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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/19/2013 11:39 PM, António Pedro
Marques wrote:<br>
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<pre wrap="">No dia 19/12/2013, às 13:47, David Stockhoff <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net"><dstockhoff@verizon.net></a> escreveu:
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<pre wrap="">But where the Atrium is reached by traveling through an underworld, increasing the sense of temporal isolation, the mausoleum is a place Severian visits almost daily that seems well connected to the world by seasons and wildlife. It has a mood of sleepy stasis to it, but then it's Severian's "spirit home" in a way, where he has nothing to do but watch and wait. And of course he remembers everything he ever saw there.
The necropolis is after all guarded, though we see how poorly against a determined attack.
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Yet, am I mistaken or no one else, besides Sev, ever drops by the mausoleum? Does any other character show any sign of knowing that the place even exists?
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I don't think so, but that is after all part of the attraction.
There is certainly a subtext going on, but it's already been
identified, more or less. <br>
<br>
Since he uses no special "key" (i.e., no secret passage or spell or
trick) to get in, if only he has access then he himself is the key,
which would make Severian himself as magical as the hidden
mausoleum. It's possible that only he can see it, but <br>
(a) there's no indication of or ready explanation for this, nor does
anything like it ever happen again (though he is often visited by
people no one else sees, but then he is always alone when this
happens) <br>
(b) the wildlife find it easily enough<br>
(c) the Necropolis is a vast, ruined place where no one goes except
apprentices, grave robbers, and funeral parties. <br>
Finally, there would be no purpose to it. The <b>plot </b>doesn't
need Severian there alive, nor does it need the mausoleum to be a
secret. We don't know how dead Severians get there anyway (or live
clones get in or out) and this theory doesn't explain that. <br>
<br>
Again, all Severians could be eidolons with no real physical
limitations. But then the mausoleum itself becomes merely the dream
of a ghost, and doesn't need time dislocation to rationalize its
minor features. <br>
<br>
Another point that just occurred to me. We do need to follow Occam's
Razor. Therefore, <br>
---Any theory that proposes something as complicated as, say, a
laboratory hidden in time that has cloning and mind-control
technology and that grows and programs cloned puppets to insert them
into manipulated time streams is just too complicated.<br>
---A coffin-corpse mausoleum theory only needs to explain how
corpses get in. A clone-storage mausoleum theory needs to explain
not only how they got in, but how they will get out. And besides,
any mechanism that could do both probably would not need clone
storage in the first place.<br>
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