(urth) What symbols mean for Wolfe

[Bill Burgess]

This is interesting.  Being new to the list, I haven't read those
discussions.

I'd find it a little surprising that anyone would think Severian was not
freely making the decisions which lead him on his path.  For example, the
compassionate decisions which lead to his exile, or decisions every step of
the way that could have made his story completely different.   He could
have sold the claw immediately for a profit for example.

Nor is there anything in the story that would lead us to believe that his
choices were all optimal in what forces outside him had chosen him for.

It seems Severian's identity consists in the choices he makes.   His being
chosen also consists in the choices he makes in the sense that his being
chosen was conditioned by those choices rather then the other way around.


On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 3:49 AM, Daniel Petersen <
danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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