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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/18/2013 10:33 PM, Michael Thayer
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAHS3GWe0v5uRgVJzdf9HXnEc66Kpr_mCDYc3CHhLEVzGdf_pyw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">>David Stockhoff: <span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">The
mausoleum is the nexus of the various Severians, and</span><br
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">it is
he himself he might see if he looks over his shoulder.</span>
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<br>
</div>
<div style="">I don't disagree with this statement at all (in
fact I'm very fond of it), and I certainly think you and I are
on the same page (and not just literally page 12 of Shadow!)
-- but isn't it a bit fuzzy? In what way -- in terms of plot
mechanics -- is the mausoleum the nexus of the various
Severians? </div>
<div style=""><br>
</div>
<div style="">The assumption behind the statement is that there
are five various Severians, one for each coffin, right? But
surely these various instances of Severian do not walk the
same time-strand/universe. Instead, they exist in alternate
time-strands/parallel universes. We know this, textually,
because we are expressly informed of at least two such
alternate/parallel Severians -- "then those who walk the
corridors walked back to the time [the first Severian] was
young, and my own story . . . began" Citadel, 406. The
mausoleum suggests strongly that there are five such Severians
(we are told of two of the five (Citadel 406), just as we are
told two of the five coffins are open/empty (Shadow 12)). But
why would the mausoleum in the second/narrator Severian's
necropolis house the five coffins for five alternate/parallel
Severians if four of the five Severians do not exist in his
universe/time-strand? Given the two alternate time-strand
Severians we are told of, the two of five open coffins in
Severian's mausoleum, the Botanical Gardens, Master Ash's Last
House, and the numerous references to time in the mausoleum
scenes (Shadow 12-13, 21-22), I think we should seriously
consider the possibility that the mausoleum is dislocated in
time and may be entered from all five alternate universes. I
don't know if you meant it this literally, but, as you say,
"the mausoleum is the nexus of the various Severians."</div>
</div>
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</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, I definitely meant that in terms of timestreams/iterations, but
it would depend on how you construct the five timelines: Are they
simultaneous, sequential, or concurrent? Are they separated by only
a few seconds, enough so they are dislocated from one another? Or is
that a meaningless question because they are utterly cut off from
one another (Severian seems to doubt it)? Yet we know the five
coffins are "here," all at once, all together. There seems nothing
magical or technological about the mausoleum; it is merely old and,
for Severian, haunted.<br>
<br>
As Jeff suggests (and this is the simplest path I can envision),
three coffins have dead Severians and two do not yet have dead
Severians. Of course there are problems with this---how do the
Severians separate to become five, how do they return, how did his
"parents" know there would be five of him, and so on. Are they truly
clones or are they time-clones? Or eidolons?<br>
<br>
And is our Severian #4 or #5? I am not even sure the Severian of UNS
is the same Severian as BNS, or that Severian really did pass the
test in UNS. If there was a #5 (and there must be!), he may be only
a hair better than #4, so that we as readers of UNS would never know
the difference if he replaced #4.<br>
<br>
And what gets you a coffin? Severian "dies" so many times it's hard
to keep track; I think he may leave a corpse once in BNS and once in
UNS before his apotheosis. That would be five. How his body would
have been interred on Urth I do not know. (Of course you always have
the symbolism of the "open tomb," which might require that the last
one stand empty---I have no idea.)<br>
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