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<pre wrap="">I know the Whorl left Urth long before the Flood of the New Sun ... but still, Craig's suggestion of a deliberate conflation of the Flood and the Second Coming can only make me think of the Long and Short Suns: six or seven more books that do not follow the story of the New Sun at all, but rather depict an Ark and the populating of a new world.
What if the nonvirtuous had crowded the Ark along with the virtuous---or at the expense of the virtuous? That's the Long Sun. It's a twist that parallels the idea of a torturer Christ. Wolfe believes there is real evil in the world, and he doesn't brush it off by starting a story, Once there was a virtuous man.... and if he did, you know that word "virtuous" would be torn apart ten different ways by the end.
It is indeed striking that Wolfe is willing to recognize that Christian myth is still myth, and just as subject to reconfiguration and reorganization as any other set of myths---as long as they ultimately point toward a just, monotheistic presence in the universe.
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Message: 4
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:00:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Craig Brewer <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:cnbrewer@yahoo.com"><cnbrewer@yahoo.com></a>
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian / Christ / Logos / Apocatastasis
To: The Urth Mailing List <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net"><urth@lists.urth.net></a>
Message-ID: <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:508691.69387.qm@web37608.mail.mud.yahoo.com"><508691.69387.qm@web37608.mail.mud.yahoo.com></a>
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</pre>
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<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""><span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>Yes, "just." Even in its internal cosmology, it's very clear that
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>Severian's actions are in no way the last word about the humans of
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>Urth--they're a hit of the reset button so that, in time, the humans
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>might evolve into Hieros and escape into a higher plane of existence.
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>That moment, if/when it comes, would be a transcendent moment akin to
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>a Last Day. This is a wiping away of the bulk of humanity to leave
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>behind a virtuous remnant, exactly like the Biblical flood. It would
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>be a pretty dramatic error to read the Flood in Genesis and the Second
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">>></span>Coming of Christ as equally important pieces of Christian mythology.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><span class="moz-txt-citetags">></span>
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">></span><b class="moz-txt-star"><span
class="moz-txt-tag">*</span>sigh<span class="moz-txt-tag">*</span></b>
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">></span>I'm not claiming a one to one correspondence.
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">></span>I'm looking at this in poetic and metaphorical terms.
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">></span>and it's TOTALLY there in the text. this is not much of a stretch of the imagination.
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">></span>
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">></span>~sonofwitz
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</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Of course you're right that the metaphorical suggestion is there. But what I think others are trying to do is to figure out exactly how far the metaphor carries. It's one thing to say that there's a poetic metaphor of the Second Coming working in the text. It's another thing to say that it's the most important metaphor, even and especially if, for example, the Flood metaphor is also there. So what if Wolfe was doing something even more interesting than just writing a sf/fantasy version of the Second Coming? What if he was intentionally was trying to conflate the Old and New Testament stories in such a way that neither works as a master metaphor for the text, but actually something quite different? That doesn't negate what you've said, nor does it argue for a one-to-one correspondence. Instead, it takes both the metaphors and the text on their own terms to see how they're using all of this mythic material in unique ways.
I don't think anyone doubts all that you've pointed out about the various metaphorical ways that the Gospel and Christian myth works in the text. I think they're trying to look at the ways that the book diverges from the metaphor in order to find out what Wolfe might be creatively doing to the myth(s) by changing them, mixing them, etc., which is what he always does with myth, even those which he apparently thoroughly believes.
Craig
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