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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=severiansola@hotmail.com
href="mailto:severiansola@hotmail.com">Lee Berman</A> </DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><BR><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>>she also
apparently sleeps with Dorcas, who would be her gran.<BR><BR> <FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>Correct. I perceive the incest
curse to extend across all members of Severian's family.<BR><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>This says something about his
relationship to Agia and Agilus. (and explains the <BR><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>impossible mutual sexual
attraction Severian and Jolenta feel for each other at <BR><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>Ctesiphon's Cross)<BR></DIV>
<DIV>I really don’t understand your obsession with this supposed “incest
curse”. The women Severian is attracted to comprise a remarkably even
social, geographic and biological cross-section of the inhabitants of the
Commonwealth, which as well as being convenient to an author wishing to describe
the realm, probably also has symbolic value given that Severian will eventually
become Autarch, and then the Epitome of Urth. That they are all related to
Severian – and therefore related among themselves – seems nigh on
unbelievable.</DIV>
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<DIV>And *everybody* is attracted to Jolenta. That’s the point of
her.<BR> <BR><BR>> <FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">>
</FONT>Ruling out what most consider the most likely candidate for Severian’s
putative sister, <BR><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">>
</FONT>>simply because he does not note that he is sexually attracted to her,
seems a perverse <BR><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">>
</FONT>>reading in every sense of the word.<BR><BR><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>This is a perverse story written
by a perverse author. If your world/literary view still<BR><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>directs you to think of WOlfe as a
very chaste and sexually virtuous author after <BR><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>all these years I think that is to
your eternal credit and speaks highly of your own<BR><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f5f5f5">> </FONT>morally upstanding nature.</DIV>
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<DIV>Perverse it may be, but that doesn’t mean that every perversity imaginable
must necessarily be omnipresent in the text. Extraordinary hypotheses
require extraordinary evidence.</DIV>
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<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
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