(urth) Five Severians - Severian-as-Clone

[António Pedro Marques]

David Stockhoff wrote (20-12-2013 13:19):
>
> On 12/19/2013 11:39 PM, António Pedro Marques wrote:
>> No dia 19/12/2013, às 13:47, David Stockhoff<dstockhoff at verizon.net>  escreveu:
>>
>>> But where the Atrium is reached by traveling through an underworld, increasing the sense of temporal isolation, the mausoleum is a place Severian visits almost daily that seems well connected to the world by seasons and wildlife. It has a mood of sleepy stasis to it, but then it's Severian's "spirit home" in a way, where he has nothing to do but watch and wait. And of course he remembers everything he ever saw there.
>>>
>>> The necropolis is after all guarded, though we see how poorly against a determined attack.
>> Yet, am I mistaken or no one else, besides Sev, ever drops by the mausoleum? Does any other character show any sign of knowing that the place even exists?
>>
>>
>
> I don't think so, but that is after all part of the attraction. There is
> certainly a subtext going on, but it's already been identified, more or less.
>
> Since he uses no special "key" (i.e., no secret passage or spell or trick)
> to get in, if only he has access then he himself is the key, which would
> make Severian himself as magical as the hidden mausoleum. It's possible that
> only he can see it, but
> (a) there's no indication of or ready explanation for this, nor does
> anything like it ever happen again (though he is often visited by people no
> one else sees, but then he is always alone when this happens)
> (b) the wildlife find it easily enough
> (c) the Necropolis is a vast, ruined place where no one goes except
> apprentices, grave robbers, and funeral parties.
> Finally, there would be no purpose to it. The *plot *doesn't need Severian
> there alive, nor does it need the mausoleum to be a secret. We don't know
> how dead Severians get there anyway (or live clones get in or out) and this
> theory doesn't explain that.

I was thinking rather along the lines that the mausoleum be somehow 
displaced from normal space/time, hence accessible only to one able to go 
such places.

> Again, all Severians could be eidolons with no real physical limitations.
> But then the mausoleum itself becomes merely the dream of a ghost, and
> doesn't need time dislocation to rationalize its minor features.
>
> Another point that just occurred to me. We do need to follow Occam's Razor.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

> 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.

Bingo.

My impression is that it serves some thematic or decorative, rather than 
plot, purpose.