, is a Christ figure in that sense. There's
> no doubt he's flawed, though.) And Wolfe preferred to call Severian a
> Christian figure, presumably to avoid any suggestion that he should be
> seen as perfect.
>
> Wolfe has also called Severian a form of the Outsider. Forms of the
> Outsider are most clearly explained in OBW; it's made clear there that
> you can _become_ a form of the Outsider - Kypris has done so, and
> Thelxipeia may do so in the future. So presumably these are not just
> forms which the Outsider adopts; they are people in their own right,
> who have become in some way attuned to the Outsider, through whom he
> has spoken and acted. I suspect Silk himself may be another. Again,
> this cannot mean that they are perfect - Kypris is not. So I think
> this means we should see what Severian does in a positive light and as
> a manifestation of God's will, but not deny his flaws.
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