Michael Andre-Driussi's Blog

Getting arch with Agia. In the early part of his fiacre-ride with Agia, Severian tries dazzling her with the telling of his wild adventure of the day before. When she does not take the bait, he searches for something less self-centered, asking, “What is that building over there? The one with the vermilion roof and the forked columns? I think there’s allspice pounded in the mortar. At least, I smell something of that sort from it.” To which she answers, “The mensal of the monachs” (I, chap. 18).

Let us start with Agia’s answer, and work our way back. “Mensal” is defined by Wolfe in his article “Words Weird and Wonderful” as “A place supplying a monthly rent to a religious order or official, particularly if the rent is given in the form of food.” (And “monach” is a monk.)

Regarding “mensal,” dictionaries give three different meanings: “monthly” from Latin “mensis”; “related to a dining table or meal” from Latin “mensa”; or, in ecclesiastical contexts, “church revenues supporting a priest’s table” (which might be a combination of the first two, as it is “ongoing” and “meal”).

Well, Wolfe’s definition seems to say the building in question is a commercial facility managed to provide income (food) to the religious body (monks). Because of Severian’s mention of “allspice,” let us tentatively call it a Middle Eastern savory stew shop (or, less likely, a bakery making gingerbread and pumpkin pie).

But when we back up to the “allspice” mention, things get strange. Severian has just mentioned architectural details (roof, columns), when he mentions “mortar.” “Mortar” has two meanings that bear on this scene: architecturally, it is the brick-glue; culinarily, it is a tool to process spices, usually paired with “pestle.”

Severian here seems to be joking with Agia in an arch manner, a wordplay that mimics synesthesia, that condition wherein the stimulation of one sense triggers involuntary experiences in a second, unrelated sense.

That is, because of what came before it (roof, columns), it seems as though Severian means that the brick-glue was infused with spice, such that it still perfumes the neighborhood to this day.

And, speaking of detecting aromas at a distance, let us note that the shop is not one they passed close by, it is “over there” and still visible. So how far can you catch a whiff of allspice, from a moving open carriage?

Hang on, context is critical. This scene is happening in the morning. The cook shop is likely to be preparing for the day’s cooking by working up the spices in a mortar and pestle. Oh, OK.

The vermilion roofing is certainly distinctive. In a medieval setting, it suggests a high-status building, religious, aristocratic, or economically elite. Severian does not recognize it as a church, so that seems out; yet Wolfe’s “mensal” definition states a religious connection. “Elite” might match this particular district of Nessus, marking the transition between low status area around the rag shop where they start their ride and the higher status area where they end their ride (which is probably Cobbler’s Common).

The “forked columns” are ambiguous: in medieval times, they might be twisted or knotted columns; otherwise the term applies to ancient Egyptian bundled columns, Byzantine twisted columns, or even Corinthian orders with their ornate capitals.

It might be that the vermilion roof and/or the forked columns tell Agia what the business is, the local equivalent of a McDonald’s “golden arches,” or it may be that she simply knows by experience in the neighborhood. Or she might know by the cook shop’s proximity to a religious order; that is, it might be on the outer layer of a monastery complex.

In any event, Severian’s few words here, his telling of the day before and his sudden change of subject, suggest he is exhilarated, happy, bubbly.

Pictures at an Exhibition. Nearly a year ago, I was contacted by a European reader named “Nattilla,” who shared a theory on the first painting Severian sees at the Citadel, “a dancer whose wings seemed leeches” (I, chap. 5). The theory being that this image was of Nataraja, a depiction of Shiva (one of the main deities of Hinduism) as the divine cosmic dancer. Nataraja has snakes for hair, and through his wild dancing these snakes look somewhat like “wings.” Snakes might appear to be “leeches” to an outside viewer.

The second painting Severian describes is “a silent-looking woman who gripped a double-bladed dagger and sat beneath a mortuary mask.” This time there are more details, but the most distinctive one is the double-bladed weapon. Gene Wolfe was a blade nut, and the double-bladed dagger is rare in the world, mainly the “haladie” knife of India, used by Rajputs, and later used in Syria. Since portraits of Rajput Queens often show them holding swords or daggers, this second painting seems likely of that ilk. Stone, an arms and armor reference work used by Wolfe, has an image of a “Syrian knife like the Indian haladie.”

The third painting is the one Severian initially writes as being of “an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape.”

The fourth painting is one Severian does not actually see. It is a work of Fechin, described by curator Rudesind as depicting “three girls dressing one another with flowers.”

It is Rudesind’s talk about the third painting that famously reveals it to be of an astronaut on the Moon. While we readers get a blast of recognition, Severian is only puzzled.

My focus here is how the sequence goes: obscure, obscure, obscure-revealed-to-be-familiar, and trope. The pieces are distant in time and unknown in context, until the third case.

At the House Absolute (II, chap. 20), Severian again encounters Rudesind, who describes a fifth painting, being another by Fechin, but this one a portrait of Rudesind himself as a boy.

Rudesind takes Severian to view a landscape painting “The Green Room,” a sixth painting. In attempting to gain focus on this work, Severian backs into a seventh painting, that of an empty room.

My focus here is on how the sequence shows a rushing of time into the present, and the human interaction with Art. Rudesind starts to break the “timeless” aspect of Art by revealing that, many decades ago, he was the subject of a portrait in the collection. Then, to help Severian with his present task of finding the Green Room, Rudesind shows him a painting of that name. Through viewing this blurry landscape, Severian literally enters the seventh painting.

Divine Ages of Antiquity. Studying ancient religions, there is this pattern of sequential pantheons, wherein one group supplants another. So for the Greeks, you start with the rather nebulous Primordials, replaced by their children, the Titans, who are then replaced by their children, the most familiar Olympians.

In Mesopotamia, the generational sense is similar, but the generations do not have a difference of substance, so it seems more like a simple regime change.

In contrast, Christianity says that history is linear.

The unreliable translator. “Gene Wolfe” is a character in the frame tale. I am not questioning his translation, but separating his translation from his speculations. Examples include his talk of extra-textual material, from handling artifacts and visiting locations to “photograph the era’s few extant buildings” (I, appendix).

Here is a red flag to signal “unreliable”:

“In translating these [terms for weapons], I have endeavored to bear in mind the radical meaning of the words employed as well as what I take to be the appearance and function of the weapons themselves. Thus falchion, fuscina, and many others” (IV, appendix, 314).

While this seems reasonable and straightforward, “fuscina” does not appear in the text, only in the appendix.

Two legendary events that might be related: the imposition of the old sun and the sinking of Jonas’s homeland. While The Book of the New Sun suggests that the sun was transformed into the old sun during Typhon’s reign, The Urth of the New Sun seems to say otherwise, that what happened during Typhon’s time was only a lesser event, a mere dimming.

Another global event referenced is the forming of the Xanthic Lands. The people of Kim Lee Sung seem to be the people of a “Xanthic” place; the people of Kim Lee Sung seem to have been the drivers of the interstellar expansion (utilizing non-xanthoderm sailors like Jonas and Hethor), which led to galactic empire; but by Severian’s time, Jonas’s Xanthic homeland has “sunk beneath the sea,” perhaps leaving behind the Xanthic Lands.

The text is clear about the global flooding with the arrival of the white fountain. This might imply a similar effect with the arrival of the black pit, perhaps a lesser flooding, like that which transformed Jonas’s homeland into the Xanthic Isles.

If the imposition of the black pit was a punishment from Yesod for the excesses of the galactic empire, then it would be fitting that the empire’s Urth-side homeland would bear the brunt. The black pit arrival certainly marks the transformation of the old sun, but it also implies the start of the empire’s long decline, and it likely signals the sinking of Jonas’s homeland.

Hint that Urth had a “fallow” period. Related to the long decline of the empire and the imposition of the old sun, the main thread of the civilizational text is that there is a chain of civilizations stretching for up to a million years. This implies “continuous,” but a simple glance at history shows interruptions and fallow periods.

The idea that Urth had a recent “fallow” period is suggested by the top layer of the “league high” cliff.

Adding to this, Typhon seems to have moved his government capital to Urth from someplace else. The derelict ships, the hulks at the Old Port at the end of Typhon’s reign, might really be from this migration wave from the beginning of his reign, rather than being from before Typhon’s invasion. Within this frame, the zoetic transport might have brought useful engineered animals like destriers.

Yesod folk as fairies, at best. In a certain light, when Ossipago, Barbatus, and Famulimus show up in the flying saucer, Wolfe signals that Team Yesod is made up of fairies, because Wolfe is on record as being impressed by Vallee’s work in this trope. See Vallee’s Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying Saucers (1969).

In addition, or as a result, Yesod folk, from high to low, seem to have this one basic trick to play: paying honor in great excess. The first time is at casa Baldanders, where the trio suddenly bow to Severian, and call him “lord.” This stunt bewilders Severian and infuriates Baldanders; it obviously stirs the pot. Havoc erupts.

On world-ship Yesod itself, Tzadkiel makes the same move, in two phases. First the excessive honor: Tzadkiel says he spent time as Severian’s sidekick because he looks up to him as an acolyte looks up to the Conciliator. Then, the monkey-wrench maneuver: Tzadkiel states “we have tricked you,” adding “we even told you this building is our Hall of Justice,” and finally that Urth “will be destroyed at your order.” Battle Royale ensues, just like at casa Baldy.

As if to drive home how limited they are, OB&F do it again at the end, implying, all but saying, that Severian is the Increate: “the head of his race and its savior,” with a kiss-the-floor.

(And that is the only use of the word “savior” in the five volumes: even the monk at the Saltus execution uses “hero” for the Increate.)

In what I take to be his credit, Severian seems wary of them, but they still keep him off balance with their fairy antics.

Easy to miss, easy to forget: wine into water. Stephen Palmer points out in “The Religious Implications of Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun” (1991/2010) over at Ultan’s Library that the famous “water into wine” episode in Saltus is mirrored by a quiet “wine into water” mention in Thrax. Palmer writes the latter happens when Dorcas is on the verge of leaving Severian; I will amplify him by noting that the Saltus one comes on the verge of Severian’s “marriage” to Thecla.

One can easily take the Thrax miracle as a mere metaphor. Henceforth I’d like to consider it a mandatory mention whenever the Saltus miracle is referred to. Granted, the problem that “wine into water” is not a miracle associated with Jesus, which is why nobody can see it.

A Logos like Legos. The argument is made that there is Christian content when Severian uses “word” several times in relation to the Increate, and he even uses “logos” once.

“Surely the Pancreator knows all mysteries. He spoke the long word that is our universe” (III, ch. 19) and later, after restating the line, he writes, “We, then, are the syllables of that word.” (III, ch. 22).

The subsequent use of “logos” adds to it: “[I]t was a living vapor that seethed as I might have imagined the logos to writhe as it left the mouth of the Pancreator” (III, ch. 35).

While the Bible has God speaking creation in Genesis, speaking creation is also a trait of Egyptian god Ptah. Creating everything like assembling Legos brand toy bricks.

In the New Testament, the Apostle John makes the revolutionary statement “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” using “Logos,” a term of Greek philosophy usually translated as “Word.” By this proclamation, John equates God the Son as the Logos.

This does not contradict that God spoke creation in Genesis, but the notion that God the Father spoke God the Son is categorically incorrect. That would make the Son a created being.

Since John’s Gospel reveals that the Logos is the Son, an interpretation that sticks to Logos as Legos is, by definition, a Christianity from the decades before the Gospel of John.

The “seams” that Severian doesn’t see. Having touched upon how Severian sees oddities in the paintings on Yesod, consider the opposite: cases where we readers detect details that fly under Severian’s radar. The painting of the astronaut on the Moon. The Jungle Garden. The Tale of the Student and his Son. The open allusion to Frankenstein.

Astronaut on the Moon. This is a compact case, involving Neal Armstrong, whom Severian does not recognize; the saint “Nilammon,” whose name is a phonetic allusion to Neal Armstrong; and an orbital distance error which Severian does not recognize.

The Jungle Garden. To set the context, Severian and Agia first stepped into the Sand Garden, which seems minimalist yet magical; Severian selects the Jungle Garden mainly to avoid going where Agia keeps urging (and the third garden they visit is yet different again).

Early on in the Jungle Garden is a sign reading “caesalpinia sappan.” To us, this garden seems more like the type of botanical garden we have visited in real life, perhaps a more modest, municipal one. The sign refers to a tropical tree found in India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Southern China.

Deeper in the garden, the hut they find seems to be made of bamboo, which has a wide natural presence, on every continent but Europe and Australia.

At the hut we encounter Isangoma, a “native” in the garden, who is talking to the missionaries Robert and Marie. His name is a Zulu title for a diviner. Isangoma speaks of “tokoloshe” a term from African folklore describing a mischievous and lascivious hairy dwarf, suggesting that the jungle hut is located in equatorial Africa.

In this way, the Jungle Garden gives us a curious blend of Asian rainforest (based on tree caesalpinia sappan) and African rainforest (based on “Isangoma” and “tokoloshe”). This might be seen as an error; or it might be explained as being true to a type of “thematic” garden that shows plants not really neighbors in nature.

Moving on to “The Tale of the Student and His Son,” the story Severian reads to Jonas in the antechamber. Jonas can clearly see some seams that Severian cannot, the content relating to Theseus of Greek mythology; Jonas grows frustrated at this, while Severian remains oblivious. We can see even more seams than Jonas calls out, in the content relating to the American Civil War.

Later still, Frankenstein. When Talos makes his open allusion about the Frankenstein franchise to Severian, it is as though Talos is looking past Severian to talk directly to us, since there is no way Severian can grasp it at all. Frankenstein is even further away from Severian’s comprehension than Neal Armstrong.

Missing crosses. While Terminus Est shows its “cross-like” qualities from time to time, actual crosses are quite obscure in the text. Crosses for torturous execution; crosses for art.

Severian’s narrative give us a catalogue of torture devices, but one lacking a cross; the closest being the whipping post that used to be out in the yard until the witches complained. This might be taken as “European medieval standard” practice, which is the usual default setting, but here we question default settings.

Crosses in art. Dorcas mentions the products in her shop, including a “rood.” This is an archaic term for a cross. Talos mentions his plan to stage the play at “Ctesiphon’s Cross;” and while Severian has no intention of going there, he winds up at the place, performs in the play, and spends the night. Through all this, not a word about the presumed monument of the location’s name; in fact, there is a fascinating dodge of not-naming the place while they are there, only chapters before, and volumes after.

Severian as Barabbas. At the trial of Jesus, the crowd famously choses convicted criminal Barabbas for a pardon; Jesus literally gets the crucifixion that Barabbas had earned. Recall that the scapegoat ritual involves two goats: one is killed, and the other is set free. Recall that the vote for Barabbas was a vote for the Messiah they believed in, one who would cast the Romans into the sea.

At the trial in Yesod, there is that strange substitution where Zack plays the part of “golden Severian.” This looks like what I’m talking about, but the real payoff is a little later, in another substitution, when Zack’s son is murdered by the crowd, right after the announcement that Severian is a genocider. Now that’s Barabbas. (Granted, it is complicated by the fact that the son is killed by the crowd trying to stop the New Sun; but the awkward fact remains that the “innocent” man was killed instead of the “guilty” one.)

Differences in Severian’s spiritual experiences. There are scenes of high spiritual impact for Severian: his “rapture of the sands” in the Sand Garden; his vision of the flying cathedral, which seems personally timed for him; his interactions with the Malrubius aquastor.

In a slightly different category, that of “altered states,” there is his (drunken) dream of the chapel restored after his elevation to journeyman, and his childhood dream of drawing things to life.

In contrast with this, there are scenes where Severian experiences spiritual misfire. In the highly charged environment of Yesod, arguably the pinnacle of the entire New Sun Project (and five books), the paintings showing scenes from Severian’s life seem slightly off. This finds some similarity with that bit at Baldanders’s tower where Ossipago, Barbatus, and Famulimus first bow to Severian, but then they are dismissive of the Claw.

It starts to seem as though these patterns maintain throughout the text. Yesod, both Team Yesod (Ossipago, Barbatus, and Famulimus), and Yesodians on the homefield, all Yesod is prone to committing gaffes that produce spiritual misfires for Severian.

The Hunt for the Mausoleum Builder: the Curious Case of Caesidius. This is the military leader who married Autarchia Valeria during her regency in Severian’s forty-year absence, and Caesidius died the year before Severian returned from Yesod (V, chap. 46, 328). Severian learns this history from sailor Eata, who reports that people said Valeria married Caesidius because he looked like Severian, but in Eata’s opinion Caesidius was both better looking and a little taller.

A character who “looks like Severian but is a little taller” sounds rather close to what little we know about the enigmatic Mausoleum Builder/Occupant, based upon the funeral bronze of the “old exultant.”

The first objection is that since exultant height would be noted as such, Caesidius does not seem to be an exultant, or at least, not a “true exultant,” he is in that fuzzy category Severian himself is in, which we might term “of the blood, but not augmented by blood (of khaibits).” (Then again, the subject of the funeral bronze might also be in that nonaugmented category. Hmm.) Another strike against the bronze being based on Caesidius is the fact that the funeral bronze of the old exultant is immediately recognizable to Severian.

Still, the mausoleum has two empty coffins. Caesidius might be the one who does not have a funeral bronze; or at least one whose bronze is not detailed in the text.

Backing up to note what little we know about Caesidius, Severian definitely remembers Dux Caesidius.

Moving on to what we can guess about Caesidius, how old is a man achieving the rank of Dux? “Dux” is one of those terms lacking a historical age designation, but the young ones were typically royals, so it seems reasonable to figure Caesidius as a non-royal senior officer, late forties or early fifties. So, if he was 45 when Autarch Severian was 23, he was 55 when Severian left, and he died at 94, the year before Severian returned.

While the fact of the Apu Implosion implies a Rule Against Mingling Severians from different eras; the possible observation of multiple Severians at the Zombie Fight of Os suggests some kind of limited work-around. Even granting this, the working relationship between an autarch and his dux is far beyond seeing mute tourists at a famous duel.

For a New Year’s Resolution, consider using the model “Severian as the Apostle Paul” as a more accurate statement than the model “Severian as Christ Jesus.”

The Book of the New Sun evokes the Apostle Paul in several ways: the discredited Acts of Paul and Thecla provides some important details; the self-reported thorn in Paul’s side, while less obvious, is actually deeper; and Paul’s dramatic change from bloodied enemy of Jesus into sainted evangelist of Jesus aligns with Severian’s startling transformation.

Acts of Paul and Thecla

The Acts of Paul and Thecla is an apocryphal Christian text about Saint Paul and a proto-martyr named Thecla, who begins as a young noblewoman of Iconium. This Thecla is said to have miraculously survived torture (trials by beast and fire) and then escaped her tormentors to live in a cave for several decades. Note how the cave detail is similar to Agia’s scheme to forge a letter from Thecla drawing Severian to a cave. Otherwise, Wolfe twists things: where Paul taught Thecla, Thecla teaches Severian; where Paul’s Thecla is a model of virginal chastity, Wolfe’s Thecla is carnal with Severian.

The thorn in Paul’s side

In Paul’s Second letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 12:7–10), he describes having a “thorn in the flesh,” a persistent source of suffering (12:7). Paul asked God to remove it three times (12:8).

This compares with the Claw of the Conciliator, a famous gem later revealed to be a literal thorn. While the Claw is, in general, a burden for Severian, on several occasions he mentions how the Claw pushes on his chest: “I awakened to discover that I was lying on my back with the sack on my chest seemingly grown so heavy” (III, chap. 1); “the first time in many weeks the Claw had ceased to drive itself against my chest” (III, chap. 9); “Since I had left Thrax it no longer pressed against my chest like a finger of iron” (III, chap. 28).

This seems highly significant in cryptically equating Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” with the Claw.

Paul’s blood-splattered history in hunting Christians

Paul, when known as Saul, was a Jewish Pharisee who was zealous in persecuting the early church of Jesus. Paul alludes to this in letters (Galatians 1:13–17; Philippians 3:4–6). Saul was present at the martyrdom of Stephen, and approving of it (Acts 7:54–60), after which Saul went door to door, hunting Christians for imprisonment, or worse (Acts 8:1–3).

This career led to Paul’s self-designation as chief among sinners: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Tim 1:15).

Paul’s transformation, from enemy of Jesus to apostle for the gentiles, from man of severity to man of mercy, finds a strong parallel in Severian’s change from torturer to bringer of the New Sun.

Capturing this in emblematic style, Severian starts off wearing a cloak of fuligin (a color “darker than black”) and ends with wearing a robe of argent “more pure than white” (IV, chap. 38).

The association between Severian and Bible figures is scarcer than one might initially assume: for example, the linkage between Severian and St. Peter seems limited to the single case of the resurrection of Dorcas. The three links to St. Paul (the Acts of Paul and Thecla; the thorn in Paul’s flesh; and Paul’s dramatic career change) form the strongest web in the text.

Michael Moorcock: links between Runestaff and the New Sun. On the genre side, Dorian Hawkmoon’s post-apocalyptic, high tech medievalism, is not the first of Moorcock’s work I would list as having an effect on the New Sun (that would be Moorcock’s Behold the Man (1966)), but let us take a quick tour of the trope checklist.

(The Runestaff series is: The Jewel in the Skull (1967), The Mad God’s Amulet (1968), The Sword of the Dawn (1968), and The Runestaff (1969).)

Start with the “hot potato” gems common to both Moorcock and Wolfe, dinguses which TV Tropes labels as “Artifact of Doom: The Black Jewel” and “Magic Feather: The Claw of the Conciliator.” Followed by laser lances and pyrotechnic polearms; and bio-engineered beasts of ambiguous provenance.

Then there is “Legion of the Dawn” in The Sword of the Dawn, a ghostly army (termed “sealed army in a can” at TV Tropes) of American Indian tribal warriors summoned by the eponymous Sword of the Dawn. This kinda relates to New Sun’s Apu-Punchau, first with the time-warping autochthon dancers from the dawn age when Apu resurrects the whole town as an army of ghosts; more pointedly later when Apu is using his own utterly untrained interpretive dance to explain the dying sun to the autochthons, and the dawn is miraculously held back.

Unwanted magical gems; flaming lances; Moreau’s beast men, filched from Circe; “sealed army in a can” rather like Barsoomian phantom bowmen . . . pretty thin gruel, when not actually “off the shelf” items.

John Fowles: from “Feast” to “New Sun,” from first to last. Turning to the best-seller side, in my reading Wolfe’s notes on what his initial plans were for “The Feast of Saint Catherine,” it seems to me that Wolfe was using as a blueprint (best-seller novel) The Collector (1963) by John Fowles. This requires a “Poe” character, an unrepentant sinner, as found in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” and I sense that originally Severian was seen in this mode, like Wolfe’s main characters from “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” “The Doctor of Death Island,” and “Hero as Werwolf,” In this type of Poe story, the reader is initially sympathetic to the character until enough gradual details emerge that the reader recoils in horror because the character is revealed to be a monster.

But then something happened, and part of the big change was that the blueprint for Severian’s story was switched from Fowles’s The Collector to one based on Fowles’s (best-seller novel) The Magus (1966), which has the main character being guided through a strange initiation. The Magus is a source of the term “godgame,” since that is the author’s original title for the work, and it describes the reality-warping manipulation of one man by mysterious others.

As The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction puts it:

[Godgame:] A frequent shorthand in sf/fantasy Terminology for tales whose outcome is controlled, and whose characters are usually weighed in the balance, by a god-like figure. The term was coined by John Fowles to describe the scenario of The Magus (1965; rev 1977), whose working title was in fact «The Godgame». His magus-figure Conchis ensnares the young narrator in a maze of delusive scenes that challenge Perception; a kind of manipulated Pocket Universe which can be escaped only when Conchis permits, after he has judged the narrator to have become a competent human being.

Yet, on the topic of The Magus, in an interview with McCaffery, Wolfe says he had not read The Magus . . . well, let’s see exactly what he says. He is talking specifically about the early phase of “The Feast of Saint Catherine,” when he says,

“And I wanted to have Severian be forced to confront the problem of Thecla and the problem of torture and the role of human pain and misery. At that time I had not yet read The Magus, so the thought didn’t come from there, but I was very conscious of the horror not only of being tortured but of being forced to be a torturer or executioner” (Wright, Shadows of the New Sun, 90).

Wolfe could very well have gotten to the godgame scenario via works earlier than The Magus, for instance, stories related to initiations within the Mystery Religions of antiquity (which Fowles references in The Magus, IIRC). For example, we know he read The Golden Ass while at the Korean War.

Within the lens established by Joan Gordon, I suppose this new godgame form for Wolfe might be seen as an extension of the Wolfean “isolated child” trope in an adult version.

Even so, I find it curious to detect two works by Fowles with such fundamental connections to the New Sun project.

Right Courthouse, Wrong Trial. Autarch Severian, feeling he is under the aegis of the numinous Conciliator, makes the trip to Yesod. To his surprise, the trial is not at all what he had thought; and though he cannot understand it until he physically meets the Deluge, his role is less “heroic world redeemer” and more “accidental angel of apocalypse.” Debate is open as to whether or not this is a “Monkey’s Paw” situation.

It certainly seems to be a bait and switch.

Then again, in hindsight, we can see all the hints of megadeath in Talos’s play, as well as in signature scenes scattered throughout the text. Through this lens, the world flood is not a random surprise, it is an example of what Damon Knight termed the “fork ending”; a third solution, gently foreshadowed.

The big switcheroo, wherein an anticipated world saver is made an actual world destroyer, has the obvious effect of putting terrible guilt upon narrative Severian. The paradox that narrative Severian did not actually push “the red button” of world destruction in the text that we have undoubtedly gives Severian some personal comfort, but it makes him a literal scapegoat. He has become a focus of inconceivable guilt for a real action, but an action he did not commit, just like a Biblical scapegoat, the being upon which the sins of others is cast.

Narrative Severian’s pre-Yesod guess that the bringer of the New Sun would become a walker in the corridors of Time, that is, a wanderer, finds an unexpected echo in the scapegoat, who is cast out of the village to wander the wasteland. And, just like narrative Severian, the scapegoat could not be killed.

Severian’s narrative reveals a gap between the promise of Big Rock Candy Mountain and the reality of the Deluge. This gap has a Biblical parallel to the way that the people in the days of Jesus had a fixation that the messiah must be a military warlord, whereas Jesus said the messiah would be so different as to seem to be the very opposite of a warlord.

This is not to insist on the Christian reading. For the story-teller, the same thing is Damon Knight’s “fork”; for the psychologist, it is the human tendency to avoid unpleasant truths with gauzy fantasies of wishing-it-were-so.

Through it all, one might wonder what it is all about; why such bewildering twists to such a disturbing conclusion. My sense is that Severian’s narrative is the “improved” version, the optimized version, a process which I too often sum up as “take a sad song and make it better.”

The first follow up question to that would probably be, “How is it ‘better’?”

I tend to focus on the curious detail that narrative Severian is guiltless of the crime, and that is better (for him) than if he were as guilty as Cain, the first murderer.

Hero as Scapegoat. Because scapegoat is better than Cain. Cain like the werwolf Paul; like Number Five of “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”; like Alan Alvard of “The Doctor of Death Island.”

Something of a Summation. The bringer of the New Sun will be a hero, possibly a world redeemer, but definitely not a messiah (Old Testament military version or New Testament non-military version). The bringer of the New Sun is not a village scapegoat, nor a global sin payment, but instead an advocate who will (somehow) bring about global revival through the lifting of a curse. The bringer might be required to express repentance for sins across a million years, or perhaps just for the “imperial” sins committed among the stars for a fraction of that time.

The Commonwealth public seems largely unaware that the autarch has the role of being the bringer of the New Sun, so the role seems open, and there is the possibility that it will be filled by the return of the Conciliator himself.

The New Sun will kill his enemies Abaia, Erebus, Scylla, Arioch, and others. This is not the action of a messiah; it is the work of a hero slaying chaos monsters. Baal, Beowulf, et al.

The New Sun will transform the depleted planet into Big Rock Candy Mountain. Like most miracles, this is presumed to happen with the ease of flipping a light switch: No fuss, no muss. Even the “disaster” talk of Talos’s play is perceived as meaning something “political” in nature; i.e., about “regime change” rather than true, literal, non-metaphorical, apocalyptic megadeath.

Holy Roman Emperor as Shaman. The Autarchy is commonly understood to have Byzantine elements, but I do not recall seeing mention of its trappings from the Holy Roman Empire. This high culture mark is easy to grasp, whereas the role “bringer of the New Sun” remains elusive until we dive into the archaic world of Shamanism. In short: The shaman goes into the spirit world to effect a magico-religious cure for individuals or even societies. (You will recall Isangoma in the Jungle Garden.) This contrast of high civilization and prehistoric culture is a trademark of Wolfe’s work. It also adds more meat to the “Pantocrator as wrestler” line Wolfe used.

The shaman is aided by patron spirits; which maps nicely to how Severian is being aided on Urth by the enigmatic Conciliator through the mysterious Claw.