(urth) Five Severians -- Severian-as-Clone

[David Stockhoff]

On 12/17/2013 10:16 AM, Michael Thayer wrote:
> *New theory (? - or maybe you've heard it before - is there anything 
> new under the New Sun?). *_Five coffins, two empty, three closed._  In 
> Citadel, Severian our narrator tells us of a second "first Severian." 
>  What if Severian is, like the narrator of tFHoC, a clone?  One of 
> five clones, each initially housed in the mausoleum, which is 
> dislocated in time like the house of Master Ash or one of the 
> botanical gardens?  At the time our narrator Severian is leaving Urth 
> for his trial, two of the clones have left/been released from the 
> mausoleum (narrator-Sev and the "first Severian" who came before).  If 
> the mausoleum is dislocated in time, then it is possible that each one 
> of the clones would exit into a different strand in the "tapestry" of 
> time.  Perhaps whoever constructed the mausoleum and put the five 
> Severians there was/is planning to release them one by one until one 
> of the clones successfully brings the New Sun?

The cloning theory is well grounded, but temporally dislocating the 
mausoleum is new AFAIK. In a way, I don't like this, because it seems to 
move the explanation further away rather than explain it. Where is this 
place? how does Severian get there? who put it there? But Lee is right, 
and the best answer may simply be "Gene Wolfe." Whether it's out of time 
or not.

I see none of the usual clues to time dislocation: Severian doesn't 
refer to time passing or not passing, and it seems like there are easier 
ways to store clones than by slowing time.

>
> *Clones in the text. *I remember reading in a Wolfe interview that the 
> prostitutes in the House Azure, the "khaibits," are in fact clones of 
> the Chatelaines.  I think we need to entertain the idea that Father 
> Inire -- "alive so long beyond the span of his short-lived kind" 
> (Citadel, 405) -- who seems (to me) to be many places at once, is not 
> a single person but a multitude of clones (reminded of Borsky's 
> Palaemon as Inire theory, Wright's Ceryx as Inire theory (AD 84), and 
> all the "bent" "crooked" or "small" men who show up cowled or masked 
> in the text -- servitor who confers with the Autarch and escorts Sev 
> to the Green Room (Claw 338), the masked medicine man escorting Sev in 
> the jungle toward the end of Citadel).  tFHoC certainly alerts us to 
> the clone as a Wolfe convention and plot device -- could it be a key 
> as well?
>
> Could a Severian-as-clone theory explain the baffling scene involving 
> the grotesque homunculus who addresses Severian as "brother" (Citadel, 
> 388)?
>

Absolutely!

Inire does get around (and so do his images), but then what does it mean 
when Inire says in his letter that he is away?

Not to mention: who cloned him, when, why? Does Severian know? I don't 
think we can use the "Gene Wolfe" answer twice. But his character does 
seem to have a form, if you will, that is larger than its content, much 
like Erebus, Abaia, and the others with Korean War parallels. He could 
very well be "someone else" or the agent of that person.

> If this theory has any legs at all -- a dubious prospect! -- we would 
> need to account for a sixth Severian, the natural born man, son of 
> Ouen and Catherine, grandson of Dorcas, etc., who was cloned five times.
>

We also need to account for Valeria, her family, and the rest of the 
Citadel, which is only superficially a cluster of 1940s-style rocket 
ships---all but the Witches' Tower. (That and Valeria bug me most of all.)

Valeria may well be in the same time-dislocated space as the Severian 
clones in storage, as has been suggested. But nothing she tells Severian 
indicates this; rather, much time has passed since her family was 
involved in Citadel affairs, and while her family seems isolated it is 
plainly not completely so. If she seems old-fashioned, the evidence 
given points toward poverty and past wealth, not time dislocation.

Yet the Atrium does do something time related: she says the dials were 
put there because of its function, not the reverse. If so, her family 
may be affected by its proximity.

It may also be that she is related to Severian, with her "dark hair." If 
those are her family's towers, why not also the Atrium and the 
mausoleum? If her family produced all the Citadel's castellans at the 
peak of its power (both the family's and the Citadel's, and probably 
from Typhon's time onward), they would once have had access to the 
highest technology possessed by Man. They could even be related to 
Typhon's family.

If she is all her family's daughters and sons, then either she is merely 
the only one (meaning her family is about to die utterly with her) or 
she is genetically identified with others unknown (i.e., Severian). 
Either explanation could justify Severian's interest in her. But 
identifying Valeria with Severian might violate the parallel with 
Rosemary (may she rest in peace).
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