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<pre wrap=""><div class="moz-txt-sig">On the first point, Severian writes this in TCotA before he experiences and writes TUotNS:
Then those who walk the corridors walked back to the time when he was young, and my own story---as I have given it here in so many pages---began.
The second thing is this. He was not returned to his own time but became himself a walker of the corridors. I know now the identity of the man called the Head of Day, and why Hildegrin, who was too near, perished when we met, and why the witches fled. I know too in whose mausoleum I tarried as a child, that little building of stone with its
rose, its fountain, and its flying ship all graven. I have disturbed my own tomb, and now I go to lie in it.
Problems:
---He can't yet know that HD/AP is himself in his own future, as well as an aquastor who presumably is immortal. Later he is stunned when he finds out. So he must be another Severian---Sev 1 out of 2, or else a corpse the single Severian left behind.
---If the man in the tomb is Severian 1, who put him in it? You can build your own tomb but you can't put yourself in it. Also, you wouldn't build your own tomb unless you expected to die, and any Severian who is mature and alive before Severian himself is born knows he won't ever die, because otherwise, what would he be doing there?
---If the time-walkers did take him back to the time of his youth, he would have been dead then, or else he would have been a threat to the Throne. They would have had to go to the Autarch and say, Build us a tomb, we have a corpse of a failed god. It's true that Apheta and Tzadkiel are unclear on Severian's fate if he fails; perhaps Severian 1's fate is to be put to sleep in a coffin, honored and forgotten, in a time when no one knows him. (Do the coffins preserve bodies somehow? If so, isn't there a danger of Severian merging with the corpse, whatever it is? If not, could the corpse be an aquastor corpse?)
---But if the corpse is Sev 1, he can't also be the Sleeper because the Sleeper is Sev 2. It may make sense that Sev 2 lies in a coffin while the other of the 5 gods do not, but who are the other 2 there and when did he get put in the coffin? Did the Sevs merge at some time?
On the second point, your theory sounds good. Severian is a god when he returns to Urth. It would basically be coincidence, then, that his "icons" and his god-self resemble one another ... but not if you see one as the echo of the other.
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Message: 8
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:29:49 -0700
From: "Dave Tallman" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:davetallman@msn.com"><davetallman@msn.com></a>
Subject: Re: (urth) Abaia and the undines
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>
Message-ID:
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:1bf4dd40812111329j659754f9i9c4727c8374b7f70@mail.gmail.com"><1bf4dd40812111329j659754f9i9c4727c8374b7f70@mail.gmail.com></a>
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David Stockhoff wrote:
</div></pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""><span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>Although I still don't understand the corpse in the tomb where Severian
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>played. And now that I understand that he did not move into a new body on
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>the starsailship but was recreated by Tzadkiel, I don't understand why his
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>face was changed when he returned from Yesod. Valeria recognized him for the
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>first time then.
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">></span>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
The mausolem is indeed a mystery. One thing we know for sure is that
it is Severian's. "I have disturbed my own tomb, and I go to lie in
it." It contains three closed coffins and two empty coffins. Who could
be in them?
I like the suggestion in Lexicon Urthus that the Sev of UotNS went
back in time and had it constructed for himself when he got old. The
rose, spaceship, and fountain markings on the tomb look like a coded
message about the New Sun. The three closed coffins could be the
remains of Odilio, Pega, and Thais. Perhaps the two open coffins were
for Severian and whoever was his wife in his old age. Perhaps they
were raided by tomb robbers or relic-seekers.
For the face-changing issue, they are talking about how the faces of
rulers are idealized and ennobled in portraits and sculptures. He
didn't look that noble in real life, even on the day he came to claim
Valeria. But now he does -- after his character-transformative
experiences of becoming the New Sun and the Conciliator. Valeria
laughs and cries because now it is too late for her.
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