(urth) Father Inire-Hethor

[Lee Berman]

>The encounter with Dorcas, the avern battle, the Cumaean seance, the meeting 

>with Typhon, Miles, the Old Leech, etc. etc. are all such tests of Severian's 

>Christ-like ability (to resurrect).


>Ryan Dunn: Do you include Triskele in the series of tests? I believe that is the 

>first time Severian enacts a resurrection, though he has already been rescued from 

>death at least once (at Gyoll).

 

 

That is such an excellent question on several levels!

 

When DO the powers-that-be first know that Severian is the one? Very early I think.

He finds Triskele outside the Bear Tower on an assigned errand/punishment. As a small

boy he is assigned to go to the Witches Keep where he encounters The Cumaean and Merryn

(both apparently ageless). He is assigned to go to Master Ultan in his library. In all

these assignments there is some tangential reference to the raising of the dead. I think

Severian's testing started early.

 

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).

 

This is such a difficult fact to accept because we get the story in first person. We feel

all of Severian's hurts and pains and vulnerabilities. We can't help but feel with him that

he could die in any of his adventures. But he can't. Wolfe is more subtle about revealing 

that in the first four books, but in UotNS he slaps us in the face with it as hard as he can, 

over and over and we STILL can't quite believe it.

 

We might wonder why Juturna or some other undine saved Severian from drowning before the 

action of the story begins. I think it is because she is not, like human/pawns, bound by

linear movement/perception in time. She (like B, F and O) knew that Severian would be the 

New Sun and wanted to curry favor with him. Seduce him to their side.

 

I think if Juturna had not rescued Severian from the weeds of Gyoll, he wouldn't have died.

He would have done a self-resurrection a he did on the Sanguinary Fields. Or some hierodule

would have created an eidolon and that would have popped to the surface while Severian's old

body drowned and disappeared. 

 

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).