(urth) The Wizard

[Jerry Friedman]

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com>
>--- On Sun, 3/11/12, António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>As I've stated boringly to tears, it's the knowledge that Wolfe is a catholic that makes me almost certain that either Briah's Jesus wasn't the Son of God or Briah's Humanity is fundamentally worse than us. I can't envision a world that has already been visited by Christ degenerating into Urth. Iow, it's the knowledge that Wolfe is a catholic that makes me believe the Christian trappings of Briah are more form than substance. 
>> 
>I don't want to go around and around, but, unlike many mystical religious writers, Wolfe is a keen observer of the world.  He has lived through a war personally, has seen men killed, has passed through DETROIT and Chicago.  He knows that there is hell on earth and on urth, in this day and age, and still believes in Christ.
> 
>There are some things going on in the inner city that make Urth seem not that bad at all.  How could Christ be Christ with all the bad things that happen today?  this is why i don't find the argument convincing - terrible things happen to good people and vice versa in reality, but that doesn't deter Wolfe from his beliefs.  there is no reason to posit everything is the same except Christ in Urth when the real world is so ugly at times, too.

I'm inclined to agree, Marc.  The Commonwealth doesn't strike me as clearly worse than much of A.D. Earth history.  Ascia is more totalitarian than any tyranny I know of, but on the other hand, we don't have superpowerful sea monsters controlling our tyrannies.  We also aren't suffering from a depletion of resources, notably including sunlight, the way Urth is.  And being in contact with a more technologically powerful but not directly helpful culture (the Hierowhatevers) is often harmful.  Wolfe handles that resentment well, I think (possibly inspired by Asimov's "dirty Spacers").


Lee takes the sea monsters and the inhumi as evidence that there hasn't been an Incarnation, if I understand him correctly, but I don't think Christians see Christ as having disposed of physical monsters.  At most it would be allegorical.  ("Done is a battell on the dragon blak.")  The flood that Severian causes may wipe out the sea monsters, though it hardly seems likely, but that still leaves the inhumi--do they need another flood?

Despite all this, I'm inclined to think the only Incarnation in the Lupiverse is the one in our universe, and its effects in Briah are transdimensional.  But I don't think there's any way to prove it.  And as Craig Brewer said, it doesn't strike me as all that important.


Jerry Friedman