(urth) Five Severians

[Marc Aramini]

I never much cared for this kind of stuff, Jolenta as Marilyn Monroe and whatnot.  Of course autobiography is in there in some way shape or form , but this kind of mapping always rubbed me as interpretationally barren.  

Patterns and repetitions and structurally created symbols are way more important for filling in elided closure. Personal problems have delayed my Peace write up but I have it framed in my head now - the green fairy book and metamorphosis, mostly into birds - mention of the children of the sidhe that become the flock, olivia as bird boned, the talk of the simurgh which roosts in the tree of life, the story of the blue bird who is king charming from the green book and professor peacock ... The banshee as derived from the word sidhe ... All those fairy stories with their princesses and the princess Indian names the women take when they write on the skin ... Sun sun and Ming sno, fire and ice, den picks up sun-sun while Olivia takes sno. Symbolic associations like that that are only pseudo logical but becoming meaningful as a pattern. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 18, 2013, at 6:29 AM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:

> 
> On 12/16/2013 10:48 AM, Lee wrote:
>> Naming Severian's father "Ouen" (Welsh form of Eugene) may 
>> also make a similar point.
> 
> I did not know that! Sounds almost like "good Gene." Or, maybe, "good gene."
> 
> I want to repost here Mantis' workup of parallels between BNS and Wolfe's life (perhaps you meant to include it, or you sent it as an attachment?). For the most part it shows that there is more than one way to plot a story (and Wolfe uses all of them at once!), but it does give us a pattern that, while not "explaining" much, does provide a little meaning behind the names (even if just an origin).
> 
> The Citadel of the Autarch = Texas A & M.
> Valeria = Rosemary Dietsch.
> Atrium of Time = the Dietsches' (front/back)yard in Peoria, Illinois A.D. 1935.
> Jolenta = Marilyn Monroe (Wolfe saw her when she visited the troops).
> Triskele = Snooper the dog (one paw crushed by tread).
> Pelerines = Red Cross girls.
> Pyrotechnic polearms = B.A.R. and the Chinese Forward Observers that Wolfe saw burned to death by flamethrowers on Hill Chinese 200.
> Agia's ploy at Mine = prostitutes working out of caves.
> Erebus = USSR (aiding/directing North Korea).
> Abaia = Communist China (aiding/directing North Korea).
> Ascia = North Korea.
> Nessus = Seoul ("there was a time when they [Ascians] laid waste to Nessus" [IV, ch. 24]; i.e., at beginning of Korean War, Seoul was overrun
> Vodalus = Howard Hughes-like anarcho-aristocrat.
> Baldanders = the Atomic Bomb (Little Boy/Fat Man) [especially check out that mushroom cloud formation when flying saucer is parked over his tower].
> Typhon = Gen. MacArthur, "American Caesar" as well as "Arthur awakened from the mountain where he sleeps."
> Kim Lee Soong = K-92, one of Wolfe's Korean "katusa" pals.
> Jonas = Algis Budrys and/or Hawkeye of M.A.S.H. fame.
> I, CLAUDIUS = one of the books Wolfe re-read at the front.
> The 18th Bacele of Irregular Contarii = the 1st Battallion of the 17th [attention 17 watchers!] Infantry (Wolfe's unit).
> Orinthyia = Porkchop Hill.
> The Samru = troopship Marine Phoenix, which brought Wolfe back to     the US (May 18, 1954).
> Marriage to Valeria/ascent to the throne = Marriage to Rosemary (A.D. 1956) and conversion to Roman Catholocism.
> 
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