Been listening to the Alzabo Soup Podcast and I’m hugely grateful for their insights, but I take issue with their assessment of Severian’s psychology, or maybe his underlying political theory.
I think Severian is a pretty good observer of human nature and the folks at Alzabo Soup (AS) seem to think that his worldview is overly cynical and misogynistic. I’m listening to their analysis of chapters four and five. The AS folks argue that Severian has got it all wrong when he uses the relationship between the torturers and their “clients” as a metaphor for all human relationships. “All love that which they destroy,” Severian declares.
I think what Severian is getting at is that questions of power infect every human relationship, even in relatively free societies. Power is an aspect of the human condition that simply cannot be evaded or avoided. Somebody always has more of it than someone else in virtually every relationship that ever exists. Sometimes this power differential can be reversed, sometimes it is hidden, and sometimes it can be negotiated to be more palatable or just, but it’s there.
The trajectory of Severian’s career, particularly as it is described in The Urth of the New Sun, serves as a metaphor or meditation about the legitimate use of power and to what ends this power should be wielded. The underlying political theory that I discern from these texts is that for power to be legitimate, it needs to serve the interests of human survival and flourishing. Typhon wields power illegitimately, Severan for all his faults, uses it for legitimate purposes. As monstrous as he is, he takes threats to human survival and welfare personally. I admire that.
The folks at AS also take issue with his description of women looking upon men as their quarry. After a fair degree of observation and reflection, I have concluded that women size men up to see if they are up to the task of providing habitable order for them and their offspring. (If you hear echoes of Jordan Peterson, guilty as charged). The folks at AS call this misogyny. I don’t think it is. Women size men up and vice versa. It’s how we are wired.
We don’t like to think about the extent to which people use other people as instruments to achieve their goals, but anyone who has served in a war, as Wolfe has, cannot kid themselves about this reality. Generals send people off to war to die to achieve goals that the dead will not see come to fruition. This does not mean that the enterprise is illegitimate. It’s tragic, but not necessarily, illegitimate.
I think that the underlying theory of politics in BOTNS and the UTNS is pretty reasonable. In UTNS, Severian is told that he is in fact a monster because of the suffering he dishes out. This is what governments do. They deal out death and misfortune to some people so that others can survive and flourish. Now, at the end of BOTNS, Severian-as-Autarch makes moves to reduce the amount of death and suffering his regime will dish out, but he doesn’t deny this is what rulers do. I suspect that Severian is able to discern this reality because of his time in the Torturer’s Guild.He takes the tragedy of the human condition as a given and works from there.
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Marty Light Nice essay - preach on!
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Marc Aramini Phil and Metz are products of their time, alas. They think Severian is pretty dim and his insights into human nature “nonsense”. I strongly disagree with their assessment of his character. His trajectory is one of overcoming devotion to an artificial and arbitrary justice to serving a higher, if at times inscrutable one. Some Women scheme, lie, and betray to gain their heart’s desires, too, in fiction and in life, as do some men.
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Jesse Faulk You sound like a jerk.
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Tim Swanson No reason for incivility...
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Nathan Carson Jesse Faulk you can disagree on any points but let’s please not get into name calling.
Everyone here has different backgrounds and opinions but we all have a common enthusiasm for Wolfe’s writings.
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Marc Aramini Every time I hear someone complain that women just like jerks I say - it isn’t nice guys who finish last; it’s boring ones. Now I have to reassess the value of my advice ... ;)
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Sean Ferguson .......what are you talking about
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Marc Aramini (It’s a joke. About five years ago I went through a period of my life when I felt like Rudolf Valentino - stalkers, hanger-ons, etc. etc.- some could not be deterred. I’m short, not wealthy. I jumped to the conclusion it was because I just wasn’t a bore anymore as I was throughout my 20s. Jesse has offered a more compelling reason for the overwhelming attention.)
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Sean Ferguson uh.........ok
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Tim Hanson I'm in agreement with Marc on this one. I like the podcast but I think they have a terrible downer on Severian. He (like them) is a product of his time. If he is a misogynist, should we be surprised? He is raised in an all male environment in a pseudo-medieval time. The Torturers response to his burgeoning lust/love for Thecla is to buy him a prostitute. Not the best role models by modern standards.
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Charles Gillingham "Jesse Faulk You sound like a jerk." lol I doubt Mr. Aramini would disagree with that. Alexander the Great was also a jerk.
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Sean Ferguson I enjoyed earlier episodes of AS a lot but disagree so strongly with their reading of Severian and BOTNS that I’ve had to stop listening. They seem to see him as a fraud and sociopath who’s also very stupid. That’s not the book or character I know at all, though I certainly think he’s a deeply flawed man who does some terrible things.
Having said all of that— I’m a leftist, I'm probably further left than Phil and Metz, and I'm certainly further left than Wolfe himself (who I love) and many folks in Wolfe fandom, and I’d appreciate if some of the more conservative folks would give me a break from their ideas about how they think leftists and “SJWs” are dumbasses who can’t read properly. (Not saying that the OP is doing this, but it’s an attitude I’ve seen on the subreddit when AS comes up... I remember some bizarre theory someone came up with on the subreddit about how “leftists don’t believe in hierarchy and this means they believe literary interpretation is a free-for-all grab-bag where you can just make up whatever you like” or whatever, just nonsense, not how me or any of my left-wing friends engage with art.)
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Wolfe speaks a lot to how shame and humiliation affect people. Every character he has contrived to create is thereafter REMEMBERED... to the point that you're almost ashamed that you hadn't as involved an interest in them, even as there were cues to consider them... as real persons. He particularly remembers when his characters may or may not have adversely treated people, even if squaring of accounts, is made too much the forefront concern rather than giving life to those you may have squelched. If people are linking him in with Jordan Peterson, there's ample in him that is really ripe to be recovered within... quite frankly, even within the forefront of feminism right now, that is, with #MeToo.
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Sean Ferguson It’s extremely depressing to me to hear people linking Wolfe with Jordan Peterson, who is an idiot, a charlatan, a sociopath, and above all else just a nasty hateful little turd, and if this group is going to become a Peterson/incel/MRA subreddit I’ll probably just unfollow. (Gonna turn off my notifications for this thread. I’ve had enough fights about that weird disturbed Peterson freak already and it’s incredibly depressing to me and I don’t want to ruin Wolfe for myself by having them linked together in my mind)
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Wilson Dolaghan I guess you won't see this, but I think I share your perspective, certainly, at least, on Peterson. I've also been pretty disappointed by some points of view expressed here. That said, with the exception of a few explosive situations, I think civility is pretty well maintained in the group. Certainly I've heard things here that I felt were sexist (Though I think Wolfe's sexism is overblown through some progressives' knee jerk reactions). A lot of times though, I've enjoyed the insights of people I've previously had vehement disagreements with, and vice versa. I feel it's worth keeping your cool and hearing people in the group out. I mean, personally, since I know there are many people in the world who believe things I find objectionable, I'm not sure why I should be shocked or dismayed when I encounter them, like I didn't know they existed. Then again, this is just about the only message board I frequent, so maybe it's a question of fatigue.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston I'm not going to read their take as I believe I'm in the midst of establishing my own, but re-reading the series now I'm struck by how many things Severian puts forth concerning his take on the relations between men and women, that no one would ever put into a novel these days for it making the author himself seem misogynistic. There is a certain sincerity concerning Severian, and Wolfe, a certain remarkable exposure, that I take seriously... even if one ultimately gauges their take problematic, especially for often passing as simply "wisdom." There are times when he talks about human nature where he seems to be foreclosing people, not because ultimately, true, but because it's more restive to be able to classify and contain rather than acknowledge a world of ever-change, requiring constant re-appraisal. There are times in the text when Severian does this, or others do so -- too early foreclosing the world, that is -- and it is challenged -- and I really appreciate these instances. But there are others where it doesn't go challenged... where it looks like Severian has just got people made, figured out... usually to their dis-credit, and where we are baited to not question him for the bad reason of it feeling good to account ourselves like him -- wiser than everyone else.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Severian for example argues for the virtue in duelling, for it squelches the practice of murder, and unlike as with murder, leaves the commonwealth with the most fit. This is left to be understood as wisdom; not to question. But when he thinks of the torturer's guild, he has clearly come to think of it as a place which squelches the production of the fit, by keeping "honest, integrity, and intelligence" down, when surely before he had appraised it in a way similar to the way duelling was excused... taking mal-attention away from the autarch and thus letting him function, and whatnot. What the Severian I wish existed would have done, would have been in the text to give hints that that sort of reappraisal he administers to the unquestionable truth of the necessity of the torturer's guild, could apply to many of his other assessments of the necessity of this and that as well. If that Severian was the one we encountered, then when for example the autarch in the end talks 'bout the impossibility of democracy, of how everything had been tried... about the firm necessity of closing the roads and thus ceasing all possibility of societal change, we would at least of been more in mind -- through recognition that these authoritative assessments that can sound so much like wisdom, delivered by those that have lent to be understood as wise, can nevertheless end up being wrong -- are still up for challenge. How can it be possible that Severian's tale shows up AN ANGEL as being ignorant, as being wrong, yet leaves some characters WITH an immunity to refutation/disbelief? Yet, unfortunately, it does.
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Wilson Dolaghan Maybe Wolfe is relying on readers having an expectation that all characters and all statements are suspect, as in reality. I think good writers treat their own beliefs, when presented in the text, as suspect. Wolfe isn't Heinlein. I don't feel his goal is to preach, but to explore, and to present his perspective for the reader's review. Anyway, can't characters be messy, just like real people? People let us down. It's what they're best at. My two cents anyway.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Wilson Dolaghan I would hope that was Wolfe's expectation. It certainly sounds like it was your own experience, which I appreciate hearing. Personally, though, whenever Severian starts philosophizing about the nature of men and women... about humankind, and it makes them seem somewhat reduced... essentially fallen or minor in importance in the large scale of things, I think he succeeds in leveraging something immature in the readers' minds that has us simply agree with him without thoroughly testing his thesis. This is one of the reason he requires critics who don't only point out the marvellous things he does in such ample supply, but ways in which he can stunt, hold back -- like Disira upon Able -- the reader, ironically by making them feel -- end goal already reached.
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Wilson Dolaghan Fair point. I think you're right in terms of how his observation minimize humans and focus on their insignificance, though not always. I think in part it's a necessary salve for his conscience, given what he ultimately does, and, possibly, the conscience of anyone who would rather not "waste" time on the problem of pain, as Wolfe has hinted at in interviews. So I think this is one philosophical thread that can probably be traced back to Wolfe. I'm both sympathetic and in disagreement with his view. I think that on a universal scale, humans are certainly insignificant, but the idea of humans as being insignificant in a universe with an intelligent creator is a very disturbing idea that says some unflattering things about whatever deity that would be. I think his attempts at apologetics of this view, or something like it, are interesting though. Since I'm an agnostic whose a baby-step away from being full athiest, obviously he hasn't converted me, but I find his worldview infinitely more plausible than the Christianity I was raised with. In some ways it resembles Roman Stoicism: refusing to be ruled by emotions (in this case, those resulting from the pain of yourself or others) and submission to your purpose elected by a higher, inconceivable power. Very anti-humanist, and though I'm not a humanist either, I suspect my issues with this philosophy would be similar to those humanists would raise. If Marc notices this though, I'm sure he'll be able to point out the ways I'm bulldozing over the complexities of Wolfe's case here.
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Wilson Dolaghan I like that despite the fact that Severian isn't on my list of characters I'd like to have as a roommate or get lunch with, he has moments of trancsendant kindness and clarity that are so touching and genuine. I think these get lost sometimes in readings that treat everything he says and does as sociopathically disingenuous. But also, his very real flaws and vices are lost in readings that are overly kind to him, as you mentioned.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Wilson Dolaghan I mention Dorcas's kind insistence that Severian considers how people use metaphors to trap you away from your potential freedom; from uncovering, not who your real self is, but the self... you're more or less comfortable with, and which suits their own preferences/current needs. I think Severian's tale could have used even more helpful, therapeutic, challenging backtalk of this kind. The idea that we are but small things in a vast universe is presented a number of times in the text, and as far as I can remember, not really challenged. If so, in the spirit of Dorcas... when she was at her best, it is for the critic to point out that we can gravitate to ways of systemizing the world that more suits some mal-need of ours we need to grow out of than reality, and that it is most important it be pointed out when the view passes as unassailable. So the critic would view the text, note how many times Severian employs the word "small" and "little," in conjunction with an atmosphere where pity and sympathy from a great outside source would seem due to care to arrive, for the particular patheticness of the thing, and leave us at least more in mind to question if Severian's estimation of the importance of people in the universe is but the fruition of some deeply seeded preference for self-understanding that he applies to himself again and again and again through the text. He uses it, so that he can imagine something great outside himself would find him worth noting on that would have ignored him if he held himself greater, like a sick boy finally being attended to by his otherwise pre-occupied mom. That way, you finally get what you've always craved, more of the supply you fell short of, from your mother's bequeathing breast:
“In our kitchen I lifted a cup of stolen wine to my lips—and found it had become a breast running with warm milk. It was my mother's breast then, and I could hardly contain my elation (which might have wiped the memory away) at having reached back at last to her, after so many fruitless attempts. My arms sought to clasp her, and I would, if only I could, have lifted my eyes to look into her face. My mother certainly, for the children the torturers take know no breasts.”
People are talking about which short story collection they most appreciate of Wolfe's. I said Endangered Species, but when I think of Severian, that boy in the collection "Island of Dr. Death" who's left alone to the drug-addled mother -- the story that contains them -- always comes to mind. I think of that story through reading the Knight series as well.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Wilson Dolaghan For me it'd be a pleasure to have lunch with him. He's very perspicacious and attentive.
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Jenny Lovern I must agree with many comments here. I enjoyed listening to the podcast in the beginning (way back) because I was a brand new Wolfe fan and loved hearing their enthusiasm for his work. But I’ve come to strongly disagree with a lot of their ‘theories’, and find I’m enjoying his writing more without all the speculation. I do think they go overboard. I stopped listening after they discussed Little Severian’s death, as if he were being used as a decoy and Sev felt no real sadness. I believe that was the take of either Phil or Metz (a suggested theory). To me that was ridiculous, as the compassion in Severian had grown leaps and bounds at that point, however troubled a being he was. Of course this is based on my own interpretation, but I feel one of the reasons why Wolfe is so careful and choosy with his prose is so that revelations (like Sev actually showing deep emotion) are that much more powerful. If I’m meant to be deceived by it, then Severian (or Wolfe) has succeeded, and I’ll let him have that victory.
If AS focused more on the brilliance of how Wolfe writes, rather than hyper focus on the ‘why’ of each thing a character says and does, Id listen again.
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Eric Bourland >>>>If I’m meant to be deceived by it, then Severian (or Wolfe) has succeeded, and I’ll let him have that victory.
Yes.
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Mike Beizer Jr. I don't like them because they challenge my (limited) personal interpretation of something i've made my own (in my head), and that scares me.
In all seriousness, in like... 99% of the outlandish theories they dish out, they call it just that, a theory. Wolfe already has a very limited fandom, lets appreciate the resources we have, nobody is asking you to change your mind about something. God forbid we speculate on FICTION from a remarkably tight-lipped author.
Lighten up, and stop bringing up modern politics. That is like trying to look at ancient Egypt through the lens of our modern political climate. Nobody cares which particular flavor of crap you subscribe to.
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Marc Aramini Talking about their approach is talking about Wolfe. Criticizing my approach, or Borski’s, or the Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast, or old Urth list posts, is also discussing Wolfe. If people want to discuss the books in the manner they find most appealing, isn’t that the goal? - all of these commentators on Wolfe are doing so through a lens which includes their “particular flavor of crap” - and this very much includes Phil and Metz. So their framing approach, too, is subject to fair discussion. And discussion involves talking about fruitful ways to approach the material. So are you saying we shouldn’t talk about potential flaws to approaches or seek refined ones? In that case I have about twenty years of Urth list responses to go back and respond, hey, come on guys, appreciate the limited resource you have!
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Severian is from the beginning... someone who would let someone he loved die -- Thecla -- out of spiteful revenge of her belittling his masculinity, his manhood. He feels unresistingly baited into admiring Jolenta, and wants to physically attack her for it. He almost permits a gang-rape of Casdoe, for her calculated spurning of him. I may be in error, but I don't believe this is Jordan Peterson' territory. Rather more those who'd explain him as not ultimately about delineating essential human truths, but about managing women in a time of rising women so that men who are fearful of women, gain unearned advantage over them... there is room to explore all his/Severian's ruminations about the nature of men and women, as about securing a malign tyrant's hold on them, if they end up being widely believed. What a conquest it is to not longer be subject to people, for knowing their essential nature better than they do themselves.
Your take on our not being interested in seeing people as using others to achieve goals, certainly doesn't fit with how historians and sociologists have typically understood people. There is a prejudice in these disciplines... as there has been traditionally in psychology as well, to understand this as the human norm -- people always come out seeming debased; of greed or whatnot -- and so in making this statement one leverages authority... built-in assumptions of what is true, but which may not ultimately BE true, to make a case.
Severian does a lot of comparisons between the women he knows, but in favouring Dorcas for being his best companion, it's difficult to see him as using her as an instrument towards a goal of children or status or whatnot. One wouldn't get points for seeing this choosing as such; only detraction for seeming to confine truly high reasons for valuing another within categorization that carries associations of the crude; of underlying debasement. Wolfe lends the autarch that kind of wisdom you're partaking of when you talk about generals and war-outcomes, so what you're saying could have been mouthed out of him, out of the autarch. Melito's story lends credit to your estimation of women, in that his tale is about helping cover for his current poor self-presentation as a provider. And Jolenta tries to dissuade Jonas in his interest in her, for not being an appropriate provider. But overall, saying women are looking for good-providers means for a very selective reading of Severian's tale, as Severian delineates Jolanta as in fact choosing Dr. Talus, precisely because he refuses her... for the fact that he replicates for her a treatment, a trauma, a primary abandonment, she finds herself driven to try and settle (this would be the trauma-study inflected reading of her motivation). Dorcas chooses a ghost of a man, who can't provide a whit, because, apparently, when she's finally in a settled man-wife relationship with Severian, a powerful provider at that point in the text, she feels driven to flee the existential freedom of a new life, and Severian himself isn't enough therapeutic weight to prompt her towards it.
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Wilson Dolaghan I'm not sure I understand how he lets Thecla die out of spite. If you don't mind explaining, I'd genuinely like to hear it.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston Wilson Dolaghan Not at all. Just before he leads her to the revolutionary for torture and eventual death, he hears her summarize him as "really rather a sweet boy in his way.”
“Were I such a hero as we had read of together in old romances, I would have released her that very evening, overpowering or drugging the brothers on watch. I was not, and I possessed no drugs and no weapon more formidable than a knife taken from the kitchen.
And if the truth is to be known, between my inmost being and the desperate attempt there stood the words I had heard that morning - the morning after my elevation. The Chatelaine Thecla had said I was "rather a sweet boy," and some already mature part of me knew that even if I succeeded against all odds, I would still be rather a sweet boy. At the time I thought it mattered. ”
I believe he has offered us enough to conclude that Thecla here is guilty of the crime of not seeing, not recognizing, that to Severian at this point what matters so much to him is his ascending the steps towards manhood. He notes this about himself about him many times before he meets Thecla... about how he was no longer boyish enough to do such and such... about how he was clearly entering terrain where he was due to experience more responsibility, more authority, and was increasingly being accepted as such -- as someone hardly anymore a boy -- by his masters. Then, here, Thecla, his first love, assesses him, in sum, as just a sweet harmless boy... she cages him into perennial infancy, and effectively rewrites much of the reason for his probably being proud of his ostensibly grownup relationship with her. He senses she would never be disproven in her belief, and so leaves her to her fate, even as he could really have saved her. Interestingly, when he refers to this later on in the text, he doesn't reference the "sweet boy" reason for not interfering, but rather his own still-maintained inability to imagine life outside the guild. Also as the text develops, counter to how he presents himself initially, he gives ground for understanding himself at this point as not so much someone who was quickly transcending boyhood, but rather someone who remains fundamentally undeveloped and immature. Fortunately, this is not as present here (though it is actually a bit... "at the time I thought it mattered), for it makes his spite towards her, understandable. This was callous and cruel of her; very self-elevating, at his expense. What else to expect of, after all, a prisoner? Well... exultants are portrayed as seeing all surroundings outside the very finest, as impressing badly upon them -- witness Thea and her assessment of the Vodalus's bandit "fortress" -- with the reality of whether or not they in fact do, not really being their concern, but really only that they can be adroitly used for purposes of one's own grandiose self-elevation. Thecla uses Severian, betrays the true assessment of her relationship with him -- which she later reveals as very, very objectively important to him -- to give herself a temporary grandiose lifting of herself above her surroundings. In effect, here she's Blanche Dubois, and he is here doing his own Stanley Kowalski-akin, spiteful revenge, for her bettering himself over him; for her, in a mood indifferent to his feelings, degrading him, to "elevate" herself.
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Patrick McEvoy-Halston “She lay down at once upon the cushions, where the uplifted petals gave her perfect complexion shade. It made me think of Agia, laughing in the sun as we descended the Adamnian Steps and boasting of the wide-brimmed hat she would wear next year. Agia had no feature that was not inferior to Jolenta's; she had been hardly taller than Dorcas, with hips over-wide and breasts that would have seemed meager beside Jolenta's overflowing plenitude; her long, brown eyes and high cheekbones were more expressive of shrewdness and determination than passion and surrender. Yet Agia had engendered a healthy rut in me. Her laughter, when it came, was often tinged with spite; but it was real laughter. She had sweated with her heat; Jolenta's desire was no more than the desire to be desired, so that I wished, not to comfort her loneliness as I had wished to comfort Valeria's, nor to find expression for an aching love like the love I had felt for Thecla, nor to protect her as I wished to protect Dorcas; but to shame and punish her, to destroy her self-possession, to fill her eyes with tears and tear her hair as one burns the hair of corpses to torment the ghosts that have fled them. She had boasted that she made tribadists of women. She came near to making an algophilist of me.”
In my judgment, at the moment where Thecla denounces/degrades Severian as but a sweet boy when he is almostly badly honestly trying to sustain himself as a budding, emerging man, she is very much in Jolenta mode... someone who can, in the process of supporting their own self-possession, shame the self-account of others so much that they be rendered into experiencing pleasure at their pain. That this is something THEY do to others -- "SHE came near to making an algophilist of me" -- that THEY are responsible for, is where Wolfe steps into highly politically incorrect territory, even as it leaves Severian, even as it leaves MEN, the opposite of the fundamental self-control of patriarchal lore. This very much, for me, is where Wolfe gets at how much what we say and can do which can reduce people... is never to be blown off, but can corrupt a life forever. It's where he's in-sync with current assessments of the effects of abuse and humiliation.
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Charles Gillingham They really go out of there way to misinterpret the "All love that which they destroy" section. I always took it as women tame men, destroy the more violent, lustful aspects of masculinity in order that they can better serve civilization. The Commonwealth has been waging a war with the rest of the world forever, against enemies that have access to alien technology. Of course gender roles wouldn't conform to our current "cosmopolitan" norms.
Judging Wolfe's personal views based on the alien worlds he writes about is foolish. Same rules apply, anyone that writes any fiction set in Rome or ancient China or Japan should also be called a misogynistic.
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