The fate of Thecla once she is transposed into Severian, is not exactly enviable. She's been told she would one day sit on the throne, and beyond this... actually accurate foretelling, being delivered to her in the most mockingly cruel way possible, she suffers other indignities... like for example being made essentially silent to voice her own preferred self-assessment, and thus forced to live presented by Severian as in "many respects a cruel and foolish woman." We know that it is owing to her that Severian escapes the prisons of the House Absolute -- but this knowledge of how escape can be achieved works also to betray her as one who herself used the whips by the perpetrating exultants who made use of the secret opening her memory reveals, a crime designated as way worse than any torturer's, because Severian's account of torturers as never, ever, ever sadistic -- all good men, these torturers -- is never given overt textual challenge (by way of contrast, exultants are I think three times shown as taking sadistic relish... including once, orgasm, at other's humiliation and pain). Severian also ends up sourcing her as probably the source of his newly installed capacity of imagination, but this fact is never subsequently recalled... to in some means restore some respect for her, when he later goes on to boldy imagine things. Thecla is portrayed as ultimately being willing to fight and die for Severian, but it seems almost beyond imagination to conceive of someone willing to do this for him after being portrayed this way, without at least first being allowed to offer a counter-take. Baldanders too fights for him, but he's relegated into being just someone who chose evil (and, apparently, to one who carries and expresses the rage and anger Severian himself will admit to holding but almost always keeps restrained)... after being someone Severian and we ourselves were clearly delighted upon discovering we were again happening upon another chance to meet with again -- his presence, was a gift. Agia was to be corralled as someone who displayed "the hopeless courage of the poor," but escaped this parable-encasement to become... nothing short of very, very accomplished. But her gaining a throne, this breaking of class expectations, is, even as Severian has always admired her courage, and even as he even admits to borrowing her own innovations, maligned by being worth only an evil doctor's mockery of it as an "exultancy," while Severian's remains only worth due reverence. (Though there is some room for arguing for the importance of the text's counter-evidence, I would say it is mostly true that it is only when you show yourself stuck, limited, imperfect... not a voice for progress, justified ambition... proof of possible human perfectibility, that Severian will apply nice acclaim to you... witness the poor who are applied as possessing "thousands of kindnesses" after amounting to, not a hive of ambitious bees, but no more than a spread-out mass of doomed individuals an autarch would survey as he recounts the end of an age.) In reply to all of this, I think it appropriate to show how Severian writes a narrative, almost from a scrubbed perspective, so he seems immune to motivations he applies to others to condemn them, so collecting... only benefits, due to be unlikely to ever find himself called on it because he expects his readers will be in a sense be living themselves through him and so collecting through their identification with him, the very same benefits, via proxy. Yet indeed how much of the text could be made to seem that that someone who desires acclaim, attention... who is suspected of desiring it above all things, of being himself a Jolenta -- and thus due, given how the text receives her, the harshest of condemnations for it -- would contrive to cover his ass.
Like
Show more reactions
CommentShare
Comments
Patrick McEvoy-Halston Severian almost admits himself one who missed out on much-needed, early maternal attention -- his rise not being someone who emerged out from out of being a torturer to sitting on a throne, from someone who lacked empathy to someone of ample store of it, but someone who healed to some extent through repeated takings of appreciative attention from parental/senior figures he'd been born immediately shortchanged of (a harsher take would be that he never grows, only collects hits of narcissistic "notice" that lift and then subside, like an addict collects highs, that leaves one actually lower for their always coming at others' expense). A Kleinian/Mahlerian/Winnicotian reading of the text is given explicit support,(1) in Severian twice talking about a visit of the bequeathing maternal breast/attention he'd never known... and of how welcome it was! But it's implicit too, the shortchanged "oral" supplies of nurturance, in how many times he is permitted to show he's special, favoured, by other onlookers; of all objects available to view, he himself is guaranteed the deepest focussed interest... perhaps always.
All the boys chose hideouts of their own, but Severian's is the only one that is clearly an exultant's or armiger's... if the others are too, we never hear notice of it... or at least, his seems more special, more of refined taste, at any rate.
Life is saved by a god-woman of the sea, making a spectacle of him no one who saw would ever soon forget.
He's chosen to be the server for Thecla, the most prestigious client the torturers ever held in their power.
He's the absolute favourite of Palaemon.
He leaves the guild and finds himself immediately in a position where he can humiliate another... probably someone of about the same age as he, in their lack of professionalism, becoming the temporary favourite, ally, of a senior lochage.
When in Nexus proper, let known immediately that his height makes him seem to others a sure armiger, even in this home of the cosmopolitan-knowing. Pelerines size him up as honest and don't touch him, while degrading Agia by readily stripping her. Has Hildegran spying on him repeatedly, someone very close to Vodalus, that is, who is so undoubtedly sure of his ginormous importance that he never stops harping on it to Vodalus. Is accepted as an armiger by Hildegran, while Agia, the person who urged him onto him as such, is assessed as "mistress slops." Innocently possessed of treasures others revere and desire beyond measure; never the provincial who wandered into the big city, thinking what he brought with him from home, still worth recognition. All the vipers the big city has to offer come out to destroy him, but to a one, come out with their teeth blunted by contact.
In Saltus, told by a wise man -- the green man -- that he is about the only truly caring person around.
Shows professionalism on stage, while an alcade shows everywhere his own nervousness, as well as his own desire to be the center of attention. An exultant shames himself through orgiastic release at the lapse of a client's life, while Severian keeps focussed... only sporting a bit of understandable excess in the end, by, after successfully pulling off a complicated execution that was on path to go badly, pretending to throw the head into the crowd.
Enters mines and rather than be rendered powerless, finds himself deemed a god.
Is captured, and rather than proving something than augments the esteem of the capturers, ends up using this "inconvenience" to showcase himself as of unique value and worth to someone he fears might doubt it (Severian never forgets that Vodalus never thanked him for saving his life, and that he gave him in return for it something that would be of huge value only to the poor... Severian later communicates this to him, by offering him total repayment through the offer of any one of those coins he could fiddle with in the contents of his bag).
Masters and rides a bull, thus becoming a man of myth to any and all observers to his act of wonder.
God-woman of the sea near kills herself to claim him.
Revealed as one and the same as Apu-Punchau, a man of invaluable worth.
Taken as an exultant, not an armiger, when in Thrax. Repeatedly told how handsome he is. Told he was a Master Torturer already, and how he was so talented his skills were wasted on the profession.
Is deemed a Master Magician by a company of real magicians... even as if this could only feel a bit less than half-earned. (Kind of earned, though, in that behind it is the rage of someone who is likened to magician in that she transforms "murder" out of "justice," and herself into a giant personage after having only been a bean.)
Even as the boy he is with amounts to nothing, is told by someone who would otherwise have ruled the world that his is of such conspicuous, obvious worth that the world will be allocated his.
Giant stone soldiers salute HIM, not... to his humiliation, Typhon. Typhon suffers blow to narcissistic self-image; Severian's own -- if it actually existed -- is inflated.
Enters a primitive village and succeeds in mastering them all -- he is caged, only because here in this remote spot the autarch's influence is presumed so weak lesser powers could contend over it; is chosen to lead the attack against the terrible giant. De facto, white savior.
The visiting aliens of the north turn out to be mostly interested in him not, as was expected, Baldanders! Newly arrived, once again he steals the show away from those it seemed due for.
Arrives in camp for the wounded, judged clearly of superior education. Instantly made a judge.
Seen as of such conspicuous worth, chosen to retrieve valued recalcitrant visitor by the head of the Pelerines.
Visits Ash; proves only one ever who figured out mystery of the tower.
Enters company of Guasacht; worth is so immediately apparent was due to replace his second... the one of armiger status, Eredus.
Autarch-love... thank god we found you! Told whole armies would be sacrificed to have some better chance of obtaining him.
Agia captures Severian, but emboldens him, diminishes herself, in the very act of trying to humiliate/scare him. She tells him of all the tortures he will be subject to, and he innocently shames her by delineating their evident ineffectiveness. She is told to school herself better, and granted no retort other than shamefacingly turning away. Greatest position of power she'll ever be over him, and he yet turns her into a joke. All innocent, though.
Vodalus' skepticism... repaid by having him -- the great Vodalus! -- disposed of casually... by Agia, who got rid of him through the flick of a space bug -- not much regal-appropriate in that -- the very moment he denied her. Vodalus being the only one who had the temerity to remind Severian of just how hard he has tried in the past to show how much attention he is always ostensibly due, and of how ready he is to discount, not think of, what, rather, others have done for him, that he hasn't yet much provided any acknowledgment for.
Finds himself accepted onto a ship. They gauge him, instantly, a man of great prowess, and he is innocently successful in compounding that estimation by doing tricks with the captain's own sword that dazzled the crew as much as Vodalus could not help but being when Severian did that impossibly heroic entrance into their forest abode. Complements the inflation of himself with diminishment of the captain... and the crew, by their thinking the captain himself actually a man of any worth. No sir! Only the great Severian!
Upon nearing the Citadel, ably breaks of thumbs of two of an officer's men, to be taken to a superior authority, who instantly recognizes him as at the very least one whose battle-acumen and experience deserves respect.
Goes to the Citadel; everyone who's ever known him... even in the faintest, makes it so they were always besties with him. A star is born!
Dr. Talus visits him... someone who only ever uses people, kindled, it is suggested, into visiting Severian, for his being responsible for his being kindled into genuine life like Pinocchio; out of gratitude (I like this bit, though.) The genius Baldanders put so much into constructing him, but only Severian really brought him to life.
In addition, he and his friends are often seen as they must inevitably have been from those outside their entourage, unaware of the circumstances that put them together, and it's always flattering in that it makes them all sources of profound mystery and wonder, never something to be overlooked -- Severian's professed ambition, at one point.
Jolenta's crime, a crime so harsh it lead to the text's most astonishingly severe judgment, was "the incessant performance whose sole goal was to garner admiration." Doesn't Severian incessantly perform in much the same way -- always garnering admiration -- but in a way sort of invisible to people as a sign of need, and thus done in a way immune to the backlash of shame and guilt, until pointed out by the critic... as quite obviously so? Severian's account might in a sense be deemed fundamentally Jolenta's, only scrubbed.
“Even now I cannot help but wonder how much any of us see of what is before us. For weeks my friend Jonas had seemed to me only a man with a prosthetic hand, and when I was with Baldanders and Dr. Talos, I had overlooked a hundred clues that should have told me Baldanders was master. How impressed I was outside the Piteous Gate because Baldanders did not escape the doctor when he could.”
(1) “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. The grayness at the edge of my field of vision, then, was the metal of her cell wall. Soon she would be led away to scream in the Apparatus or gasp in Allowin's Necklace. I sought to hold her back, to mark the moment so I might return to it”
“My eyes brimmed with tears at the sight of them, because they were shaped like that claw that is the Claw, that once lay concealed in the gem that I, in my ignorance, called the Claw of the Conciliator. The Autarch saw I was weeping, and told the woman-cats they were hurting me and must put me down. I felt like an infant who has just learned he will never see his mother again.”
Comments
Post a Comment