(urth) What symbols mean for Wolfe

[Daniel Petersen]

Your observation on Commitments that Shape human life contributes
fruitfully to a discussion of Wolfe's rendering of 'predestination and
freewill' (a major thematic thread of his whole Solar Cycle).

-DOJP

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Bill Burgess <whburth at gmail.com> wrote:

> *In response to the previous thread inquiring into the meaning of the
> thorn in the claw and what all other symbols, fangs, talons, etc., this
> might possibly allude to,  I thought I’d start a new thread in order to
> solicit general thoughts,  as well as to give my own,  as to what symbols
> mean for Wolfe.
>
> I don’t mean this thread to be about any particular symbol(s),  but an
> inquiry into what symbology itself is.   Of course we’ll have to use
> individual symbols as examples,  but that will be only to elucidate how
> Wolfe uses symbols in general rather than to inquire into what a specific
> symbol means.
>
> Forgive me if all I say is well known stuff from this list.  I’m brand new
> to this mailing  list and have not read through the archives at all,  nor
>  have I read any scholarly works on Wolfe;  I’ve only read the five books
> comprising the Book of the New Sun.
>
> With that,  here are some of my own  observations with support from the
> text of TBotNS
>
> 1. Symbols REPRESENT human life.
>
> *
> *That is to say,  that the story of an  individual human beings’ life,  a
> particular group of human beings lives,  or  human life in general,  can
> all be represented, in various ways, by various symbols.   This means that
> a symbol can no more be exhaustively defined then a  human being or
> humanity can be.
>
> In the text,  in the very first  paragraph,  Severian remembers the wisps
> of river fog threading the spikes in the locked gate like mountain paths
> and this image is for him a SYMBOL of his exile.
>
> Then after four books,  at the very end of TCotA,  he tells us that he has
> carried us, his readers, from
>
> “gate to gate -- from the locked and fog shrouded gate of the necropolis,
>  to the cloud racked gate we call the sky, the gate that shall lead me, as
> I hope, beyond the nearer stars”.
>
> So,  from the locked gate of the graveyard  to the gate of Hope --  which
> is as wide open as the sky.    Thus Wolfe expresses his Christianity, but I
> digress; this isn’t really my point in citing these passages.
>
> We know that the locked graveyard gate symbolizes Severian’s  exile  from
> the guild,  but we also know,  by the way this is expressed,  that Severian
> sees that exile as a symbol of an even larger Exile,  the one that will end
> on the other side of the sky gate.
>
> The story of his life is Exile.   But we could go on forever about what
> this means without ever exhausting its meaning and could probably find
> something in every chapter/episode  of all four of these books which would
> add to what Exile means.   And whatever we’d find,  it is all contained in
> this one symbol: a  locked graveyard  gate with fog wisping in it.
> So it is with all symbols.
>
>
> 2. Symbols represent COMMITMENTS that SHAPE human life.
>
> In the first chapter of TSotT, Severian says that symbols invent us rather
> than we inventing them.
> Using the example of the soldier who takes an oath and is given a coin to
> symbolize that oath,  he says they are soldiers at that moment,  even
> though they know nothing of the management of arms.   The implication being
> that they spend the rest of their lives learning the meaning of their
> commitment.
>
> Over and over this happens to Severian.    He commits himself to something
> that moves him,  some image or event  becomes a symbol for him,    and only
> later does he learn more about why he was moved, and what his commitments
> mean for his life.   He never stops learning as long as the story of his
> life continues and  this story is the unfolding of what his commitments,
> and the symbols that caused them,  mean.
>
>
> 3. The story of a human life is itself a symbol.
>
> In the passage below,  Severian says that Thecla is a symbol of undeserved
> love (Grace) for him,  and says that the force of her life as a symbol  did
> not disappear when she died anymore then what  his own life  story
> symbolizes will disappear when he closes the book he is writing.   So the
> lives of people are symbols of something that continues to exist even after
> they are gone.   The great question he ponders,  is what these symbols mean
> in and of themselves, apart from their expression in the lives of human
> beings
>
> “If Thecla had symbolized love of which I felt myself undeserving, as I
> know now that she did, then did her symbolic force disappear when I locked
> the door of her cell behind me? That would be like saying that the writing
> of this book, over which I have labored for so many watches, will vanish in
> a blur of vermillion when I close it for the last time and dispatch it to
> the eternal library maintained by the old Ultan.
> The great question then, that I pondered as I watched the floating island
> with longing eyes and chafed at my bonds and cursed the hetman in my heart,
> is that of determining what these symbols mean in and of themselves. We are
> like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but
> one, and a sword in the last.” *
>
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