Gene Wolfe
Page 5
The Age of the Monarch is the pinnacle of magical superscience: the source of fliers, thinking machines capable of reading minds and projecting aquastors, ships that sail between the stars, android sailors to tend them, and the rest. Adding to this legendary base, we have in The Book and Urth a glimpse of life in the era of Typhon, at the end of the age. The mountains of Urth are in their natural, un-carved state, and technology, while considered a ghost of the earlier marvels (Hadelin says of a flier, “‘You don’t see many anymore, sieur.... Most won’t fly now’” [V.xxxii.227]), is still ahead of the Age of the Autarch with oxenless wains, powered riverboats, and armored giants that can carve mountains with their iron hands. Nessus is founded by Typhon, who, as the monarch of many worlds, makes his capital on Urth, the most ancient one, but later admits to Severian, “‘That was an error, because I lingered too long when disaster came. By the time I would have escaped, escape was no longer open to me — those to whom I had given control of such ships as could reach the stars had fled in them, and I was besieged on this mountain’” (III.xxvi.195). The disaster Typhon refers to is the abrupt beginning of the sun’s decline, and the departure of all flight-worthy starships from Urth reinforces the idea that the towers of Nessus (referred to as “hulks at the old port” in Urth) are only towers by the Age of the Autarch. (This is also presumably the point of departure from which Wolfe’s “Long Sun” series about a generational starship has begun.) This is Dwapara-yuga, the Age of Copper. The appearance of Canog’s Book of the New Sun (not Severian’s autobiography, but the original book of this title, considered long lost by Severian’s day) in this age parallels the appearance of the Rig Veda in Dwapara-yuga.
The Age of the Monarch is the great period of interstellar travel, the point of origin for those who sail between the stars, so what better place to examine two of them more closely.
The Sailor Who Stole Fire from Heaven. Hethor is a mysterious figure, a sailor who has a secret name. As Agia says, “‘His name isn’t really Hethor, by the way. He says it’s a much older one, that hardly anyone has heard of now’” (III.xvi.108). Severian himself notes that Hethor disappears whenever Jonas is present, and he wonders if they served on the same ship together, or if Jonas would somehow recognize Hethor (III.xvi.107). The text seems to deny that they served together, giving the names of Quasar and Fortunate Cloud for their respective ships, but then again, noting the antiquity of both characters (both are from the Age of the Monarch, from the period of the First Empire), it may be that “quasar” and “fortunate cloud” are cognates of the same ancient (and probably Chinese[ii]) word, especially in light of the fact that a quasar is a cloudlike celestial body. There is also a thread of associations linking Hethor to stars: Hethor’s eyes are seen as stars in Severian’s night on the mountain (“his eyes ... blazed into mine ... I saw that the points of light I had taken for their pupils were in fact two stars” [III.xiii.87]); and his disappearance in the presence of Jonas is echoed by Severian’s explanation of the star motif (“‘The old legends ... are full of magic beings who vanish slowly and reappear in the same way. No doubt those stories are based on the look of stars then’” [III.xviii.131]).
My theory is that Hethor is Kim Lee Soong, which is the most ancient name in the Urth Cycle (with the possible exceptions of Robert, Marie, and Isangoma within the Botanic Gardens). It is clear that Jonas was on a ship that crash-landed on Urth around 210 PS, that most of the crew has been subsequently imprisoned in the antechamber for seven or more generations, and that the name Kim Lee Soong causes Jonas a great deal of anxiety. As he explains, “‘Kim Lee Soong would have been a very common kind of name when I was [...] a boy. A common name in places now sunk beneath the sea’” (II.xv.117). Hethor, or Kim Lee Soong, was probably the captain of that ill-fated ship. I suspect that, like Prometheus, he stole his magic mirrors from Yesod (the only other person with any access to mirror technology is Father Inire, a hierodule), and, like Captain Ahab, he destroyed his ship in pursuit of his personal goals in the Briatic universe of Urth. In the following passages, Hethor’s lament for a lost love suggests a death and burial in space, but on closer inspection (after reading Urth) it is unmistakably about Tzadkiel: “‘Where has she gone? My lady, the mate of my soul? ... Gone in her little boat.... She is her own ship, she is the figurehead of her own ship, and the captain ... She has left us behind. We have left her behind’” (IV.iv.24). Hethor has clearly spent time with Tzadkiel, and this is the probable source of his powers, the magic mirrors as well as his ability to enter those non-dream trances that Severian occasionally undergoes via the corridors of Time (where the passage above takes place). Furthermore, it is possible that, as a spurned lover, a sailor fallen from grace, Hethor/Kim Lee Soong is responsible for the sudden and calamitous ailment of the old sun: the worm of white fire that Hethor uses to dispatch Vodalus resonates with the imagery of the caloyer’s line about “the black worm that devours the sun” (II.iv.26).
But who is Kim Lee Soong? His name suggests that he is related to the Mandarin Sung, a Chinese family prominent in public affairs, especially Soong Meiling, who married Chiang Kai-shek (1927) and was secretary general of the Chinese Aeronautical Affairs Commission (1936-38). This provides a link to our own Earth, lost in the Age of Myth.
The Sailor Who Fell from the Sky. Jonas himself is enigmatic. Comparing his name to those of other known androids like Hadid, Hierro, Sidero, and Zelezo (the word “iron” in Arabic, Spanish, Greek, and Czech) compounds the idea that Jonas is a human name (i.e., the name of a saint), bestowed upon the android after his repair from the crash-landing that left him with a biological head and left arm. Soon after discovering the tragic fate of his fellow crewmembers, trapped for generations beyond counting, Jonas steps into the mirrors, making a break with the past and hoping to return fully repaired. In Yesod, he apparently becomes fully biological; then he returns to Urth and becomes a soldier while searching for Jolenta, only to die of a disease. Resurrected by Severian, he takes on the new name of Miles (meaning “soldier”).
An argument can be made that Jonas is actually Sidero. To begin with the name, “Sidero” means more than just “iron” in Greek; it is also the name of a character from Greek mythology, the stepmother who treated Tyro with such cruelty that Sidero was killed in revenge by Tyro’s twin sons Neleus and Pelias (who were otherwise very much like Romulus and Remus). The android Sidero is certainly malicious enough to make Severian want revenge (V.iii.17), but Sidero seems a twin to Jonas because of the mirroring events that befall them: Sidero loses its right arm and gains a biological arm and “head” (that is, Severian controls Sidero) when Severian climbs inside; and Sidero is the only one present when Severian dies, just as Severian stands alone after Jonas steps into the mirrors. Thus, Jonas is evolving from robot to cyborg to human, just as Severian is changing from human (the prototypical “first” Severian, who brought the New Sun without unusual help or hindrance), to solar hero-king (still bound, in part, to his material body) to godling (the state he is in through most of Urth).
A giant step back to the Age of Myth. Our own Earth is hopelessly lost in the dawn of the Age of Myth, but there are occasional glimpses, in the Botanical Garden’s Jungle Section (the “Parisian” missionary Robert, his wife or sister Marie, and the airplane), for example, as well as the familiar “Astronaut on the Moon” picture hanging on a wall within the Citadel.
Apu-Punchau is a major figure of this age. He leads a group of agricultural villagers along the way to civilization, teaching them advanced techniques of architecture and ritual, and is later venerated as a god in a place known as the Stone Town. If this figure is the same Apu-Punchau (also known as Inti, the Sun god) who was worshiped by the Incan people, then perhaps the Stone Town is Cuzco, where the Inca dynasty was established in A.D. 1200.
The shortest span of time between the era of Apu-Punchau and the era of Severian is 19,500 years. This is based on the precession of the equinoxes, which completes a cycle every 26,000 years, and the
observation that the spring stars of Apu-Punchau’s day are the winter stars of Severian’s. (The constellations advance through the cycle, so the stars have “shifted” three seasons.) Since I have provisionally dated the rise of the First Empire at 72,000 PS, this pushes Apu-Punchau back to 97,500 PS. (If we take A.D. 1200 as the Earth-date for Apu-Punchau, this puts Severian in A.D. 98,700.)
Later in this age we must find the “dawn-men” of Thea’s tale about the terra-forming of Mars into Verthandi and Venus into Skuld. The forests of Lune are also probably sown at this time. This is Treta-yuga, the Silver Age. The sun burns brightly, modest cultivation brings forth an abundance of food from Nature, and technology is in its infancy. Religious feeling is strong: the god of the people lives among them and develops elaborate rituals to try and explain to them the future sickness and death of the sun.
Back to the future in the Age of Ushas. Little is known about the Age of Ushas. There are the gods Odilo, the Sleeper, Thais, and Pega, who are respectfully worshipped by seaside-dwelling villagers. The time-traveling Green Man must come from later in this age, as he says:
“I am a free man, come from your own future to explore your age.... The green color that puzzles your people so much is only what you call pond scum. We have altered it until it can live in our blood, and by its intervention have at last made our peace in humankind’s long struggle with the sun. In us, the tiny plants live and die, and our bodies feed from them and their dead and require no other nourishment. All the famines, and all the labor of growing food, are ended.” (II.iii.20)
In other words, the Green Men have achieved a harmony with Nature and a mastery of Time and in doing so have attained a Golden Age. This may sound a bit poetic, at first, but a careful examination of the Urth Cycle will disclose two quiet and powerful gods: Fauna, or Mother Nature, and Thyme, or Father Time. Fauna appears in “The Tale of the Town that Forgot Fauna” in Urth, and in The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun (Cheap Street, 1991), where she has power over animals and the harvest. To kill an animal or pick a plant for food is to trespass on her domain, but to be nourished by internal algae is to be independent of her. Thyme is the main character of Empires of Foliage and Flower, where he ages as he travels west and grows young as he travels east. Thyme is also the Grim Reaper, by his own admission, “‘The Increate is father to all. I take them away from him — that is my function. And I return them again’” (CRANK! 2: 16). But to master Time by walking the corridors of Time is to lessen the sting of death, such that, as in Hesiod’s Golden Age, it is no worse than falling asleep.
And Ushas is the Krita-yuga, the Golden Age where Man is once again naturally virtuous and lives in an Edenic Garden alongside his gods. Presumably, the four gods forge the race of Green Men from among their followers. If the Green Men are not the Hieros born again, they are at least a step closer to that goal.
The Shapers of Posthistory
Having ascertained the existence of four posthistoric ages, we can now look at the overall direction and purpose of posthistory itself by looking at those who move and shape it: the hierodules and hierogrammates; the Mirror-people, the inhabitants of Yesod.
A manvantara is the cycle of a universe from bloom to bust. The Hieros were a race of men in a manvantara previous to that of Briah (Severian’s universe), and they spread out through their galaxy meeting life forms and shaping them into hierodules. The Hieros died with their universe, but the hierodules escaped by entering a higher universe, Yesod, in a world-size spaceship. The Brook Madregot flows from Yesod to Briah, just as energy flows from a higher state to a lower one. The hierodules rule the Briahtic universe, trying to shape the inhabitants into Hieros. Just as the reflection of a fish within Father Inire’s magic mirrors causes a real creature to materialize, so do the hierodules, reflections of their creators, try to bring the Hieros into being.
“Yesod” and “Briah” are terms from the Kabbalah, an esoteric tradition of Jewish mysticism. Yesod, meaning “Foundation,” is a Sefira, one of the ten Divine Utterances of God. The Sefiroth are usually depicted in a pattern known as the “Tree of Life,” with Kether (“Crown,” the first Sefira) forming the top, Yesod (the ninth Sefira) forming the trunk, and Malkuth (“Kingdom,” the tenth Sefira) forming the base. In Kabbalah, Malkuth is considered the Sefira of the physical universe, so it is temptingly easy to see Severian’s universe as being in the position of Malkuth, connected by the path Resh to Yesod, just as the Brook Madregot connects Severian’s universe to Yesod.
Unfortunately, it is more complicated than that, because “Briah” is not a Sefiroth at all, but one of the four Created Worlds that interlock with the Sefiroth. Furthermore, its position on the Tree of Life is in the middle branches, nowhere near the base. If this is the case, then moving from Briah (essentially the cluster of Sefiroth 4, 5, and 7) to Yesod (Sefira 9) would be in a “downward” motion, away from the godhead and toward the purely physical.
All very confusing. However, the upshot of it seems to be that Severian’s universe is not our own, but one more spiritually advanced than ours, closer to the godhead. Either our universe somehow crawls up the Jacob’s Ladder of Sefiroth to become Severian’s universe, or the process ties back into the manvantara scheme, and each new universe is another step closer to the godhead, in which case we ourselves are the Hieros!
Having brought the reader to examining his or her own face in the magic mirror, we now end this course in Posthistory 101, a rudimentary outline of future ages, undoubtedly flawed in parts where I have guessed wrong or misplaced eras, but the richly mythical tapestry that makes up the background of the Urth Cycle should be clear, as well as the different threads of genre and mystical traditions.
Fragmentary Timeline of Posthistory
The Age of Myth
97,500 PS: Apu-Punchau
The Age of the Monarch
72,000 PS: The First Empire of 1000 Stars
? : Sinking lands form Xanthic Isles
2,000: The Fall of the First Empire
1,100: Era of Typhon and the Conciliator
The Age of the Autarch
1000 PS: Autarch Ymar dies
1000-700: Yellow and Green Empires end their war
350: The Book of Wonders of Urth and Sky is published
300: Autarch Sulpicius sets aside books in Library
70: Autarch Maruthas closes roads
66: Scandal in reign of Appian; Odilo I serves
62: Sancha leaves (assumed to be eighteen years old)
50: Paeon the honey steward dies
40: Dorcas dies in childbirth
30: Journeyman Palaemon exiled from guild
20: (Roughly) Thecla born, Severian born, “Old Autarch” becomes criminal, Catherine in Tower
19: Silent man visits the Stone Town?
15: Odilo II begins work
12: Sancha returns
10: Thecla (ten years old) sees Sancha alive
6: Sancha dies at age seventy-five
1 PS: Most events of The Book
1 SR: Severian becomes autarch
? : Severian lives among Ascians for a year
5: Odilo II tells tale of “The Cat”
8: Eata convicted of smuggling
10: Severian embarks on journey, Eata returns
49: Dux Caesidus dies, as does an assassin in the House Absolute
50: Severian returns
Age of Ushas
150 SR: Severian awakens the sleeping gods
Works Cited
Borges, Jorge Luis. The Book of Imaginary Beings. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1987.
Cotterell, Arthur. A Dictionary of World Mythology. New York: Oxford UP, 1986.
Frazier, Robert. “The Legerdemain of the Wolfe.” Thrust no. 19 (Winter/Spring 1983): 5-9.
Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1975.
Smith, Clark Ashton. Zothique. New York: Ballantine Books, 1970.
Stapledon, Olaf. Last and First Men. New York: Dover, 1968.
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Vance, Jack. The Dying Earth. New York: Pocket Books, 1977.
Wells, H. G. The Time Machine. New York: Ballantine Books, 1985.
Wolfe, Gene. “The Boy Who Hooked the Sun.” Weird Tales no. 290 (Spring 1988) : 21-22.
———. The Castle of the Otter. Book Club ed. Willimantic, CT: Ziesing Brothers, 1982.
———. The Citadel of the Autarch. Book club ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
———. The Claw of the Conciliator. Book club ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.
———. “Empires of Foliage and Flower.” CRANK! no. 2 (1993) : 15-39.
———. Endangered Species. New York: Tor Books, 1990.
———. The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun. New Castle, VA: Cheap Street, 1991.
———. The Shadow of the Torturer. Book club ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980.
———. The Sword of the Lictor. Book club ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.
———. The Urth of the New Sun. New York: Tor Books, 1987.
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Afterword to “Posthistory 101”
This article explicated the timeline I had created for Lexicon Urthus (1994).
The section “The Sailor Who Stole Fire from Heaven” ends with a bit about the historical figure Soong Meiling. This is straight from the Lexicon first edition and was cut for the second edition. It was erroneous to link Kim Lee Soong to Soong Meiling, but it was an honest mistake.
This piece uses more Science Fiction Book Club editions. On that subject, here is a FAQ entry from the first chapbook of corrections:
Q: “Why is the lexicon keyed to the SFBC edition?”
A: As a teenager I read the paperbacks and library hardcovers. Then with a hint of how important The Book would become, I made the investment after being lured into the SFBC for The Castle of the Otter. I began the wordlist several years later while I was living overseas, using a mixed paperback collection of US and UK volumes. This later had to be converted ... to SFBC. All because I didn’t have enough money as a teenager. Since there are so many different editions, I finally decided that listing volume and chapter would have the most utility (another conversion). (AE&1, p. 4)