Baldanders

Character Synopsis

Finally, the issue of dreams in TBOTNS turns out to be, as usual, much more open to interpretation than I originally thought. For example, I thought it was perfectly clear that on the night in which Severian and Baldanders share a bed they accidentally share dreams, or more specifically, they trade dreams--that is: Severian has the dream of undines that propells Baldanders; Baldanders has the dream of the Matachin Tower that propells Severian. (Whether agents actively beam one or both of these dreams is an open question; whether Severian's special mind drags mundane mortals into the corridors of time, vortex style, is another similar issue as well.)

However, Peter Wright finds this reading to be impossible--there is no sharing of dreamspace and no crossing of messages in these corridors of time episodes. (To me this seems like a strong veer towards Solipsism.) Baldanders's "horror" at the Matachin dream is, to Wright, a polite fiction--since Baldanders really =does= have a tower more terrible than the Matachin, a fact which doesn't seem to bother Baldy in the slightest. (So I try to argue that this =bolsters= the dream swapping argument--since Severian really is bothered by the Matachin reality, his dream would reflect this horror, even if the dream was shown in the Baldanders dream theater.)

Onomastics

Physical Description

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