Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 10:04:41 -0500
Subject: Re: Belated thoughts RE: (urth) Shadowy reflections on an amazing
From: Adam Stephanides 

on 4/17/02 6:56 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at ddanehy@siebel.com wrote:

> Nigel observed:
> 
>> Severian in some sense takes on the role of Christ when he resists
>> Typhon's three-fold temptations, but as the author has insisted
>> elsewhere, Severian is not Jesus...
> 
> and I insist that this is a case where the author either is -- I was
> going to say "lying" but let me say instead "being deliberatly disingenuous"
> -- or doesn't know what he's talking about. Or maybe some combination of
> the two. And it doesn't start with the temptation in the desert.
> 
> I mean, come on: his career starts with baptism and ends with
> resurrection. Before he meets Typhon, he raises the dead, heals the
> sick turns water into wine, tames wild beasts, and (I think a case
> could be made) banishes demons. Not to mention coming back from the
> dead repeatedly, telling parables (what _do_ you think the stories
> in the Book of Urth and Sky are?), etc., etc., etc.

Well, he isn't literally Jesus: he's not God, and his return isn't the
Second Coming of Christ (and I've never understood how the events of UotNS
are to be reconciled with the Christian eschatological scheme).  But I agree
that the similarities between Severian and Jesus go far beyond "he's a
Christian, and Christians are supposed to imitate Christ."

When I read UotNS, it seemed to me that the portions of the book where
Severian is the original Conciliator might have been Wolfe's attempt to
imagine why someone might behave as Jesus does in the Gospel of Mark
(reluctant to perform miracles, and telling those he's cured not to say
anything about it).

--Adam



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