Michael Andre-Driussi's Blog

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.

The Trinity, and other hypostases. “A green book hardly larger than my hand . . . appeared to be a collection of devotions, full of enameled pictures of ascetic pantocrators and hypostases with black halos and gemlike robes” (I, chap. 6, 67). In his article “Books in the Book of the New Sun,” Gene Wolfe writes that this book, one of the four that Thecla is allowed to read while in the Matachin Tower, is a euchologion or formulary of prayers (Plan[e]t Engineering, 12).

The word “hypostases” is defined by Wolfe in his article “Words Weird and Wonderful” as “The persons whose union constitutes the Increate.” It is the plural of “hypostasis,” meaning “base, foundation; essence, principle, essential principle.” Specifically, of the same divine substance, but separate, like the persons of the Christian Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). (However, in the early days of Christianity, Wisdom or Sophia was a hypostasis of God.)

The word “pantocrator” is defined in “Words Weird and Wonderful” as “Those who have mastered the physical. Also, incarnations of the Pancreator. Those fit for spiritual and philosophical ‘wrestling.’” Historically, a title of Christ represented as the ruler of the universe, especially in Byzantine church decoration: (Greek) “panto-” meaning “all,” and “crator” for “ruler,” but usually translated as “Almighty” or “all-powerful.”

Regardless the murky connection between “pancreator” and “pantocrator,” Wolfe makes his use perfectly clear: that the Pancreator is a god, and a Pantocrator is a physical incarnation of that god. Within the Christrian frame, the Pancreator is the Son of the Holy Trinity, and a Pantocrater is Jesus Christ.

Still, the original quote regarding the green book gave the plural, “pantocrators.” At first glance, it might seem out of place, or even blasphemous, to consider multiple incarnations of the Son, but I will sketch out how pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus are actually covered.

In the Old Testament there is a mysterious “angel of the Lord” who appears seven times: he finds Hagar in the wilderness (Genesis 16:7–12); he stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac (Genesis 22: 11–18); he appears to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2); he delivers a message to insolent Israel (Judges 2: 1–4); he commissions Gideon (Judges 6: 11–24); he puts a plague upon Israel in David’s time (2 Samuel 24: 15–17); and he appears in a vision of the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 1: 11–13). This figure is thought likely to be a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus.

Another mysterious figure of the Old Testament is Melchizedek, a priest of the Most High God who meets Abram (Genesis 14: 18–20), later referenced (Psalm 110: 4; Hebrews 5: 6–11; 6: 20–7: 28). Melchizedek is considered to be a possible pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus.

And yet, the green book’s plural pantocrators seemed to be together in pictures. It might be symbolic, showing different solitary actors across time, or they might be working together as a team in one timeframe. Or they could be wrestlers.

Since “pantocrator” leads to “Pancreator,” let us review other glimpses of the Christian Trinity in the text.

For God the Father we have “Increate” (I, chap. 24, 210), a Wolfe coinage, presumably meaning “not created,” “uncreated.” This word appears in the text the most, that being sixty-one times.

For God the Son, we have “Pancreator.” The tea-seller at Saltus says, “I think that if the Pancreator don’t care nothing for me, I won’t care nothing for him, and why should I?” (II, chap. 3, 24). Historically, the term appears to be a Western synonym for Byzantine “Pantocrator,” in that ikons are often labeled “Christ Pantocrator (pancreator).” In any event, it is linked to Jesus Christ. Used sixteen times in the text.

For God the Holy Spirit, “Paraclete”: “We who are worn [like a cloak by a god] are seldom aware that, seeming ourselves to ourselves, we are yet Demiurge, Paraclete, or Fiend to another” (II, chap. 24, 217). In the Bible, this is a title of the Holy Spirit; properly “an advocate, one called upon for assistance, and intercessor” but often taken as equal to “comforter.” Used one time in the text, and that in the play.

The Christian Trinity seems to be in the text, but there may be another hyptostasis. As intimated before, in the early days of Christianity, Wisdom was a hypostasis of God. Which brings us to Caitanya, as spoken by Thecla: “Possibly we all come to such a time, and it is the will of the Caitanya that each damn herself for what she has done.” (IV, chap. 2, 21). Responding to pre-internet lexical puzzlement, Wolfe answers that he means a goddess of consciousness and intelligence (akin to Athena and Minerva), she is called “Wisdom” in Bible translations. The word is Sanskrit for “spirit, consciousness, especially higher consciousness,” and “Supreme Being.”

(In addition, an Indian mystic (AD 1485–1533) of this name led a Hindu sect focused in part on the love of Krishna and his consort Radha as the archetype of mystical union. He is regarded by his followers as an incarnation of both Krishna and Radha in a single form. This seems related to the later union of Thecla and Severian in a single form.)

So, there may be four hypostases rather than three.

While the text uses Pantocrator, a term associated with Jesus, the text provides no linkage between Pantocrator and the Conciliator or the New Sun. Readers are encouraged to see linkages, through miracles and other details, but the text says nothing like that.

Scripture of the New Sun. The text offers very few traces of holy writing, and most of it is indirect.

1. The caloyer’s formulary at the execution of Morwenna (II, chap. 4). This is the largest direct text. It includes the “black worm” quote, and “you whose breath shall wither vast Erebus, Abaia, and Scylla.”

2. Canog’s transcription (V, chap. 37). The prison conversation between the Conciliator and three of his followers. We have the gist of it. Some history: “To the ice of ten chiliads [the big solar crisis] will be added the ice of the winter now almost upon us [the relatively minor Typhon solar crisis].” Some prophecy: the coming Ascian threat; some bits from Talos’s play “Eschatology and Genesis” about the arrival of the New Sun to Urth.

3. Talos’s play “Eschatology and Genesis” (II, chap. 24). Provides rather more gist than originally supposed. Shows a decidedly Persian presence, which is more than just a substitution to render familiar names exotic.

4. The brown book has a section mentioning the Conciliator (II, chap. 26), but we see none of it. Among Thecla’s four Library books is the book of scripture, but we see none of it; we see more of the green prayer book, with its enameled pictures in Byzantine style.

5. Severian’s last words to Morwenna are, “almost everyone who has ever lived has died, even the Conciliator, who will rise as the New Sun” (II, chap. 4). Severian, at the masque in Thrax, notes, “appearing here [at the masque] because it was an inappropriate place and he had always preferred the least appropriate place” (III, chap. 5).

6. Dorcas says, “when [the Conciliator] comes again, isn’t he to be called the New Sun?” (III, chap. 11).

7. Little Severian says, “[The Conciliator] will kill Abaia” (III, chap. 21).

Reincarnation. There is a hint that belief in a personal cycle of reincarnation is not unusual in the Commonwealth, as Master Gurloes says, “Doubtless I had acquired merit in a previous life, as I hope I have in this one” (I, chap. 7, 76). This is decidedly non-Christian, but it points to the ambiguity regarding the nature of the hero who will bring the New Sun: whether he will be a literal or a figurative reincarnation. In the New Testament, this situation has a parallel with Elijah as the promised herald of the messiah, a role that was enacted by John the Baptist, a figurative reincarnation rather than a literal return of Elijah.

The Pelerines. Officially “the Order of the Journeying Monials of the Conciliator” (IV, chap. 15), the popular name comes from the short, red cape that is part of their habit or “investiture.” This cape is scarlet silk, with long tassels along the fringe, and it might be attached to the scarlet hood worn by all the monials. The Pelerines are enigmatic. They are the largest religious body described in the text. They seem to be an all-female Red Cross, treating soldiers wounded on the battlefield. Away from the battlefield, they might function as a religious tent revival. That they wear red is obvious; that they might wear crosses, “roods,” is suggested. They have the relic, the Claw of the Conciliator. While they do use the term “sisters,” their higher titles are not similar to those of Christian nuns (e.g., “Mother Superior”); they seem to be enigmatic coinages (“Conexa,” “Domnicellae”) by Wolfe. (Red Cross established in 1863. There are nuns in red habits, the Redemptoristines, established in 1731.)

The Seven Orders of Transcendence. Moving from traces of scripture to hints of ritual, the text sketches a sequence of seven New Sun religious rituals performed in the court of the autarch.

“Such rituals are divided into seven orders according to their importance, or as the heptarchs say, their ‘transcendence’. . . At the lowest level, that of Aspiration, are the private pieties, including prayers pronounced privately, the casting of a stone on a cairn, and so forth. The gatherings and public petitionings that I, as a boy, thought constituted the whole of organized religion, are actually at the second level, which is that of Integration.” (IV, chap. 28, 225)

Severian subsequently skips describing levels three though five, and he only notes level six for its music and rich vestiments, but level seven is the memorable ritual wherein Severian and other participants enter a zero-gravity field, and each becomes like a separate sun orbited by “planets” (actually skulls). This ritual reinforces the ambiguous personal connection between the hero and the New Sun.

Star of Bethlehem. The Christmas Star appears in Matthew chapter 2 as a sign in the sky marking the birth of the messiah. The Magi, wise men from the East, follow this star and find Jesus.

Wolfe takes this well-known “questing star” and makes it the solution for a dying star, a “new sun” that will mark the transformation of an exhausted Urth into Ushas, an Edenic utopia.

The Prophet of the End Times. Elijah is a prophet of the Old Testament known for his miracle working (including his resurrection of a boy); for being taken up into heaven directly, without dying; and for his anticipated return at the end times.

Wolfe fills this role with the Conciliator. The Conciliator’s message is about the coming of the New Sun to lift the curse on the land. The Conciliator is known for his healing miracles; the hint of his being taken up without dying; and for his anticipated return with/as the New Sun.

The World on Trial. “Eschatology” is the word, and the phrase “end times” shows it is a one-time event in scripture.

Wolfe’s treatment of “the world on trial” shifts within one volume. Initially, the Conciliator tells the people that he has passed the test, so that the new sun is on the way (V, chap. 29, 204); but after he has been put in prison, when Herena asks him if he is not the New Sun himself, he tells her he will not speak of that, “fearing that if they knew it--yet saw [him] imprisoned--they would despair” (V, chap. 37, 266).

Somewhere along the way, sometime after the Conciliator’s week on Urth, it became established that the autarch would go to Yesod and take the test, would stand the trial. Ymar, the first autarch, took the test and failed, but the punishment was personal to him alone, and the test was open to any autarch who would take it. So the trial is open-ended; and the test-taker is the one to suffer penalty for failure, since the prize will be for Ushas should he succeed.

The Unreliable Narrators did a podcast (in two episodes) on Wolfe’s story “Hero as Werwolf” (1975), collected in The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, and The Best of Gene Wolfe.

That first podcast was in February, 2025. Five months later, I made a connection to a story from the first SF anthology.

The linkage has to do with “ghost houses,” mentioned in the second paragraph of Wolfe’s story: “This [public meeting in the park] was no ghost house, no trap.”

Wolfe describes a world where some sort of genetic revolution has divided society into lords and monsters, kind of like Wells’s Eloi and Morlock. The hero is Paul, a monster who preys on lords.

Chekov’s Gun goes off in the final part of the story, where monster Paul and his wife Janie are chasing a lordling boy who escapes into what turns out to be a ghost house. At first this seems to be a mausoleum with technology, making it like a multimedia museum about a departed man. But the house is more than that, it is also a sentinel watching for genetic deviations, which it will trap for one processing or another.

As for The Pocket Book of Science-Fiction (1943), Wolfe repeatedly cited this anthology as being very influential to him, so I examined it in “Gene Wolfe and the Pocket Book of Science-Fiction” over at Ultan’s Library (link).

The first story in the collection that Wolfe read was “Microcosmic God” by Theodore Sturgeon, but the first story in the book is “By the Waters of Babylon” (1937) by Stephan Vincent Benét. Quoting from my article:

Synopsis: The coming-of-age story for a young primitive in a post-apocalyptic world, a place where only tribal “priests” can safely take metal from spirit houses in Dead Places. (Enough time has passed since “the Great Burning” that some bones will fall to dust if touched, though this might be a side-effect of the apocalypse rather than a sign of time’s passage.) The hero reaches the age for his manhood journey, where he will go to a spirit house and return with metal from it, but his secret ambition is to break tribal taboo by going to the forbidden Place of the Gods. When he does this, he is rewarded with a powerful spiritual vision of life before the Great Burning, and then he witnesses the Great Burning itself. Through this experience he realizes that the “gods” were just humans, and he mentions the taboo name for the Place of the Gods is “new york.”

Benét’s story is framed as a science fiction about a neo-primitive, so we readers possess a certain “we know more than the hero” as well as assuming that there will be no “fantasy” elements that one would find in a Conan story or a ghost story. That is, we take the “spirit houses” as merely empty ruins. In the story, to escape a pack of dogs, the hero enters a spirit house and climbs the stairs to what we recognize as the penthouse (note his climb to the top; Wolfe’s hero does likewise). He investigates the apartment until night falls, whereupon he builds a fire in the fireplace before going to sleep.

Now I tell what is very strong magic. I woke in the midst of the night. When I woke, the fire had gone out and I was cold. It seemed to me that all around me there were whisperings and voices. I closed my eyes to shut them out. Some will say that I slept again, but I do not think that I slept. I could feel the spirits drawing my spirit out of my body as a fish is drawn on a line.

Why should I lie about it? I am a priest and the son of a priest. If there are spirits, as they say, in the small Dead Places near us, what spirits must there not be in that great Place of the Gods? And would not they wish to speak? After such long years? I know that I felt myself drawn as a fish is drawn on a line. I had stepped out of my body—I could see my body asleep in front of the cold fire, but it was not I. I was drawn to look out upon the city of the gods.

It goes on from there, where the hero looks out the window and sees both the former world, and its abrupt end, with high accuracy.

So Benét takes the basic, baked-in sense, and flips it over, simultaneously validating the hero’s cultural mindset, and rocking us readers with wonder.

In “Hero as Werwolf,” Wolfe clearly lines up the “ghost houses” at the start, and then delivers in a way that keeps us guessing: first we suppose that the houses are just empty; then that they are (sometimes) automated memorials; and finally, that they are the terrible traps hinted at in the first mention. This follows Benét’s pattern, but resolves with magic seeming technology rather than a supernatural-yet-clearly-accurate-to-us experience.

Wolfe often uses tombs with surprises (his “Memorare” offers a mini-catalogue), but “Hero as Werwolf” is the closest match I have found to “By the Waters of Babylon.”

Link to Ultan's link
Link to Unreliable Narrators podcast link
Link to story "By the Waters of Babylon" link

Severian’s adventure in the living city of Nessus is much like that of an American art student arriving in 1890s Paris. This connects with about half of the stories in The King in Yellow (1895) by Robert Chambers, but I want to focus in particular on “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields.”

Cribbing from my own work (A Chapter Guide About the King in Yellow), this story is a romance told in six sections:

I. A young American artist named Hastings comes to Paris in 1891.

II. An American girl directs Hastings to the Luxembourg Gardens.

III. At the gardens, Hastings meets his old friend Clifford, who introduces him to the mysterious and beautiful Valentine. Hastings takes her to be a fellow artist.

IV. (a) At art school, Clifford protects Hastings from bullies. (b) Hastings meets Valentine at the Gardens, (c) then she goes away to a secret dinner with Clifford, where she enlists his aid. (Basically, Valentine is the current queen of the nude models in Paris, but Hastings does not know that, and she wants to preserve his unknowing.)

V. Hastings goes on a fishing party with Clifford and others, a single among three couples.

VI. (a) On another morning, Hastings is disturbed by Clifford’s drunkenness. (b) Leaving this, Hastings has an unexpected morning meeting with Valentine, where she gives in to his request to spend all day together. (c) In the course of their adventure, they confess their love for each other on a swiftly moving train.

Initially, I was drawn to the similarity between the moving train episode as being similar to the fiacre race. In the story by Chambers, it is something striking and strange: Valentine opens the window and leans out, in a dangerous and exhilarating move. My theory is that Wolfe translates this into the Hong Kong action-comedy taxi sequence that is the fiacre race.

And yet, there is more than that. There is the presence of a Gardens, where the Luxembourg Gardens are translated into the Botanical Gardens of Nessus. Chambers writes about the statues of mythological figures at the Luxembourg, and Wolfe seems to morph this into the brutal busts of the eponyms on the Adamnian Steps that lead to the Botanical Gardens. Thus, Wolfe rearranges the order into VIc-IVa (exhilarating race; garden).

But deeper still, just as Valentine and Clifford have entered into a (good) conspiracy about Hastings, so have Agia and Agilus entered into a (criminal) conspiracy about Severian. Part of this plan involves directing Severian to the Gardens. The order of rearrangement is expanded to IVc-II-VIc-IVb (conspiracy; directed to garden; race; garden arrival).

Of course, we have to add Severian arriving in the living city, and please forgive me in advance, but the night before he met Agia he was “swimming with the undines” in the company of Baldanders (i.e., fishing party), and in the morning he first meets Agia at her shop, where she is introduced by her brother. So the pattern is expanded to I-V-III-IVc-II-VIc-IVb (arrives in city; goes on fishing party; meets the femme; conspiracy; directed to garden; race; garden arrival).

Cribbing from my chapter guide to the New Sun, when Agia and Severian are on the Jungle Garden trail in chapter 21, there is an echo to another King in Yellow tale, "The Demoiselle D'Ys," where the eponymous lady herself says, "to come [here] is easy and takes hours; to go is different--and may take centuries." Chapter 21 likely ends the King in Yellow thread of maybe seven chapters, akin to the Voyage to Arcturus thread(s) when Severian is in the mountains.

Duck, Duck, Goose! The gray salt goose (II, chap. 17, 143; IV, chap. 9, 71; V, chap. 21, 151; V, chap. 31, 220) first appears in stories within the story: “wild salt geese” flying by (143) in “The Tale of the Student and His Son,” and the transformed “gray salt goose” (71) in Melito’s story. The transformed goose of Melito’s story is mentioned as “swift salt goose” (151) in question to Tzadkiel, and finally there are “gray salt geese” who “never fail of their landing” even in deep fog (220), mentioned in chapter “Zama.”

Probing a bit, a “gray goose” is greylag goose; but a “salt goose” is preserved goose meat, i.e., salted.

Thus, it appears that this is a stealthy Wolfe coinage, in the spirit of Lewis Carroll’s “bread and butter fly” from Through the Looking Glass (1897).

Conundrum of the Ages. Early on in Severian’s narrative, he gives an aside that hints at a span of history divided into named “ages”:

“Traditions from our [guild’s] days of glory, antedating the present degenerate age, and the one before it, and the one before that, an age whose name is hardly remembered now by scholars” (I, chap. 2, 19).

That is, Severian sketches out a sequence of four.
The current named degenerate age.
The earlier named degenerate age.
The even earlier degenerate age, whose name is all but forgotten.
The earliest age of our guild’s glory days.

This is straightforward, and whets the reader’s appetite for the given ages to have their names revealed, especially that one that is hardly remembered.

The pattern of four ages, with three ages declining from a golden age, matches Ovid’s scheme of Gold, Bronze, Silver, and Iron; itself a simplification of Hesiod’s five age system Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, and Iron.

Alas, it is not so. The only named ages the extended text provides are “Age of the Autarch” (in “Cavalry in the Age of the Autarch,” an article by Wolfe) and “Age of Myth” (one time). In talking about his guild, presumably Severian is referencing subdivisions within the Age of the Autarch, but even that is not certain.

The use of “ages” is nebulous in the text, matching usage in real life (contrast the Augustan Age with the Bronze Age). Cribbing from my article “Posthistory 201,” there are cases where Severian uses “ages” in a way that could be read as subdivisions within the Age of the Autarch.

Severian on dueling: “Those ages that have outlawed it (and many hundreds have, by my reading) have replaced it largely with murder” (I, chap. 27). Whatever their actual duration, he is writing about many hundreds of them.

Severian on his narrative: “I shall call it The Book of the New Sun, for that book, lost now for so many ages, is said to have predicted his coming” (IV, chap. 38). Clearly subdivisions of the Autarchial Age; maybe even numbering four.

Conciliator to Typhon: “and whole ages of the world will stride across it before my coming reawakens you to life” (V, chap. 39). Solid subdivisions of the Age of the Autarch.

This is what we are up against.

Artifacts of the Commonwealth.

19th century
Pointillism 1886

18th century
spadroon

17th century
craquemarte
fiacre
soubrette (theater)

16th century
badelaire
batardeau
commedia dell’arte (theater)

15th century
spadone

13th century
coutel
estoc

Roman
spatha

TL/DR: Nothing conclusive on topic of khaibits singular (one clone) versus sequential (multiple clones, one at a time), just a laying out of the scattered cards, with allusion to imitative science, imitative magic.

Granted that khaibits are clones utilized to enhance exultants with greater stature and extended youth, what if khaibits are not “one and done” (a la “Picture of Dorian Gray”), but a series of clones over time (call it “Subscription of Dorian Gray”), clones who are each “used up” in the enhancement process?

For exultant women, the text establishes that each has a “bed-fodder” clone; which implies that all exultants must have at least one clone.
For exultant men, the text hints of multiple clones in same-age soldiers. This might resolve as multiple “cannon-fodder” clones.

Common sense implies that the clones are rendered reproductively sterile, with vasectomies for the boys and tubal ligations for the girls.

For scientific background, young blood/organ transfer experiments in the 1950s suggest benefits from donors under the age of twenty. Health benefits imply a significant age gap between donor and recipient, rather than the two being of the same age.

In the text, the reason for having clones is two-way blood transfusions, where the “exchange of blood will prolong the exultants’ youth” (IV, chap. 24, 194). This suggests that there is a significant age difference between an exultant and his younger clone, with the corollary that perhaps clones are “used up” by the process, taking on the old blood, requiring a steady stream of new clones. But either way, through “Picture” or “Subscription,” the exultants have a Saturn-like existence as each one “eats up” his clonal offspring to a lesser or a total degree.

Reclones (from Wolfe’s Smithe novels)
In a different series, Wolfe put a focus on slave-like “reclones,” who are burned like books.
The hero Smithe’s total lifespan is estimated to be around twelve years (ABM, 19).
Reclones have been force grown, such that they possess no childhoods of their own. They have a shelf life estimated at twelve years.

Baldanders
Back on Urth, Baldanders, who has engineered his own gigantic growth, is obviously imitating exultant tech, so we should expect evidence of clones.
The little giant fat boy, the naked boy, is a “small child” who is nearly as tall as Severian, due to forced growth in less than two months after leaving group. However, despite this hint, the naked boy is not clonal, he is a possible future catamite. There is no evidence of clones for Baldanders, but then again, he would likely dispose of them quickly.
Baldanders’s age: he was little guy in grandfather’s day (i.e., 60 years ago). He has grown beyond exultant stature; this might argue that Baldanders has used up more clones than an exultant could.

The ziggurat leech
The old man is seeking after ancient knowledge. He has the slave boy Mamas, thirteen years old. He uses Mamas to provide a blood transfusion to Severian, which itself is close in process to an exultant young blood exchange. (As an aside, the fact that Mamas’s lips turn gray from the blood loss points to him being like the picture of Dorian Gray, suffering the ill effects for the benefit of the other.)
The leech claims the breath of the boy in their shared bed “acts as a restorative” to those of his years, imitating the exultant young blood exchange by association.
The leech talks about further experiments with the boy, and Severian has “a vision of children in flames.” This is a curious detail given in proximity with two different allusions to the exultant young blood exchange.

Khaibits
The three Echopraxia clones displayed are “tall women” (I, chap. 9, 89) who seem age seventeen, sixteen, and . . . Thecla’s age? (However, this view is skewed by Severian perceiving them as exultant-bastard commoners; so as exultants they might actually be much younger than his estimate.)

Exultants
Thecla is the primary model, but limited in age-related details
• Thecla’s childhood height suggests she received treatment during childhood, since at age thirteen or fourteen she was as tall as Severian (IV, chap. 4, 34)., i.e., 6'1" (according to Wolfe in interview “The Legerdemain of the Wolfe”).
• If adult Thecla is 6'11" tall (which seems the least she could be), then Severian comes up to her chin.
• Thecla’s khaibit is “somewhat shorter” than Thecla (I, chap. 9, 90), yet still she literally looks down on him (91). Age-wise, Thecla and her khaibit are treated as peers, but there is an implied gap of at least seven years, since Thecla seems older than twenty-three and her khaibit is being shown alongside seventeen-year-olds.

Sancha is a model for the exultant’s full life, from childhood to elderly death, but Sancha’s childhood height is not given.

Sancha (II, chap. 15, 125; “The Cat,” es, 210–17) is the young exultant caught with Lomer; later married to Fors; finally returned to House Absolute as the Dowager of Fors.
In the story there seems to be a pattern of seven years (Sancha at age seven, fourteen, twenty-one, possibly seventy).

• When Sancha was seven years old, she became a pupil of Father Inire and gained an invisible familiar.
• At age thirteen or fourteen she was caught undressing Lomer (twenty-eight years old), a scandal which marked her for life.
• When she came of age (at twenty-one years old) she received a villa in the south and married the heir of Fors.
• Later in life, she returned to the House Absolute and died there, probably in her seventies.

Sancha’s story implies that exultant “youth extension” is only an extension, and that it is not life extension.

Ultan is a model for an exultant lacking organ replacement. While most of this examination is about the blood exchange mentioned in the text, a clonal donor would be perfect for organ transfer. Master Ultan is a true exultant whose eyesight failed in his senior years. As Ultan seems based on Borges, we note that Borges lost his sight at age 55; and Borges was around 80 when Ultan appeared in the New Sun series. That Ultan’s eyes were not replaced with clonal eyes might suggest that he does not have a much younger clone available for such a thing; which would be automatic for a singular clone, and might suggest a limit to the number of clones in a sequential regimen.

Summary
The exultant young blood rejuvenation therapy requires an age gap between exultant and khaibit. Based on “young blood,” there is an implied age limit of twenty years for the donor; which in turn opens the possibility that an exultant has a sequence of clones as each one ages out. Exultants Thecla and Thea have clones; Baldanders, while giant, has no clone; the ziggurat leech seems to be following science imitating the exultant tech, and Severian anticipates that his teen slave will be consigned to flames.

Common costume conundrum. At the big costume party in Thrax, Severian sees multiple persons in the paired costumes of ablegates and their acolytes (III, chap. 4, 42). Historically, an ablegate is an envoy of the papal see who brings a newly appointed cardinal his insignia of office.

The role must exist in the Commonwealth, if only in legend, but what sort of costume would be instantly recognizable as being that of an “ablegate” remains completely unknown. This reveals a subtle paradox, that readers have a better picture of costumes depicting autochthons, gymnosophists, eremites, eidolons, zoanthrops, and remontados, than the costume of ablegates.

You will know them by their toys. Exultant Thecla, telling of an episode from her childhood, mentions, “A few days before I had been given a set of paper figures. There were soubrettes, columbines, coryphees, harlequinas, figurantes, and so on—the usual thing” (I, chap. 20, 182).

This is one of those famous quotes. Colin N. Manlove uses it as the last line of his article on the New Sun in Science Fiction: Ten Explorations (1986), to illustrate “science fiction’s dialectic with the alien that it presents us with powerful images which at once invite and refuse interpretation.”

Outside the text, Wolfe puts some torque to it. His article “Words Weird and Wonderful” defines soubrettes in this citation as “servant maids,” whereas he explicates the others as a cast of females from high culture theater: comedy heroines, prima ballerinas, devil-girls, and female extras. Clearly, “One of these things is not like the others...”

The point being to give a glimpse of the intimate life of an aristocratic girl, who treasures paper toys based upon high culture theater.

Rushing ahead four volumes, Severian finds among the survivors of the Deluge Odilo (III) and Pega, a female servant of the armigette Pelagia. Pega introduces herself to Severian as Pelagia’s soubrette.

Odilo reprimands her, saying, “Hardly well mannered for you to introduce yourself in such a way, Pega. You were her ancilla.”

After describing her playful duties, Pega says, “[S]he always called me her soubrette,” (V, chap. 44, 312). That is, her mistress clearly named her maid’s title after the paper doll, from a set like the one Thecla had; a doll which was named after the “saucy maid” role of high culture theater.

And yet, ambiguity remains. When Odillo chides Pega for calling herself a soubrette rather than an ancilla, is it because she is trying to claim a higher station (where a soubrette is above an ancilla) or being frivilous (where soubrettes only exist on the stage)?

Troublesome trumeau. After Severian has accidentally stepped into a painting that turns out to be a fun-house type of room, he sees the autarch’s face through an unusually placed reflection: “An oddly angled mirror set above a trumeau at one side of the strange, shallow room caught his profile” (II, chap. 20, 183).

The first level of meaning for “trumeau” is a central pillar supporting the tympanum of a large doorway, especially in a medieval building.

But “trumeau” has a few different, more modern meanings, involving the space between doors, the space between pillars, and the space between windows. In this text it seems to be about the space between windows.

The inclusion of a mirror pushes the sense into the area of “trumeau mirror,” a type of looking glass which has a decorative panel that can be above or below the mirror (as per Collins). Trumeau mirrors are often hung between windows in the “trumeau,” however, the decorative panel is not called “the trumeau.”

Thus, it is not a “trumeau mirror”; it is a mirror set above a trumeau (space) between two windows.

Foibles of the flaneur.