(urth) Five Severians - Severian-as-clone

[David Stockhoff]

On 12/20/2013 12:01 PM, Michael Thayer wrote:
> >David Stockhoff:  It's possible that only he can see it, but . . . 
> (b) the wildlife find it easily enough . . .
> My reading is quite the contrary one.  We are told that the 
> wildlife cannot "hear" or "scent" Severian as he watches them through 
> the mausloeum window, though some animals come "two cubits from [his] 
> face."  Shadow, 12.

I actually don't think that is terribly remarkable---that's how blinds 
work. They can't see him if he doesn't move and Severian himself seems 
in a kind of stasis. But that is a good point.

> >David Stockhoff: Another point that just occurred to me. We do need 
> to follow Occam's Razor. Therefore,
> ---Any theory that proposes something as complicated as, say, a
> laboratory hidden in time that has cloning and mind-control technology
> and that grows and programs cloned puppets to insert them into
> manipulated time streams is just too complicated.
> ---A coffin-corpse mausoleum theory only needs to explain how corpses
> get in. A clone-storage mausoleum theory needs to explain not only how
> they got in, but how they will get out. And besides, any mechanism that
> could do both probably would not need clone storage in the first place.
> I agree with your method.  The only question is whether a hidden clone 
> laboratory dislocated in time is the simplest explanation.  For 
> instance, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Citadel is a 
> traditional citadel rather than a spaceport just because the citadel 
> is the simpler explanation of the two.  In tBotnS, a castle tower is 
> not a castle tower at all, but a space rocket.  A poor traveler is not 
> a poor traveler, but a marooned robot from the distant past with 
> a human face grafted onto his metallic body.  A two-headed demonic 
> monster is not a two-headed demonic monster, but a former 
> intergalactic hegemon who has had his head surgically grafted 
> onto another's body to extend his own biological viability.  Witches 
> (a witch at least, the Cumaen) and sirens (Juturna and the other 
> undines) are not witches and sirens, but space aliens meddling in 
> human affairs.  A divine prophet from the past is not a divine prophet 
> from the past, but a machine-projected time-traveler recently returned 
> from beyond this solar system.  The entire conceit of the novel is 
> that the setting appears to be that of ancient myth and medieval high 
> fantasy, but it is in fact a far future hyper-techno space age.  In 
> light of this, I think we should exercise caution in slicing away, 
> Occam-style, the possibility that a mausoleum is something more than a 
> mausoleum, especially where that mausoleum is imbued with such import 
> and strangeness.
>

That's a very good point. There's no doubt that things are named in BNA 
according to what we might call their "essential" nature, not their 
"true" nature. Yes, the Citadel was a spaceport, and yes, the mausoleum 
could be other than a mausoleum. It could have been built as something 
else before there was a necropolis there. (It could have been the hut of 
Apu-Punchau.) The coffins could be other than coffins, although they are 
too large to be creches. Severian does not notice any difference between 
it and other buildings there, and it is described as a simple stone 
building:

Rather, it was the smallness of the room, the thick walls of masonry, 
and the single, narrow

window with its one bar, together with the faithless door (so massively 
heavy) that remained eternally ajar.


But if it predated the necropolis, we need to explain why was it not 
desecrated, whether as a tomb or a cloning storage facility. Severian 
refers to it as "violated" and calls the three closed ones "intact" as 
though all five once contained corpses, a natural assumption that would 
not be subverted by the three-Sevs-out theory but that IS subverted by 
the three-Sevs-in theory.

And if it was not the first building, then why was it placed deep in a 
necropolis? Making it hidden certainly takes care of these problems, but 
if it is a hidden zone, it could have been hidden anywhere. It doesn't 
need to be isolated.

Moving on, why are the coffins made as bronze sarcophagi molded to 
Severian's features like those in medieval churches? That might be good 
camouflage against people fearing vampires (although they would be just 
as likely to think a sleeping clone a saint), but not against people who 
rob mausoleums. If the place is hidden to all but Severian, why are they 
disguised at all?
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