Adrift on Brook Madregot

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Adri on Brook MadregotTerm Paper

Denis Telofy Drescher

September 13, 2014

1 Introduction

Reviewers of Gene Wolfes Urth Cyclecentrally the four volumes ofe Book of the NewSunand their codae Urth of the New Sunhave likened the author to an illusionist, acardsharp (Budrys 195), and a builder of labyrinths (Wolfe, A Solar Labyrinth; Borski).Misdirection, slight of hand, and torturous paths that circle back on themselves are thestuff of his oeuvre and the five books epitomize this style. Within the Urth Cycle, the nar-rators are cast in major obfuscatory roles. First there is G.W., the intradiegetic translator ofthe manuscript, which he has somehow received from the future, so that he has to borrowmany words from our past as suggestive rather than definitive stand-ins for words of alanguage that has not yet achieved existence. (Wolfe, e Shadow of the Torturer 211;

appx.) And then there is Severian, the author of the manuscriptat least in a superficialsense.

Severian, later known as Severian the Great and Severian the Lame, has a peculiar men-tal condition that lends him extraordinary mnemonic abilities but also comes with moreelusive side effects. Like many other books by Gene Wolfe, the Urth Cycle puts us into thisextraordinary mind, so that we may understand its nature and overcome its limitations.Trusting Merryns words of wisdom that ere is no magic[,] only knowledge, more orless hidden (Wolfe, e Claw of the Conciliator 404; ch. 31), reviewers have long tried toachieve the laer; this paper will aempt the former by highlighting how the first-personnarrative mirrors Severians cognition.

Such a narrow focus is indispensable in a discussion of a cycle that has been analyzed inseveral books, numerous articles, and countless mailing list posts over the course of three

Somehow it is rarely called a sequel, maybe to express its finality or because ofcodas more lupine ety-mology.

Assuming G.W. is an intradiegetic version of Gene Wolfe.It could be argued that just as Severian writes his autobiography, so the hierogrammates have wrien the

story of his life, all of which, in turn, is the work of Gene Wolfe.

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decades. No less focused approach could come to any conclusion within just a few thou-sand words. Said focus, however, also necessitates that many intriguing tangents be cutshort if they do not circle back on the gist of the paper. e cited literature is recommendedto anyone interested in investigating these further.

e structure of the following is such that aer a short summary, one section will brieflyhighlight some of the effects of the text on the reader. en the principle section willexpand on these observations to encompass many key elements that help unlock the storythat lies obscured by the narration. Penultimately, a more speculative section will take afew tentative steps into the story thus revealed, until finally the conclusion will summarizethe findings.

2 Plot Summary

is summary is meant to guide a reader who wants to follow the arguments in this paper

without having read the Urth Cycle in its entirety. It is also highly compressed. Henceyou need to take care to bear in mind that focused as it is on providing a basis for thisparticular paper, it is also inevitably biased. e facts that seem crucial to one reader mayappear peripheral to another, but there is no way to even aempt to do justice to all themore prevalent readings in a summary without rendering it greatly more expansive thanthe scope of this paper would allow.

e torturers apprentice Severian has drowned in Gyoll where he has been resurrectedin a new body. inking he merely narrowly escaped death, he recovers from his traumaquickly enough to save the life of the famous outlaw Vodalus by killing a volunteer guard.Vodalus thanks him by giving him a chrisos, a valuable coin that shows the autarchs face,

but Severian interprets this as a symbolic enlistment of his person in the movement of theVodalarii and professes to have shared their ideals.

One winter, he unwiingly resurrects a dog, smuggles it into their guilds home, theMatachin Tower, and expertly tends to its wounds. Soon the dog scules off and its trackslead him into dark tunnels underneath the Citadela fortified harbor for spaceships suchas the Matachin Tower, which are long grounded and have largely fallen into disrepairso that they are used only as houses for about 135 guildswhere he loses its tracks andemerges in the Atrium of Time, a likely time traveling platform at the heard of the Citadel.ere he meets Valeria, who he will later marry.

A while later, the Chatelaine ecla is put into the custody of the torturers and meets

Severian. Highly placed, she can request for Severian to entertain her. In an aempt tokeep Severian from developing feelings for her despite their closeness, the guild pays fora trip to brothel for him where he meets the autarch but fails to recognize him from thecoin. e guilds aempt fails. When ecla is subjected to torture, Severian enables herto commit suicide.

For a much more expansive summary, see the first appendix to Lexicon Urthus (389). at summary,however, is focalized on Severian at the respective times.

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Expecting to be tortured and executed, Severian is surprised to find that the mastersof the guild appear to be so afraid to lose the trust of the courts if Severians violation ofguild dogma should become known that they merely exile him to a distant town.

He ventures forth into the world carrying first the valuable sword Terminus Est and

soon a valuable gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, which he seeks to return to its rightfulowners. Almost always he has companions at his side, most significantly the teenage yetwise Dorcas. At his next meeting with Vodalus, he gets to merge eclas mind into hisown, and soon his allegiances veer about 180; still he accepts a new mission from Vodalus.

At several pointsspecifically in a play by a Dr. Talos, which is based on an old book,e Book of the New Sunit is now indicated that the sun is slowly dying because it was in-

jected with a black whole that eats it up from inside. Some of the people of Urth now hopefor the coming of the New Sun (pun surely intended), while others fear the destruction itsgravitational influence would wreak on Urth.

Severians newest mission is exhausted when he delivers a message to an agent of Vo-daluss inside the secret house of the House Absolute, an agent who turns out to be the

autarch himself. is time Severian recognizes him from the House Azure but it is fromeclas memories that he, much delayed, recognizes him as the autarch.

He completes his initial mission by becoming lictor of rax but soon repeats, in effect,the digression that got him exiled and has to flee the town. When his mission of returningthe Claw is exhausted as well, he aimlessly joins the cavalry in the war against the Ascians.

Aer having been saved repeatedly by friend and foe alike, the autarch bequeaths tohim his position, and as ruler of the commonwealth Severian awaits the trials of the hi-erogrammates that will determine whether Urth deserves a fresh sun.

To aend these trials, he travels to Yesod, an ostensibly higher universe with an epony-mous planet ship within it. ere he is told that his whole life and the lives of his prede-

cessors on the Phoenix rone were all part of his trial and that he has already passedit. He also learns that the reason the hierogrammates have orchestrated all this is so thehierosdescendents, they hope, of the humans of Severians daywould come into exis-tence and eventually create the hierogrammates, which would then evade the demise andreconstitution of the Briahtic universe (or rather multiverse) by fleeing into the universeof Yesod. Hence they are working to ensure their own procreation or birth as a race.

Severian then goes on to become the Jesus-like Conciliator in the distant past, where hetells his life story while incarcerated in the Matachin Tower, whereby he uses Dr. Talossplay to guide his narration. Another prisoner, Canog, protocols it and turns it later into abook that would become known asBook of the New Sun.

A hidden house everywhere coextensive with the public one (Claw 333; ch. 20) and surely an allusionto the Urth Cycle itself. e secret house is a product of the architectural genius of the vizier to allautarchs for the past millennium, Father Inire.

According to the Kabbalah, Yesod is a sefiroth of Yetzirah, a lower created world than Briah, but maybeit is lower along one dimension and higher along another. (Jordan)

ere are indications that time in Yesod runs counter to time in Briah, so that the hierogrammates maynot so much be trying to ensure their procreation in the next Briahtic manvantara but their own birth.

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Later he steps into the future to observe the destruction of Urth, goes back to an evenmore distant past to become Apu-Punchau, and finally returns to the future and to Ushas,as postdiluvian Urth is called.

3 The Reader

Oentimes a strong internal focalization has the effect of allowing the reader an insight,however superficial, into the nature of the focalized characters thought processes andmodes of perception. In many of his books, Gene Wolfe goes a step further. Internal focal-ization of this kind still requires the empathetic cooperation of the reader, and in novelssuch asere Are Doors, this empathy provides a crucial part of the reading experience,but at the same time a closely related process is going on, a recreation of the focalizedcharacters confusion on the extradiegetic level. Readers who try to make sense of thetext, just as the focal character tries to make sense of his or her life, encounter in their

interpretative efforts hurdles that replicate the difficulties of the character. Empathy is nolonger required to evoke the readers sympathy.

Wright identifies this artifice as an all-pervasive theme in the Urth Cycle. e booksare replete with intertextual references to sources as diverse as Kabbalah; Tarot; GrimmsFairy Tales; Greek, Roman, Christian, Egyptian, Persian, and Norse mythology; varioustraditions of sun worship; and of course many individual authors such as Marcel Proust,

Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Campbell, H.G. Wells, Lewis Carroll, John Locke, and manymore. All of these are worked into the story so seamlessly that the reader has to be versedin the referenced material to even notice them, but then they open up new subtextualbackdoors to countless minor mysteries of the text. e richly textured, defamiliarizing

descriptions that have led reviewers to call the style of the Urth Cycle baroque (Gordon75) are similar in effect and function, and deciphering them does not get easier whenthe narrator starts to shi between the many personalities he is host to. Finally, there isalso the archaic, eclecticist diction, which first refracts what light one tries to shine onthe events, but then, under close etymological or historical examination, reveals impor-tant (albeit limited) clues to their deeper significance. While Wolfe may mention crucialfacts only once or twice in his books, off-handed remarks, idle metaphors, and the wordsthemselves, can give additional clues to those who look closely enough.

However interesting these facets of the text may be, Wright is wary of them for themyopia they induce, and especially in view of the tetralogy that forms the Urth Cycleproper, his apprehension is justified. Where unsuspecting readers will see a monomythical

coming-of-age fantasy story with many Romantic elements, more careful readers will finda labyrinthine science fiction with self-similar riddles on all surfaces, but they would have

Which has led reviewers to miss the fact that the narrator ofPeaceis dead although it is said outright onpage 17. (Hall)

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to be almost paranoid to suspect that if they could view the structure from the orbit, theywould read a mocking inscription in the paerns of its meandering paths.

e coda resolves some of these puzzles, for which Kincaid has criticized it as a tyingup of loose ends that didnt necessarily need tying. Especially a character by the name of

Apheta, who, fiingly, has no voice but speaks by canceling out ambient noise, makes acentral one explicit. To Wright, it is the one central puzzle of the series, and he makes agood argument for its pervasiveness, but in a world where everything, whatever happens,has three meanings, (Shadow 190; ch. 32) there surely are more mysteries of equal rankthat are still waiting to be discovered.

What then is the origin of all this fascinating, addictive, but distracting embellishment?One of the answers lies in the cognitive predispositions of Severian, who unconsciouslyplunges the reader into the same noisy reality that is the only one he knows.

4 The Narrator

4.1 alifications

In order to aempt an examination of the unusual cognitive abilities and limitations thatare mirrored in Severians narrative, it is necessary to make at least two assumptions thatare not trivial, namely, that Severian is (intradiegetically) real and that his memories arenot wholly fabricated.

It could be argued that the hierogrammates could have more easily instated the Concil-iator myth by fabricating the firstBook of the New Sunand leaking it to Canog rather thanhaving Severian reenact all of it, so that Severians Book of the New Sun may be similarlyfabricated for the purposes of manipulating its intradiegetic readers or possibly us.

Similarly, Severian may have received a much harsher punishment than exile for hisviolation of guild dogma, may have been locked away on the third level of the oubliee

Wood (5) makes a distinction between reliably unreliable and unreliably unreliable narration. e UrthCycle may well fall into the laer category for there are many themes, such as roses or gold, that indicateimportant relationships in the text that Severian has probably remained unaware of. In some cases, thesesame themes are then used to seemingly lead the critics astray throughout most of the text and mockthem subtly in the last volume.

e same evidence that Wright enlists to show how closely all of Severians life has been stage-managedby the hierogrammates, centrally many episodes where parts of the story are staged in real or dreamedtheater plays, could also be read to indicate that Severians career itself was very literally a play toentertain the hierogrammates without all the existential significance that Apheta imbues it with. Yesod

certainly feels like a stage with its house specifically constructed for Severians trial and its trapdoorsthat lead to backstage areas with giant fly los and backstage exits from the planet (Wolfe, e Urthof the New Sun 164169; ch. 23). Apheta reveals in the same chapter that visiting the surface of theplanet is a rare reward for them who labor inside the planet. Gunnie then references Dantes Inferno

just as theyre about to exit it again, maybe a hunch she has about the pleasure-seeking disregard thehierogrammates might have for the lives of their actors. Such an interpretation would also turn muchsubtextual writerlinesssuch as etymology and history linking the names of characters or themes ofroses and gold linking familiesfrom an extradiegetic influence by Wolfe into an intradiegetic influenceof the hierogrammates.

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where Master Palaemon, pitying him, le him the four books Severian had fetched forecla, among them the brown book and Canogs Book of the New Sun (Wolfe, Plan(e)tEngineering15), and is at times visited by Master Gurloes who would talk with him ofthings no eavesdropper could understand (Shadow 56; ch. 7). Severian would retreat too

easily into his rich imagination and relive his own version of Canogs story, eventuallyable to write it down (time and time again for lack of anything else to do) thanks to aquiet well of vermilion ink (205; ch. 35) maybe from one of his legs.

ese interpretations, however, would render much of the following considerationsmoot, so that they need to be temporarily put in abeyance.

4.2 The Mnemonist

4.2.1 Wolfes S.

It seems to be a repeating theme that the narrators of Gene Wolfes novels die shortly

before the beginning of their narration. e title of the first chapter, Resurrection andDeath, gives this fact away, which will only be explained again in the coda. e samechapter continues to summarize many of the crucial facts in intimations that, in somecases, will only become clear much later.

On its first page already, Severian explains the nature of his memory in a section thatwill become even more significant in the following:

Just as all that appears imperishable tends toward its own destruction, thosemoments that at the time seem the most fleeting recreate themselvesnotonly in my memory (which in the final accounting loses nothing) but in thethrobbing of my heart and the prickling of my hair, making themselves new

just as our Commonwealth reconstitutes itself each morning in the shrill tonesof its own clarions. (Shadow 9; ch. 1)

Time and time again he mentions this perfect memory and uses it to pass time bycounting from memory 137 soldiers who had marched past him a week or so earlier (Claw319; ch. 18) or to recount verbatim several stories he was told, but superficially it does notseem to have a major significance for the plot.

Flaying of the leg is described as inducing a slow, generalized welling of blood (Shadow 23; ch. 3), butany form of torture would require a judicial decree, and in the ostensible story at least, the guild triesto cover up their internal issue so not to lose the trust of the Autarchs courts. en Severians wound

might be self-inflicted.e curious order of the words in the title may indicate the perspective of the hierogrammates and hiero-

dules for whom time runs in the opposite direction, or Deathactually refers to Severians first homicidein the chapter, rendering him in effect Death for the first time, a name and role he would subsequentlyassume with frequency and varying degrees of willingness. ere is another related, collocationally sur-prising but apposite inversion in the title of the play that would serve as blueprint for Canogs Book ofthe New Sun,Eschatology and Genesis.

It is never calledeideticbut maybe just because the term might have been anachronistic for Severian. Itwas coined by Erich Jaensch in the 1920s. (Harper)

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e simile in the quoted paragraph is also a surprisingly apt description since eachmorning may appear a recreation of the last but is yet bound to be different from it incountless ways, just as new recall errors increasingly skew the original memory withevery reactivation (Bridge and Paller).

Finally, the same section even illustrates this process. A few sentences before the quotedparagraph, we have the sentence I would have hidden, but Roche held me, saying, Wait,I see pikes, and immediately following it, e men had no armor, as I could soon see bythe sickly yellow light of the lanterns; but they had pikes, as Droe had said, and stavesand hatchets.

Other examples of the mutability of his memory concern the bag Docas sews to holdthe Claw and the pistol hand-off in the necropolis. As Wright (114) observes, the bagtransmogrifies from doeskin (Wolfe, e Sword of the Lictor 13; ch. 1) into manskin(Urth279; ch. 39), a very unlikely material for Dorcas to have used, and (here Wright quotesGreenland (8285)) Severian first recalls Vodalus giving his pistol to Hildegrin, who then,being unacquainted with the weapon, hands it to ea (Shadow 13; ch. 1), and later recalls

Vodalus handing it to ea directly (Claw 221; ch. 1).Severian freely admits to the mutability of his ostensibly perfect memory at several

places.

You that read [my story] cannot but have noticed that I have not scrupled torecount in great detail things that transpired years ago, and to give the verywords of those who spoke to me, and the very words with which I replied;and you must have thought this only a conventional device I had adopted tomake my story flow more smoothly. e truth is that I am one of those who arecursed with what is called perfect recollection. We cannot, as I have sometimes

heard foolishly alleged, remember everything. I cannot recall the ordering ofthe books on the shelves in the library of Master Ultan, for example. But Ican remember more than many would credit: the position of each object ona table I walked past when I was a child, and even that I have recalled somescene to mind previously, and how that remembered incident differed fromthe memory of it I have now. (Claw 260; ch. 8)

Known gaps in his memory do not seem to worry him; he may not have paid aention tothe ordering of the books in the first place, and so it never impressed itself on his memory.Alternatively, it may be that he once knew it but not only forgot it but even forgot everhaving known it. Either case would explain his indifferent aitude. Interesting is also theequanimity with which he observes alterations of his memories. Since his memory of howhe had previously recalled some scene may have undergone alterations just as severe asany alterations of his memory of the scene itself, he has no way of knowing the scene itselfanymore. at his original memory of it has been replaced by a fiction does not undo thefact of his forgeing, it merely conceals it, yet he does not seem to acknowledge this formof forgeing or dismisses it as inconsequential (I searched my memory, which is perfect,except perhaps for a few slight lapses and distortions. (Urth244; ch. 34)).

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What seems to be truly frightening to him, though, is forgeing. e following excerptsshow his fear of forgeing and the powerful mechanisms his brain has developed to con-ceal it from him.

I shook my head. I dont want to forget, Tzadkiel. Ive boasted too oen thatI forget nothing, and forgeingwhich I have known once or twiceseemsto me a kind of death. (Urth174; ch. 24)

I have forgoen! Do you remember when we flew over the armies? For atime I forgot it! I know now what it is to forget.

ere was pale laughter in his voice. Which you will now remember al-ways.

I hope so, but it fades even as we speak. It vanishes like mist, which mustitself be a forgeing. (Wolfe, e Citadel of the Autarch 336; ch. 25)

In addition to these sections, which portray his acknowledged fear of forgeing, thereis another where he describes the experience of facing his fear of phantom memoriespoignantly as the most harrowing of [his] life, e catalyst was that, as an apprentice,he has assumed that many of the upper-class prisoners given into the guilds custody weresupporters of Vodalus. Upon reading some of the clients court dossiers, however, he hasfound that none of them were, but only minutes later thinks that he has heard Vodalussname in a conversation though no one else seems to have heard it. He extrapolates that hiswhole memory of meeting Vodalus and ea may have been a hallucination or phantommemory, that only his killing of the volunteer may have been real.

It was in this instant of confusion that I realized for the first time that I amin some degree insane. It could be argued that it was the most harrowing ofmy life. I had lied oen to Master Gurloes and Master Palaemon, to MasterMalrubius while he still lived, to Droe because he was captain, to Rochebecause he was older and stronger than I, and to Eata and the other smallerapprentices because I hoped to make them respect me. Now I could no longerbe sure my own mind was not lying to me; all my falsehoods were recoiling onme, and I who remembered everything could not be certain those memorieswere more than my own dreams. I recalled the moonlit face of Vodalus; butthen, I had wanted to see it. I recalled his voice as he spoke to me, but I haddesired to hear it, and the womans voice too. (Shadow 27; ch. 3)

ese limitations, however, are marginal compared to the feats of memory he per-forms, for example, when retelling the same dialogue verbatim and identically severaltimes throughout the narrative.

Fear of forgeing is one side of the chrisos, but the more optimistic side becomes evidentonce Severian becomes more aware of the possibility of time travel.

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e chiliarch said, Well stay here and die with you, Conciliator, if youdesire it.

I dont, I told them. And I wont die. I tried to reveal the workings ofTime to them, though I do not understand them myself. Everyone who has

lived is still alive, somewhen. But you are in great danger. Go! (Urth279; ch.39)

is consolation, surely unhelpful for the chiliarch, may be one that has great meaningfor Severian, for whom time was gradually becoming as freely navigable as space. Hencehis fear may be less of him losing his memories than of the corresponding events geingirretrievably lost in the past. A fear that only abates as he grows accustomed to time travel.

His motivation for writing hisBook of the New Sunmay spring from the same source. InReturn to the Whorl(262; ch. 13), it is revealed that Horn alias Incanto, the narrator ofeBook of the Short Sun, introduced Severian to the writing of autobiographies or memoirs,but that alone would probably not have sufficed to drive him to invest endless hours into

the recording of his memories.In his own autobiography, he laments, But what a disease this writing business is!

(Urth1; ch. 1) is statement suggests that he is not merely motivated but compelled towrite. Moreover, he repeatedly claims not to be writing for anyone. e same volumestarts with the words:

Having cast one manuscript into the seas of time, I now begin again. Surelyit is absurd; but I am notI will not beso absurd myself as to suppose thatthis will ever find a reader, even in me. Let me describe then, to no one andnothing, just who I am and what it is that I have done to Urth.

His manner of publication is also not optimized for mass dissemination, distinguishingthe book from the autobiographies of other famous rulers. Of the first manuscript, he gaveone copy into the care of the library of Nessus, a giant, dusty archive underneath the citythat is not open to the public (Shadow 42; ch. 6), then wrote a second copy from memory(surely with some unconscious alterations), sealed it in a trunk, and tossed it into space.If it had not been for G.W.s knack for time travel and xenolinguistics, at most a librarianor two would have read it. (Johnson)

While some part of him may be unable to acknowledge that his memory, due to itssilent mutability, is unreliable, he may yet be aware of it on another level, one that doesnot allow him to express this insight. His drive to write then may stem from a latent

fear that without his help the events he witnessed would fade to oblivion, either uponhis death or even much sooner. e reason he has never, to our knowledge, continued hisautobiography further than he had, may also be due to the waning of the same fear astime travel becomes natural for him.

From this evidence it becomes clear that while Severians recall is exceptional, it isimperfect and subject to slight alterations, which his strong imagination disguises from

Compare, for example, Vargha-Khadem, Isaacs, and Mishkin.

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him. It is also likely, though the evidence appears more tenuous, that Severians fear ofthese imperfections is the driving force behind his writing.

4.2.2 Lurias S.

From the 1920s to 1950s, the Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria studied the jour-nalist and mnemonist Solomon Shereshevsky and summarized his findings in his booke Mind of a Mnemonist. Solomon Shereshevsky, called S. in the book, evinces severalparallels to Severian, as Wright already observed, but also a few marked differences.

Jerome Bruners foreword already contains a good summary of the parallels:

For the mnemonist, S., whose case is studied in such exquisite detail in thesepages, is a man whose memory is a memory of particulars, particulars thatare rich in imagery, thematic elaboation [sic], and affect. But it is a memorythat is peculiarly lacking in one important feature: the capacity to convert

encounters with the particular into instances of the general, enabling one toform general concepts even though the particulars are lost. It is this laer typeof memory without record that seems so poorly developed in this man.

Several notable things about the disorders of this mnemonist are especiallyfascinating from a psychological point of view. For one thing, the sheer per-sistence of ikonic [sic] memory is so great that one wonders whether there issome failure in the swi metabolism of short-term memory. His immediateimages haunt him for hours, types of images that in much recent work onshort-term memory are found to fade to a point where information retrievalfrom them is not possible aer a second or so. Along with this trait there isalso a non-selectivity about his memory, such that what remains behind is akind of junk heap of impressions.

So powerful is his imagery that this man can easily drive his pulse up byimagining running. He is flooded and disturbed by the images and impressionsof childhood, and, when he was a child, his imagery of school would becomeso real that he would lie abed rather than get out from under the quilt andget ready. It is interesting that, given his mode of remembering, there seemsto be no childhood amnesia, and his memories from the earliest period cancause him acute malaise and chagrin. roughout, there is a childlike qualityin the protocols, protocols that are rich beyond anything I have ever encoun-tered in the psychological literature on memory disorders. S.s life in some

deeply touching way is a failure. He waited for something to happen to him,some great thing. In the conduct of his life, too, there was a passive-receptive

Wright (108) notes that as Wolfe took beginning and advanced courses in Abnormal Psychology atMiami University in Ohio in the late 1960s, and an introductory course at the University of Houston,it is probable that he was familiar with the clinical studies of the psychology of mnemonists when hebegan writinge Book of the New Sun.

An ineffectual pseudonymization not only because Shereshevsky was a well-known mnemonist but alsobecause both his first names are mentioned in the text (Luria 50).

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aitude, almost precluding organized striving. In place of the more abstractand constructional aitude of planning, there was waiting. (Luria 57)

Certainly Severians writing is brimful with particulars and rich in imagery. More irrev-erently, it could be called a junk heap of impressions. Similarly, that Shereshevsky couldeasily drive his pulse up by imagining running is reminiscent of Severians descriptionof moments that recreate themselves in the throbbing of [his] heart and the pricklingof [his] hair (Shadow 9; ch. 1). But Severian seems to also know about some of the sideeffects of his condition:

Some say [perfect recall] is linked to weak judgmentof that I am no judge.But it has another danger, one I have encountered many times. When I castmy mind into the past, as I am doing now and as I did then when I soughtto recall my dream, I remember it so well that I seem to move again in thebygone day, a day oldnew, and unchanged each time I draw it to the surface

of my mind, its eidolons as real as I. (Claw 261; ch. 8)

Shereshevsky found it difficult to recognize faces (Luria 64) and voices (25) because ofhow changeable they were. He could not extract and recognize whatever commonalitymost people find in the same face or voice what allows them to agree that it is indeedthe same. He compared the aempt to trying to tell apart waves on an ocean. Similarly,Severian has problems recognizing faces, for example, when he repeatedly sees the oldautarch but the recognition keeps being one-sided. ere are also cases where he considersthat people may not be the same people anymore having changed or matured so much.In the case of his own person (Citadel 401; ch. 37), the observation is debatable on several

levels, yet his readiness to accept this unintuitive nonidentity is telling.e same extraneous data that distracts Shereshevsky and Severian also distracts thereaders from whatever paerns they would otherwise recognize. at is one of the waysin which the book forces the inquisitive readers to sympathize, rather than bargaining fortheir empathy. One could imagine that Shereshevsky was not describing the influence ofS.M. Eisensteins acoustic voice in this paragraph but that of Severians literary voice:

You know there are people who seem to have many voices, whose voicesseem to be an entire composition, a bouquet. e late S.M. Eisenstein had justsuch a voice: listening to him, it was as though a flame with fibers protrud-ing from it was advancing right toward me. I got so interested in his voice, I

couldnt follow what he was saying. (Luria 24)

e Urth we see is thus an eclecticist world somewhat like the House Azure, in whichthe accumulation and interconnection of what were originally separate buildings pro-duce a confusion of juing wings and architectural styles, with peaks and turrets wherethe first builders had intended nothing more than rooops, (Shadow 62; ch. 9) except that

He is yet unaware of having died and having been recreated as aquastor.

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Severians uncomprehending, defamiliarizing lens (aided by the translation) fuses the het-erodox assemblage of numerous religious mythologies, weapons and ships from variouscultures and times of Urths past, animals from at least nine geological epochs, and au-thors of various genres into a fairly homogeneous whole. Put differently, it sounds like a

color blind person describing in great detail a most artful Ishihara Color Test to the reader,all the while completely missing the number depicted in the center. If the readers couldlook at the image directly, they would see it clearlyalthough different readers might seea small set of different numbers.

ere are also several instances (e.g., Claw 261; ch. 8) in e Book of the New SunwhereSeverian gets lost in his memories forgeing the reality around him just as the youngShereshevsky mixed up the real geing up and geing to school with his imagined (third-person) version of it (Luria 151).

Unusual stability is also common to Severian and Shereshevsky. e laers synes-thetic associations remain very stable throughout his life and enable him to recall memo-ries from decades past (Luria 12), even into his early childhood (76). Similarly, Severians

character seems to undergo curiously lile development while his position in society andhis political stance change radically and repeatedly. What there is in terms of develop-ment can oen be explained by him gaining knowledge and applying it in a very immedi-ate fashion. e instances where Severian comments on his earliest memories, however,are few and fragmentary, and due to this sparsity it is not clear whether Shereshevskyswere similar. In the first book Severian claims From my earliest memory I remember all.at first recollection is of piling pebbles in the Old Yard (Shadow 16; ch. 2). In the second,however, he manages to penetrate further into his past; the neonatal blur in the paragraphis very reminiscent of Shereshevsky protocols of his earliest memories:

I sought to recall that celebration of Holy Katharines day that fell the yearaer I became captain of apprentices; but the preparations for the feast werehardly begun before other memories came crowding unbidden around it. Inour kitchen I lied a cup of stolen wine to my lipsand found it had becomea breast running with warm milk. It was my mothers breast then, and I couldhardly contain my elation (which might have wiped the memory away) athaving reached back at last to her, aer so many fruitless aempts. My armssought to clasp her, and I would, if only I could, have lied my eyes to lookinto her face. My mother certainly, for the children the torturers take knowno breasts. e grayness at the edge of my field of vision, then, was the metal

of her cell wall. Soon she would be led away to scream in the Apparatus orgasp in Allowins Necklace. I sought to hold her back, to mark the moment soI might return to it when I chose; she faded even as I tried to bind her to me,dissolving as mist does when the wind rises. (Claw 384; ch. 27)

e parallels between the mechanisms behind Shereshevskys alter egowho does onerous things Shere-shevsky himself is loath to do (Luria 153) or behaves in socially awkward manners so Shereshevsky getsspared the embarrassment (156)and Severians alzabo-induced legion of them seem merely nominal.

It should be fair to call Severians memoryunusuallystable despite its slight mutability.

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While serendipitous here, this paragraph also shows the difficulties Severian and Shere-shevsky encounter in trying to concentrate on one train of thought and not being sweptaway by circumstantial associations. Luria (155) writes:

ere were many instances too in which images that came to the surfacein S.s mind steered him away from the subject of a conversation. At suchmoments his remarks would be cluered with details and irrelevancies; hewould become verbose, digress endlessly, and finally have to strain to get backto the subject of the conversation.

Wright (110) gives a lengthy example from (Sword 148; ch. 27) where a red cape triggersa chain of association so tenuous and arbitrary as to appear non sequiturs, but whichSeverian presents as an argument for various fantastic empyrean machinations behindthe piece of cloth. Of these fantastic ruminations there are several throughout the UrthCycle.

Both mnemonists also show a surprising aptitude for seemingly unrelated cognitivetasks. Severian solves several criminal mysteries through surprising feats of ratiocination(e.g., Gunnies and Purns involvement in the killing of his steward ine Urth of the NewSun) and Shereshevsky is able to recognize minute inconsistencies in stories and performimpressive calculations through idiosyncratic processes of visualization (Luria 102).

Apart from these many striking parallels, there are also a number of differences. WithShereshevsky, for example, the basis for his exceptional memory is in his five-fold synes-thesia; no synesthesia is discernible in Severians case. Shereshevskys memory is perfectlystatic even over decades; Severians memory shows curious alterations.

Before one can assemble these into a coherent whole, more parallels between the two

S.s have to be explored.

4.3 The Marionee

e first sentence of the first chapter of the first book reads It is possible I already hadsome presentiment of my future; the last sentence of the same chapter reads It was in thisfashion that I began the long journey by which I have backed into the throne. Togetherthey summarize well Severians expectations, hindsight bias, and passivity.

One of Shereshevskys protocols from 1937 could be that of a Severian lost in our timeand forgoen by the hierogrammates.

I read a great deal and always identified myself with one of the heroes. ForI saw them, you know. Even at eighteen I couldnt understand how one friendof mine was content to train to become an accountant, another a commercialtraveler. For whats important in life isnt a profession but something fine,something grand that is to happen to me If at eighteen or twenty Id thoughtI was ready to marry and a countess or princess had agreed to marry meeven that wouldnt have impressed me. Perhaps I was destined for something

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greater? Whatever I did, whether writing articles, becoming a film staritwas just a temporary thing.

At one point I studied the stock market, and when I showed that I had agood memory for prices on the exchange, I became a broker. But it was just

something I did for a while to make a living. As for real lifethats somethingelse again. But it all took place in dreams, not in realityI was passive for the most part, didnt understand that time was moving

on. All the jobs I had were simply work I was doing in the meantime. efeeling I had was: Im only twenty-five, only thirtyIve got my whole lifeahead of me. In 1917 I was content to go off to the provinces. I decided to getin with the movement. So I was in the Proletcult, ran a printing shop, becamea reporter, lived a special sort of life for a time. But even now I realize timespassing and that I might have accomplished a great dealbut I dont work.ats the way Ive always been. (Luria 157158)

Had Shereshevsky become the monarch of South America and later the Jesus-like cyno-sure of that continents predominant religion, these feelings would, in retrospect, haveseemed presentient.

Having always, on some less rational level at least, expected his ascent, Severian goesalong with it docilely and unquestioninglyand that is the essence of what he does, too.ere are few major decisions by Severian that are not forced by circumstances or dic-tated by authorities, and even these decisions, like allowing ecla to die, serve to markthe passing of the authoritative leash on Severian from one authority to another (in thiscase from the masters of his guild to Vodalus). When the decrees (or maybe rescripts(Urth138; ch. 19)) of the authorities diverge, Severian seems to simply follow the one he

perceives as greater rather than to decide for himself.His upbringing has of course reinforced this docile nature, for the torturers carry outthe sentences that are delivered to [them], doing no more than [they] are told, and no less,and making no changes (Shadow 81; ch. 12).

Furthermore, he places great importance on symbols, which may either render him sus-ceptible to magical or mythical thought that relies on symbols and to those who employsymbols as means of control, or which may be a result or symptom of a pre-existing dis-position to magical thought. Maybe it is a mutually reinforcing cycle.

Certain mysteries aver that the real world has been constructed by the hu-man mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which

we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our wordsfor them. I understood the principle intuitively that night as I heard the lastvolunteer swing the gate closed behind us. (Shadow 11; ch. 1)

Maybe it can be imagined as a feeling akin to Romain Rolland and Sigmund Freuds so-called oceanicfeeling, only with the additional feature that it puts the subject in some key position. Such a similaritywould also provide a basis to explain the Romantic themes that Severian perceives.

Another example may be the way Severian oen conflates ocean-going and space-going ships while tous they are starkly different.

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It is certainly true that there are many specific things weaker than our words for them,but that does not mean that all things are an undifferentiated hodgepodge; Severian isprobably underestimating things here. Such constructivism has been criticized on var-ious grounds, crucially that of its self-refutation and related problems (Boghossian e.g.,

66).However if a coin or a gem can alter ones loyalties and aitudes so dramatically, it isprobably a reassuring illusion to believe that nature is inherently that malleable or am-biguous so that it is not just ones conception of it that is being manipulated. He commentson these tokens, or Vodaluss coin in particular, a few pages later:

We believe that we invent symbols. e truth is that they invent us; we aretheir creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. (Shadow 14; ch. 1)

More concretely again, he later recites a verse that his older friend Roche told himwould keep hidden items from being discovered by others. Severian uses it to protect the

coin he had received from Vodalus and observes that he was somewhat astonished todiscover that [he] was now old enough not to be ashamed of it (Shadow 25; ch. 3). Hisconcern here is with having overcome his adolescent fear of appearing childish, whichveils the age-independent superstition in trying to use such a charm. He does, however,dismiss more inconvenient aspects of the spell, showing a certain divide between what hefeels and what he knows. en again, he shows less reflection when commenting on thesensation of being watched (33; ch. 4). e chapters are riddled with similar episodes.

Another section highlights his internal conflict between the rational appraisal and thedistractive magical intuitions. In the Garden of Endless Sleep, he considers a hyacinthwhile the others who are with him think, guessing from his circumstances and counte-

nance, that he is considering his own death.

Severians musings are also reminiscent of the debate over whether language determines thought or viceversa, which, on account of the intertwined, oen inseparable nature of the two concepts, probably hasto be answered differently.

However, this thought sequence may have several more meanings. In e fiacre drew up to her withthe skiish animals dancing to one side as though she were a thyacine (Shadow 112; ch. 18), Severianindirectly and counterfactually likens Agia to a thyacine. He, however, stands close behind her in thescene, so it is possible that they shied away from him as much as from her. is interpretation is corrobo-rated by the fact thatthyacineis a misspelling ofthylacine, the native Tasmanian wol or zebra-wol (Andre-Driussi 348), and, obvious extradiegetic associations aside, the wolf is typically associated withSeverian (17). Hence the thought sequence about the hyacinth may mirror Severians possible drowning

or near-drowning in the lake, since Dorcas saved him by plugging him from the water (and from theother hand that tried to pull him down) just as she plugged the hyacinth moments later. In an inver-sion of it, it must have seemed to amnesiac Dorcas as ifshecame into existence to save Severian, whenreally the saving had been mutual. When Dorcas finally insists that he had been thinking about dying,Severian does not again contradict her. Furthermore, thanks to the misspelling (the only appearance ofthe animal in the books), the word shares a sequence of six characters with hyacinth, a common typeof hint in the cycle, which, in this case, may have the additional function of intimating Agias familybonds with Severian (Borski 1017). It should also be noted that Hyacinthis the name of the wife of theprotagonist of WolfesBook of the Long Sun, who (the protagonist) is subtly linked to Severian.

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Is it possible the flower came into being only because Dorcas reached forit? In daylight moments, I know as well as the next that such things are im-possible; but I am writing by night, . (Shadow 147; ch. 24)

is propensity is not unknown to Shereshevsky:

One time when I was planning to go to Samara, Misha [his son] developedstomach pains. We called in a doctor, but he couldnt figure out what waswrong with him . Yet it was so simple. I had given him something that wascooked with lard. I could see the pieces of lard in his stomach . I thought tomyself Id help him. I wanted him to digest them . I pictured it in my mindand saw the lard dissolving in his stomach. And Misha got beer. Of course, Iknow this isnt the way it happened yet I did see it all. (Luria 144)

Luria summarizes this aspect as follows:

With each individual there is a dividing line between imagination and real-ity; for most of us whose imaginations have distinct limits, this is fairly clear-cut. In S.s case the borderline between the two had broken down, for theimages his imagination conjured up took on the feel of reality. (Luria 144)

e difference is that Shereshevsky was not, according to Lurias account, exposed toany manipulation that he would have to disguise from himself. Severian is, and Wrightpoints particularly to the Claws psilocybin-like psychedelic influence described at thevery end of the third volume:

Seeing it thus without its case of sapphire, I felt profoundly an effect I hadnever noticed at all during the days before it had been taken from me in thehetmans house. Whenever I looked at it, it seemed to erase thought. Not aswine and certain drugs do, by rendering the mind unfit for it, but by replacingit with a higher state for which I know no name. Again and again I felt myselfenter this state, rising always higher until I feared I should never return tothe mode of consciousness I call normality; and again and again I tore myselffrom it. Each time I emerged, I felt I had gained some inexpressible insightinto immense realities.

At last, aer a long series of these bold advances and fearful retreats, I came

to understand that I should never reach any real knowledge of the tiny thingI held, and with that thought (for it was a thought) came a third state, one ofhappy obedience to I knew not what, an obedience without reflection becausethere was no longer anything to reflect upon, and without the least tinctureof rebellion. (Sword 200; ch. 38)

If you are tasked with destroying most life on Urth so that it can re-emerge to evolveinto something beer (by the standards of the hierogrammates), then obedience without

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reflection is surely inevitable lest the magnitude of the risks and uncertainties becomeapparent. e claw lends Severian the comfort of the illusion that he is integral in some-thing overwhelmingly grand and good, and as the old autarch told him, You came forpleasure, did you not? If a dream adds to your enjoyment, why dispute it?

Another way to dismiss the global near-omnicide and all considerations of necessity,proportionality, and effectuality is to dismiss consequentialism in favor of some brand ofmoral philosophy that concerns itself with intentions onlywhich of course are good solong as obedience to a perceived god is considered incontrovertibly good: Until we reachthe end of time, we dont know whether somethings been good or bad; we can only judgethe intentions of those who acted. (Urth237; ch. 33)

5 Reconciliation

Given that in the Urth Cycle everything has three meanings (Shadow 190; ch. 32)

and seeing the ambiguity that facilitates such versatility, great caution is necessary whenforming sweeping theories of the text. In its vast repository of facts it is too easy to letideology blind oneself to gaps and contradictions. As a preemptive countermeasure, thissection will try to introduce its hypotheses with all their qualities and shortcomings in sofar as they were apparent to the author.

ese hypotheses will concern the parallels and differences between Shereshevsky andSeverian. ough the true relationships of cause and reaction may be more convoluted,it appears that for Shereshevsky his synesthesia was integral to his mnemonic abilities,which in turn caused his cognitive limitations due the noise he had to consciously sithrough in order to recognize any paerns. So how can Severian perform such similar

feats and be subject to such similar limitations with no noticeable synesthesia? And howcome that some of his memories change when Shereshevsky was so notable for his prefectrecall even aer decades?

5.1 The Man Your Mother Bore

eUrth of the New Sun gave away many a secret that people like Kincaid would have likedto or had figured out themselves. One of them is Severians nature as aquastor. In a partic-ularly revealing conversation with the hierodules Barbatus, Famulimus, and Ossipago,this is made explicit.

But if Apu-Punchau is myself, what was the body I found on Tzadkielsship?

e quotation is of course taken out of context, but then again an earlier section has already drawnaention to the similarity between the House Azure and the reality of Urth as we might see were it notfor Severians consciousness and the translation filtering our perception. en the quotation might notbe out of context aer all and might even be directed not only at Severian but at the reader, remindingthe reader to consider dismissing the very thought they have at that instant.

ough Ossipago may be a machine or Father Inire in disguise.

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Nearly whispering, Famulimus sang, e man whom you saw dead yourmother bore. Or so it seems to me from whats been said. Now I would weepfor her if I had tears, though notperhapsfor you still living here. What wedid here for you, Severian, the mighty Tzadkiel accomplished there, remem-

brance taking from your dead mind to build your mind and you anew. (Urth359; ch. 50)

She is of course wrong in the sense that Severian had died and was rebuilt in muchthe same fashion several times before that incident, but had they been talking aboutSeverians death by drowning in Gyoll that starts the narrative, then she might have beenright.

Much earlier, the aquastor of Master Malrubius, created from Severians childhoodmemories of him, explains his nature thus: Once you met a woman named Cyriaca, whotold you tales of the great thinking machines of the past. ere is such a machine on theship in which we sailed. But we are maintained in the physical world by the energies

of the machine, and its range is but a few thousand years.is immediately suggests that Severian, as aquastor, may be able to draw upon thestorage capacities of a computer, maybe the ship computer of the Matachin Tower, inorder to augment his memory, and the interaction of these memories with his biologicalbody may introduce occasional inaccuracies.

Furthermore if Severian was created as aquastor not just aer his first death but fromhis birth, created according to the designs of the hierogrammates or their subordinates,then he could have been born without the help of a father, though some gruesome scenesin Baldanderss castle suggest that a female host was necessary to create Dr. Talos (Sword176; ch. 33). is would also underline the Christian mythological imagery with Severianbeing born to a virgin thanks to advanced alien technology.

An alternative would be that he only became an aquastor a few years later in his life,an event that would, in retrospect, be marked by his first memory (at first recollectionis of piling pebbles in the Old Yard (Shadow 16; ch. 2)).

e text does not seem to provide much evidence for the theory of Severians ontoge-nesis by design to the degree Dr. Talos was designed; Ouen is rather assuredly Severiansbiological father; and furthermore Severians mother Catherine may have taken the vowsof abstinence of the Pelerines, thus giving her a motive to lie about Ouens fatherhood andoutfiing the appropriately subverted allegory in any case.

However, the second theory does hold some appeal as the Old Yard, either by name orby implication, is repeatedly invoked in dying visions or dreams of Severian like an echo of

an early, unremembered trauma. Furthermore, it is where Severian is shot and probablykilled once again in ancient times resulting in the breach of the curtain wall (Urth255; ch.36). Finally, the Old Yard has been the site of executions and probably excruciations, and

Assuredly once but likely more oen.I knew he was looking for me in the Old Yard below. (Shadow 12; ch. 2) e deepest bell in the Bell

Tower was ringing. (Urth65; ch. 9)By ancient custom, we must not use the steps (although I have seen Master Gurloes assist his vault to the

scaffold with his sword, in the court before the Bell Tower). (Claw 234; ch. 4) Its no more than it seems,

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is located close to the Bell Tower with its Bell Keep the apprentices are forbidden to enterfor unknown reasons, so it may be a rather hazardous place.

But the evidence for a first death when Severian was barely old enough to stack pebblesis thin and as a means of explaining his extrodinary memory fails to account for one

important phrase in the cycle.

5.2 Our Own Shadows Race Into the Past

I dont forget much, is how Ouen explained that he learned reading and writing withoutformal education. Ouen being Severians biological father, this suggests that Severian hassomething akin to an inherited predisposition for great memory.

But that does not yet explain the memory itself. Absent any solid cause and groundingof his gi, such as highly developed synesthesia or the hard drives of a ship computer, itseems necessary to assume that Severians memory is no beer than average.

In the same conversation with the familiar trio of hierodules, Severian learns that his

ability to time-travelor to walk the Corridors of Timeis dependent on the energy of thestar he identifies with and that he cannot draw on it in the day of Apu-Punchau (until aerthe death of that version of him) because the light of the star had not yet reached Urth.It should be noted thatwith the exception of his decade-long sojourn as Apu-Punchauamong the autochthons of the stone townhe can draw on this source of energy through-out his whole life.

ere are also many indications that his awareness of this energy source maybe aidshis conscious control over it but that it can work quite independent of this awareness. Ina different context Severian explains:

I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that wemust know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe sois to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. e would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational peopleknow that things act of themselves or not at all. (Shadow 14; ch. 1)

Examples are the countless cases where he resurrects beingsstarting with Triskelebefore he receives the Clawbut continually misaributes the causes.

Dorcas, also aributing the phenomena to the Claw, gives a parsimonious explanationof the workings behind the events even though she does not even consciously know thatSeverian would aain the ability to time-travel:

just a stake to immobilize the hands, and a thirteen-thonged scourge for correction. It used to stand inthe Old Yard, but the witches complained, and the castellan made us move it down here. (Shadow 81;ch. 12)

While his conclusion is surely correct in most cases, the argument is invalid, since the proposition thatthings can have an effect without our knowledge of them does not imply that our knowledge of them isnecessarily without effect, but this is unrelated to the argument of this section.

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Severian, when you brought the uhlan back to life it was because the Clawtwisted time for him to the point at which he still lived. When you half healedyour friends wounds, it was because it bent the moment to one when theywould be nearly healed. And when you fell into the fen in the Garden of End-

less Sleep, it must have touched me or nearly touched me, and for me it becamethe time in which I had lived, so that I lived again. (Sword 60; ch. 11)

Severian later lends extra emphasis to this statement by recounting himself retellingthe episode verbatim to Miles (Citadel 217; ch. 3).

With Severians unusual ability to resurrect reduced to a manipulation of time, it be-comes even more parsimonious to explain his unusual memory in the same terms. Notphysically transferring himself into the other time but just bending time for his conscious-ness now to meet his consciousness then might require much less skill, focus, and energy,so that he could master it at a much younger age and still several resurrections away fromthe Severian who would go on to become the Conciliator.

e inaccuracies of his memory may then be grouped into three categories in order toexplain them in terms of this system. First, it is possible that from a certain present differ-ent pasts whose differences have proved inconsequential for the present are are blurred toa degree and thus hard to distinguish for the time traveler. Hence Severians different ver-sions of the pistol hand-off in the Necropolis, where, in both cases, the pistol soon endedup in eas hands. Second, Severian may be loath to enter into the trance-like state thathis casting back into the past entails for his present body, especially when he had just doneso and still thinks that he remembers (with his ordinary episodic memory) what he saw inhis transtemporally enhanced remembrance, so that he misremembers facts just as anyonewould, for example, who spoed the pikes first. ird, his ordinary semantic recall may be

subject to production errors. A moments reflection would have convinced him that thereis no way Dorcas would have used human skin for his lile sack, but since the sheath ofTerminus Est was fashioned from something called sable manskin (Shadow 90; ch. 14)and both were items very dear to him that he carried with him across the Commonwealth,he might have momentarily mixed them up.

e fluidity of the dividing line between this travel in his imagination and actual timetravel is exemplified when he dreams on the shores of Ushas, is told in his dream that heno longer dreamed, and soon emerges, wholly physical, as Apu-Punchau in spe. When hereturns to the approximate time of his departure, he learns that a wraith-like aspect of hishad the whole time remained where he had slept, one that the priest of this new religionof Ushas professed to be able to sense.

According to this theory, Ouens good memory may be not so much the genetic precur-sor and foundation for Severians gi but a latent ability of his to access the energies ofthe new sun due to his close relation to Severian. A gi handed back in time. Such notionsare not foreign to the text, where Dr. Talos observes that just as the momentous eventsof the past cast their shadows down the ages, so now, when the sun is drawing toward

Barbatus suggests that the amount of energy at ones disposal is crucial for determining the number ofpeople one can ferry through time. (Urth361; ch. 50)

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the dark, our own shadows race into the past to trouble mankinds dreams. (Sword 186;ch. 35)

Symmetrically, the same counterchronological influence may be the reason for Vale-rias association with the Atrium of Time. Borski (19) presents a convincing argument

that two of the women Severian has a relationship with, Dorcas and Valeria, are both hisgrandmothers. is is clear in the case of Dorcas, but there is also ample evidence (de-tailed inSolar Labyrinth) that Severians mother Catherine is the daughter of Valeria andher second husband Dux Caesidius, and that it is her who is sent back in time on the finalday of Urth.

Further evidence of this theory is that the period Severian lives as Apu-Punchautheonly one, as noted earlier, when he cannot draw on the energy of the new sunis keptvery short despite its many years in story time and contains no direct speech until rightbefore the end when he can escape to the future again. Severian has not scrupled to renderthe language of the Ascians in his own in his account, so the foreign language they speakis not likely to be the reason for the stylistic break, and the content of the two chapters is

close to what someone with ordinary memory would be able to remember of the events.Conversely, there are several unexplained visions of the past embedded in the cycle,

which Andre-Driussi (93) has compiled under the headword Corridors of Time, therebyimplying the same conflation of memory and time travel that may be at the basis of Sev-erians mnemonic ability. At least two of these visions take place before he has obtainedthe Claw and one of them clearly reaches back much further than his own lifetime.

What further corroborates the theory is that it repeats the paern of annular fusion,the circular or mutual recursion that is found all throughout the Urth Cycle, be it in theschemes of the hierogrammates who want to ensure their own creation by ensuring thegenesis of the humans of Ushas who will evolve into the hieros who created the hiero-

grammates, or be it in Canogs Book of the New Sun, which serves as blueprint for Dr.Taloss playEschatology and Genesis, which Severian uses to guide his account of the fu-ture that Canog protocols and eventually turns into the first book. Severians mnemonicability is the reason he is enlisted by the hierogrammates and his mission eventually isthe counterchronological cause of the same ability.

Father Inire may have the same gi as Severian. Borski (4370) makes a good case forInire reappearing throughout the cycle as a father figure in various guises. He is usuallydistinguished by this stature, size, abilities, manner of walking, manner of social interac-tion, and significantly his impressive eyes, either directly or in that he tries to hide them.

e ostensible hierodule and machine Ossipago is likely to be one of these guises. He is

the one who enables the other two hierodules of the trio to step through time (Urth360; ch.50), and reduplicating himself throughout time is probably also the way Inire manages tostay alive so long beyond the span of his short-lived kind. (Citadel 405; ch. 38) So when

Dreams, here, can be taken quite literally since the fight in the ensuing chapters had been foreshadowedin one of Severians dreams in the first volume.

Or at least why he ended up as the successful candidate if Baldanders was a previous one but was foundto be too egotistical and ambitious for the job.

Hierodules typically live only a score of years, like dogs. (Sword 178; ch. 33)

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Famulimus says that Only Ossipago here has memory like yours (Urth405; ch. 38), shemay have meant memory that has transtemporal access to all brain states all throughoutthe persons lifetime.

5.3 For That Were You ChosenSome previous sections have already pointed toward the enhanced manipulability throughmyths and symbols and scintillating gadgets that may be a concomitant of a memory thatdoes not filter any noise, but the hierodules Barbatus, Famulimus, and Ossipago imply thatSeverians memory capacity itself may have been an even more immediate and forciblereason, but not necessarily because of any record he would write, though lethe suggeststhat interpretation.

Barbatuss pleasant baritone flouted the gloom. Youre conscious. What doyou remember?

Everything, I said. Ive always remembered everything. Dissolution wasin the air, the fetor of [Severians own former bodys] roing flesh.

Famulimus sang, For that were you chosen, Severian. You and you alonefrom many princes. You alone to save your race from lethe. (Urth353; ch. 50)

is description, as well as previous, identical descriptions of the nature of aquastors,suggests that the accurate recreation of a person is aided by good memory. Anticipatingthat their marionee would die repeatedly on his journeys, the hierogrammates henceselected someone they could recreate almost losslessly from his own memories.

at is, if the hierogrammates are even the directors of the play. Father Inire, geniusarchitect and adviser to all autarchs over maybe 1,000 years, is a formidable contender forthe role, but as hierodule, he may be just the subcontracted architect of the hierogram-mates. Finally, Sergei Novikov may also be behind it all, seeing how the future may dictate,through the self-consistency principle, all the less likely events of the past that caused it.But such speculations would go beyond the scope of this paper.

6 Conclusion

First, the reader ofe Book of the New Sungets to experience the overwhelming deluge ofdata and associations that cause mnemonists like Shereshevsky and Severian to perceive

If instead Ossipago is really only a machine rather than a machine with Father Inire inside, then this state-ment would seem to corroborate the theory that Severians memory is owed to cloud-sourced storageaugmentations.

And at least in dismissing Severians faith in the Claw, they have been remarkably (surprisingly) honestwith him (Sword 184; ch. 34).

e river of oblivion, one of the streams of Hades, the waters of which possessed the quality of causingthose who drank of them to forget their former existence. (e Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia)

Trivial for beings who can contravene time or whose clocks run widdershins round both suns (Urth360; ch. 50) by design.

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much less clearly paerns that would be obvious to most people, a condition that alsoseems to entail passivity and, with Severian, docility, the laer of which is reinforced byhis upbringing. ese processes are detailed by reference to the research of Luria.

Second, and more fundamentally, there is the search for the basis of Severians condi-

tion. Cause and effect cannot be assumed to be clear-cut in a medium as interconnected(or curiously disconnected) as our brain, but to the reader of Shereshevsky case history itwould seem like his synesthesia is the foundation for his mnemonic feats, while the laerare the cause of some of his peculiar character traits. e absence of any such synesthesiain Severian forms a conspicuous lacunaa clear sign that it is up to the reader to interpo-late.

One argument that reconciles these similar symptoms with their dissimilar causes drawson Severians latent ability to navigate time, which is only fully revealed in the coda ofthe cycle. Various fragments of evidence can be marshaled from the text to substantiatethis hypothesis.

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