Books

The following thread was posted to the Urth.net mailing list:

> The same thing is going on to a much greater extent in a third text
> which is shrouded in such crafty silence that most readers do not
> know that it was read in the cell by Thecla and Severian: the
> original, "long lost" work (that Dr. Talos has also apparently seen),
> (Canog's) THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. (No, I didn't figure this one
> out, dispite the clues--I only learned it in an essay by Wolfe in
> PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING.)

Now this is interesting! Presumably this is the old theory that one of the unnamed books Severian brings for Thecla is in fact the Book of the New Sun? I've always thought this was daft: why would Thecla ask for a "long lost" book from the library? It's like asking a travel agent for holiday brochures on Atlantis.

Haven't read PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING. Are you saying that in so many words Wolfe actually says that this is the case? What are the "clues"? Please elaborate!

Re: "holiday brochures on Atlantis," well, it might be that way, but I took it more as being a case that Thecla, finding herself on death row, suddenly got religious and wanted a copy of the bible in a land that has more or less forgotten the bible. I assume that she had received a certain amount of instruction from her tutors, and/or perhaps her parents (her father died years before, it turns out).

"Briefly, in the time before Ymar was Autarch, when the sun had begun to cool, there appeared on Urth a man now called the Conciliator, an intercessor and mediator who healed the sick and attempted to teach the people; his stories form what is now called THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN . . . "

"The fourth book [in the cell with Thecla], as the astute reader will have guessed long ago, is THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN itself"--Gene Wolfe, "Books in THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN," PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING p. 15.

> Is the copy of the BOTNS which is given to Thecla in her cell Severian's
> first manuscript, or a copy? (I don't know if we have a definite answer to
> this).

Personally I'm still reeling from the bombshell that Thecla is able to order the "lost" BOTNS from her local library in the first place. I think it must be not only a copy, but a major rewrite of the manuscript Severian pens. How else could he fail to recognise the New Sun as himself, or walk blindly into the various dangers he encounters, if he's read the narrative we have?

I would be interested to know just how many versions of the BOTNS are actually out there, and how they differ. Any educated guesses?

I would imagine that the version that Thecla & Sev read is similar to the one Dr. Talos claims to have based his play on. That is, a colourful, mythic reworking of the "facts", which are more likely to be found in the Brown Book, purporting as it does to contain accounts of the original historical events upon which the mythological corpus of the time was based. I seem to remember Severian commenting that Thecla & himself were about to commence reading the section on the Conciliator in the Brown Book, but never get around to it. Now *that* could possibly have contained a closer approximation of the events as they happen in our BotNS.

In any case, coming as it did from Ultan's library, which appears to extend in space and time beyond the boundaries of the citadel, it is perhaps not unreasonable to allow the possibility that the version of tBotNS which Thecla gets from the library relates an account from a parallel Urth, but one in which the New Sun also appears (Eata as New Sun? not sure of the spelling: Severian's old apprentice friend who he meets again in Citadel & features in his musings on alternative workings out of the story).

Re: how many versions of THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN (the book of the church of the Conciliator, rather than the skiffy adventures of Severian), there is at least one, which I refer to as "(Canog's) Book of the New Sun," since Canog is the criminal in the next cell who overheard Severian the Conciliator talking to his followers in URTH.

  • Severian describes two of the books he collects at the Library. One is a huge book, 40" x 15" in size, that is a genealogy of Thecla's family. The other is a small green book, the size of one's palm, that consists of prayers and ikons.
  • Two families. Two groups of "exalted, exultant" people. One inflating itself with a huge book, but representing the old world; the other humbly satisfied with a tiny book, but representing the world to come.
  • Green book. Green man. The world to come.

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