The Book of the New Sun First Read and Re-read project [spoilers]

[Jo498]

34 minutes ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

So my kindle tells me i'm 82% of the way through book 2; and this i'm afraid is where I bow out. Despite the acclaim and all his influence on the genre, Wolfe just isn't for me. I don't think I will be revisiting these books some time in the future either.

Is that where Dr Talos' allegorical play starts...? That was where I almost gave up... Or the Theseus-style story from the little brown book...

[Sheep the Evicted]

Yeah it was the story from the little brown book that did it.

[Jo498]

The only comfort (or motivation to continue in spite of it) I can offer is that after finishing the 4th book I still find this story one of the strangest bits and while the play by Dr Talos (if it's later, I am not sure) is even worse, one could basically skip them. They do not become important later on (or if they do, I did not make the connection) and fortunately there is nothing so excursus-like later on (there are a bunch of embedded stories told but they are shorter and less mysterious).

If one does not like stories within stories or appreciate some of the stories (this also holds for some episodes happening to Severian) for their sheer weirdness or atmosphere, I do not think they can be completely redeemed by their possible symbolism or allegoric meanings.

[Fragile Bird]

Chapter XXV, The Inn of Lost Loves

Severian, Agia and Dorcas walk all afternoon, until they reach the Sanguinary Field ("involving much blood or bloodshed").  Severiian muses that the places he's been associated with all his life have been of the most permanent character, like the Citadel, and the people have been the most ephemeral.  The exception is the Inn at the edge of the Sanguinary Field.

Severian thinks a storm is brewing, seeing black on the horizon and feeling closeness in the air.  Agia laughs and explains what he is seeing in the Wall, which is so large it affects the air flow.  The Wall frightens Dorcas.

They head to the Inn, which at first Severian couldn't see, since it is in a tree and entered by a staircase winding around the trunk.  The Inn's sign depicts a weeping woman dragging a bloody sword.  Agia has several times mentioned that Severian will buy her a dinner, whether she will eat it with him or the Septentrion or the broken sailor who keeps inviting her.  The innkeeper is a man named Abban (an Irish saint), and when Agia orders a roast fowl to be eaten after the duel, Severian notices a look passing between the two of them they made him feel certain they had met before.  Severian also asks for a basin of water and a sponge so that Dorcas can wash, and wine and biscuits because no one has eaten all day.  Abban asks for payment for the wine and pastries and a deposit  on the meal.

A brazier is brought so Severian can dry his clothing still damp after his fall into the water, and a folding screen so that Dorcas can have some privacy while she washes.

The waiter brings a tray and puts it down.  Severian sits by the tray and notices a piece of paper wedged in such a way that only the person sitting where he was would have seen it.  He tells Agia there's a note, and they joke about what the contents could be.  But when Severian tells Agia about his meeting with Vodalus, the presence of Hildegrin, and the fact he hoped Hildegrin could have told him why a hipparch of the Septentrion Guard would challenge him to a duel, and how he and Thecla would laugh about spies and intrigue, masked trysts and lost heirs, a look crosses Agia's face that makes him ask if she is sick.  In response Agia throws off her gown and gets Severian desiring her more than ever.  She tells Severian she's not a strumpet, but she has a price:  he can't read the note.

Severian immediately loses his desire for her and pushes her away.  Agia claims she has a bad premonition about the note.  Severian says he believed her when she said she was not the Septentrion's lover, but he feels like she is going to betray him some way.  He tells her to put her dress back on, and picks up the note, which Agia tries to snatch from his hand.  He pushes her away forcefully and she staggers backward into a chair.

The note reads:  The woman with you has been here before.  Do not trust her.  Trudo says the man is a torturer.  You are my mother come again.

[BookWyrm2]

I just got a super lucky/great deal on a copy of Plan[e]t Engineering, which has some original stuff by Gene Wolfe regarding the Book of the New Sun. There's apparently a map of the Commonwealth in there too, which I can't wait to check out. Will definitely share insights!

[Fragile Bird]

Thoughts on the last two chapters I posted.

I don't see how the bioscapes in The Botanical Gardens could be places you travel to:  Severian sees the Sand Garden being built and the jungles have been dying for centuries.  I think the Garden of Sleep has had spells cast on it, as have the other gardens, but the seeress has been moved there, not the world to the seeress.

As I read the scene at the averns, the thought crossed my mind that Agia, once again, has too much knowledge about the process.  That knowledge shows up at the Inn again, when Severian sees the look that passes between her and the innkeeper.

The next thing that catches my attention is that Severian doesn't seem to have an issue with being violent with women.  This is the 2nd or 3rd time he's been more than brusque with Agia, and it makes me think of the first time he met Thecla and she asked him if he wanted to know why she was there, and he replied, "to be tortured, eventually", and then walked out of the cell.  That was emotional violence.

[matt b]

24 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The note reads:  The woman with you has been here before.  Do not trust her.  Trudo says the man is a torturer.  You are my mother come again.

The note is Kind of a Big Deal™

Well, I think it is, YMMV.

[Fragile Bird]

3 minutes ago, matt b said:

The note is Kind of a Big Deal™

Well, I think it is, YMMV.

I must admit I was LOLing while reading the next chapter as Severian puzzles over the note.  Of course he's focused on himself and the duel and thinks the world revolves around himself, but who the note is addressed to is so obvious it hurts.

[BookWyrm2]

5 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The next thing that catches my attention is that Severian doesn't seem to have an issue with being violent with women.  This is the 2nd or 3rd time he's been more than brusque with Agia, and it makes me think of the first time he met Thecla and she asked him if he wanted to know why she was there, and he replied, "to be tortured, eventually", and then walked out of the cell.  That was emotional violence.

Yes, I think Severian's romantic encounters would be described differently if the story were told from the perspective of some of some of the women he meets. At this point there's already ample examples of his misogyny, i.e. his grabbing of Agia during their  fiacre race ("I'm glad you did that... I hate men who grab me." ), his abusive relationship with Thecla etc.

[Jo498]

I think the remarks in the first Thecla scene are supposed to be honest and to keep her from illusions (because she is treated reasonably well in imprisonment). And he was trained as a torturer since a small boy, so it's rather surprising he is not more abusive... He is also only about 18 and his only social interaction with non-guild-members (except occasional weirdos like the picture cleaner and Master Ultan) were with Thecla and at the brothel. So he is doing reasonably well on his first day out of the Citadel.

The avern and its use as a weapon is a fairly cool idea, I think, although I have doubts how it could ever work in practice. It's also probably to show that Severian is pretty well trained in combat (although this is not his main trade), otherwise he would easily have hurt/poisoned himself when wielding it.

[Mavoras]

4 hours ago, Jo498 said:

The only comfort (or motivation to continue in spite of it) I can offer is that after finishing the 4th book I still find this story one of the strangest bits and while the play by Dr Talos (if it's later, I am not sure) is even worse, one could basically skip them. They do not become important later on (or if they do, I did not make the connection) and fortunately there is nothing so excursus-like later on (there are a bunch of embedded stories told but they are shorter and less mysterious).

If one does not like stories within stories or appreciate some of the stories (this also holds for some episodes happening to Severian) for their sheer weirdness or atmosphere, I do not think they can be completely redeemed by their possible symbolism or allegoric meanings.

Doctor Talo's play, at the end of the second volume, foreshadows the *real* ending - what would happen if the New Sun arrives. So it is important.

[Wilbur]

On 3/21/2016 at 5:54 AM, Jo498 said:

The only comfort (or motivation to continue in spite of it) I can offer is that after finishing the 4th book I still find this story one of the strangest bits and while the play by Dr Talos (if it's later, I am not sure) is even worse, one could basically skip them. They do not become important later on (or if they do, I did not make the connection) and fortunately there is nothing so excursus-like later on (there are a bunch of embedded stories told but they are shorter and less mysterious).

If one does not like stories within stories or appreciate some of the stories (this also holds for some episodes happening to Severian) for their sheer weirdness or atmosphere, I do not think they can be completely redeemed by their possible symbolism or allegoric meanings.

Stories within stories became more popular in the 1980s, and I believe that it was Gene Wolfe that drove their increasing use with these books.  The culmination or pinnacle of that framing oeuvre was Dan Simmons' Hyperion, of course, so you had a decade or so when many literary science fiction works included the technique, even including William Gibson to an extent.  And you can make an argument that it influences ASOIAF, with the many look-backs from the character viewpoints.

But Sheep the Evicted and Jo498 have a point in that Wolfe is just so damn obscure in how he uses these vignettes.  In Hyperion, the framing story requires all the insets to reach a logical conclusion - it is the apotheosis of the form.  When Milgrim goes on his little mental excursions in Spook Country, Gibson is both informing us about his character and foreshadowing the events to come.  But the relevance of the Wolfe miniatures is much, much less apparent and thus more frustrating without a group of interpreters such as we have in this re-read to help develop an understanding of their connection to the whole.

[Jo498]

Stories within stories are a very old tradition; there are nested stories in many of the "Arabian nights" and like the Arabian Nights many classical story collections (Decamerone etc.) have at least a frame story (but sometimes also deeper nesting). I highly recommend (although I do not know about English translations) Count Jan Potocki's "Manuscript found in Saragossa". This has so many nestings that one tends to forget at which level of the story one currently is...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Potocki

[Iskaral Pust]

I've finished book 1.  I wrote a long post yesterday but the board ate it.  I'm too miffed to try to recreate it.

[Fragile Bird]

Ha ha, I was doing my next chapter and was so annoyed didn't get back to it.

[Wilbur]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Stories within stories are a very old tradition; there are nested stories in many of the "Arabian nights" and like the Arabian Nights many classical story collections (Decamerone etc.) have at least a frame story (but sometimes also deeper nesting). I highly recommend (although I do not know about English translations) Count Jan Potocki's "Manuscript found in Saragossa". This has so many nestings that one tends to forget at which level of the story one currently is...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Potocki

Yes, the board ate a longer, better post I wrote yesterday, I wasn't clear.

 

I meant more specifically that popular SciFi in the 1980s saw a big increase in the use of this technique, or at least I saw more of it in that time than I remember from the 1970s SciFi that was available to me at the time.  And then in the 1990s it seemed to recede a bit after the Hyperion plaudits died down.

[Fragile Bird]

Chapter XXVI, Sennet

A sennet is signal blast on a trumpet.

Severian barely has time to read the note when Agia snatches it from his hands and throws it over the edge of the platform in the tree where they have been sitting.  She looks at his face and then glances at Terminus Est, and Severian thinks she was afraid he might strike her head off.  She asks if he read the note, and he says he did but he did not understand it.  She suggests he not think about it.

He questions her about her age, and then what her guess is about Dorcas' age, trying to figure out if one of them could be the mother referred to in the note.  Agia estimates Dorcas is 16 or 17.

Just as they are speaking of her, Dorcas steps out from behind the screen, like an eidolon (a spectre or phantom).  She is transformed after the washing.  Severian notes she is a slender girl of singular grace, with a very white face that glows, pale blond hair and deep blue eyes.

Agia pulls on her gown and tells them they must hurry.  The trumpets will sound, a signal that actually has nothing to do with the duels but is used by duellers to bracket the time in which duellers need to appear.  The first trumpet signal is made when the sun has come down so low it seems to touch the wall, and is actually a signal to the guards to close the gates.  When the sun dips below the horizon and darkness comes, the trumpet signal means the gates will not be opened to anyone, not even someone with a special pass.  It also means that if someone who has been challenged to a duel has not arrived at the grounds he can be taken to have refused satisfaction, and can be assaulted wherever he is found.

Dorcas asks for some wine and Severian asks for paper and pen.  He grabs Terminus Est and the innkeeper takes him down to a smaller bower with a desk, quills, paper and ink.  Abban assumes he is writing a will.  Severian asks him if he knows someone named Trudo, the name mentioned in the note:  could it be the waiter?  The waiter's name is Ouen, but the ostler's name is Trudo, and the innkeeper leads him further down the tree, calling for the ostler.  As they stand there, Severian sees the crowds hurrying to the duelling grounds.  The innkeeper wishes some would stop to dine at the inn, but very few ever do, usually gawkers who took ill watching and came to recover with a bottle of wine.  He warns Severian that there are regulars who come to witness the duelling, and if he wins they will follow him back to discuss the duel.  Severian says he wants a private room.

Agia and Dorcas come down the steps, Agia carrying the avern.  Severian has already gotten over his temporary lack of desire for Agia and wants her more than ever.  He believes love and desire are actually aspects of the same thing, that if you love someone and don't desire them at first, you will desire them eventually, and if you desire them you will come to love them, "for their condescension in submitting to us (this indeed had been my original foundation of my love for Thecla)."  But no one, he thinks, can say where love or desire come from.

When Agia comes down the stairs the light hits her face so half is in light, half is shaded.  Her gown is split and shows her thigh, and Severian desires her twice as much and twice as much over again.  He comes to a sudden realization and thinks:  "we find the real difference between those women to whom if we are to remain men we must offer our lives, and those who (again - if we are to remain men) we must overpower and outwit if we can, and use as we would never use a beast: that the second will never permit us to give them what we give the first."  Agia is one of the second type.

The boy comes back and tells the innkeeper the cook saw Trudo running off, and his things were gone.  The innkeeper is phisophical about losing an employee, since he owed him wages.

Dorcas whispers to Severian she is sorry she spoiled his fun upstairs.  But she loves him.  And the trumpet sounds.

A dirty little boy runs out and tells the innkeeper Trudo is not there, and the innkeeper tells him to go look for him.

[Fragile Bird]

Thoughts on the chapter.  Dorcas sounds like an exhultant, but she's too short.  Could she be an exhultant's bastard?

I assume we will meet Trudo again, somewhere along the way.

I'm not sure what the part of the note means that says "you are my mother come again".  Is she really the waiter's mother, or does he only mean she looks like his mother?  The old man in the garden said nothing about children, and she must have been a child bride if she is only 16 or 17 and they were married for 4 years.  Who gets to be buried in the garden?  Surely they must have some kind of status?

Severian's comment about Thecla is chilling - he desired her and she condescended to submit.

[Fragile Bird]

Chapter XXVII, Is He Dead?

Severian the Autarch says he so far has been too busy to think about monomachy (duelling) but whether or not duelling is good or evil, he thinks the practice is ineradicable in their society, mainly because for society's survival military virtues must be held higher than other virtues.  As for whether it is evil, societies that have banned duelling have seen increases in murders, he claims.  If a thousand legal combats result in the death of a thousand combatants, he reasons, society is better off than if 500 murders occur.  And the survivor of combat is likely to best suited to defending society and engendering healthy children.  The murdered don't survive and murderers are likely only vicious, not strong, quick or intelligent.

But duelling lends itself to intrigue.

When they reach the duelling grounds, Severian hears names being called out.  Agia explains combatants are announcing their arrival and the fact their opponent has not.  He asks her to call out his name, and she says she's not his servant.  Severian gives her a look that makes her ask that he not look at her like that, and then instead of calling out "Severian of the Matachin Tower" as he asks, calls out "Severian!  Severian of the Torturers!  Severian of the Citadel!  Of the Tower of Pain!  Death!  Death has come!"

He strikes her for that and she falls to the ground.  Dorcas tells him he shouldn't have done that, she'll only hate him more.  Severian seems surprised she thinks Agia hates him.  Then he sees another avern in the distance.

He goes to the fenced off duelling area where the Septentrion waits.  The umpire or referee, the ephor (the highest rank of magistrate in Sparta, one of 5) formally announces the challenge has been accepted, and the only decision to make is whether they will fight as they are, or naked.  Dorcas calls out 'naked', because the Septentrion is dressed in armour, including a helmet.  The helmets leave the ears bare so that they can hear instructions, and Severian thinks he sees a narrow band of black and tries to recall where he has seen that before.  The Septentrion refuses to fight naked, because the men of his country are only naked when alone with women.  But he is willing to take off his armour, but not the helmet.  He is not as well muscled as Severian expected.

The ephor asks Severian if he wants some compensating advantage.  Both Agia and Dorcas immediately say he should refuse the combat.  Severian wants to continue.  Severian puts on his torturers mask and the crowd gasps.

The duel starts and the avern leaves are flying back and forth.  At one point two of them hit each other, and instead of falling they duel each other, whittling each other down to shreds.

All of a sudden Severian feels like someone or something is pressing against his back.  the sky is a kaleidoscope of colours and someone is asking "Is he dead?"  Someone else answers, "That's it. Those things always kill."  And the Septentrion claims victor right and claims his clothing and the sword.

Severian sits up.  An avern leaf with a bloodstained tip falls from his chest.  A spectator calls out, let him get up and get his weapon.  Severian gets up on wobbly legs, and the Septentrion shouts, "He should be dead."  The ephor says, he's not and the combat will continue once he regains his weapon.  Agia shouts "Sacrilege".  Severian gets his avern and turns towards the Septentrion, who turns and runs away.  Spectators block his path, and he uses his avern to scourge them.  Severian hears Agia shrieking "Agilus!" while a woman keeps shouting a name called out at the start of the chapter, "Laurentia of the House of the Harp!"

[Fragile Bird]

Comments on the chapter.  I admit the turn of events took me by surprise, because I couldn't figure out how the whole Septentrion disguise had been done.

And why didn't the avern kill Severian?

ETA:  Don't answer, I wasn't thinking....