(urth) You have the wrong creation you ninny - eschatology and genesis

[Lee]

>Marc Aramini: What do you think of Robert and Marie and their Bible

>missionary work in the Jungle Hut?  Cross-cyclic hijinks in the 

>Botanic Gardens?


Yes, most emphatically. I'll address that specific issue below, but

generally I find that Dr. Talos' words apply to artifacts and stories

from Earth being found on Urth. I don't have the text with me, but

something about the echoes of past and future travelling back and forth

through the corridors of time. A Frankenstein quote applies this quite

directly to Dr. Talos, not to mention Biblical elements found in his

Eschatology and Genesis.


(Conversely, I think Wolfe is suggesting that some of our legends and

myths, like Typhon, like Scylla, come as an echo from Urth not our own

planet's history.)


Wolfe is careful to put such Earthian references only in the hands of

certain key Urth individuals who are likely to be privy to them, e.g. 

Jonah as mentioned, Father Inire/Rudesind, for the Apollo moon painting, 

Dr. Talos for Frankenstein, etc. Please remind me if I have overlooked 

any Earth reference from a non-spacefaring, general populace sort from 

Urth (i.e. with a Saint name). I don't think I have.


Based, in part on the hierarch shape preference, I see the links of the 

sequential universes coiled into a spiral shape as a model. Given that,

it becomes easier to see how a link might easily appear between a lower

coil and a higher coil.


So, regarding Robert and Marie: 


A number of years ago, I  wrote an essay which wasn't published anywhere,

regarding time travel structures in BotNS. The archetype for such things 

is found in the Last House, for which severian has to exactly follow

a labyrinthine path and in doing so successfully, he arrives at a vertical

structure in which upper stories exist in the future and lower stories

exist in the past.


we see a parallel to this in Valeria's tower, which Severian cannot find by

flying around above The Citadel. He can only find it by retracing his steps

in a maze below the Matachin Tower and finding the "antique" Valeria who 

resides in the lower levels of her tower. There may be a few other versions

of this sort of structure in the text (the lair of the Naviscaput, for example).


I suggest that the Jungle Hut is actually another one of these time-spanning 

structures.  Severian and Agia have to travel a labyrinthine path to find it. 

Because they have to ascend to see the residents of the Hut, it reveals that

what we are seeing is in the future. We see Robert, Marie a Bible and an airplane

because inside the Hut we are in the (universal) future, on Earth.


I find it a wonderfully written irony that the flimsiest of these time-travel 

structures opens the furthest (further even than the Last House) into the

future. And if Isangoma is really Father Inire, as some have deduced, then it

makes the connection that much stronger.