Rereading Wolfe
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James Wynn’s The Life of Malrubius, the First Severian, Timeline
🕑 Added 2021-04-12 00:23:15 +0000 UTCTLDR; FAQ
- Doesn't this theory make Severian's story unnecessarily more complicated?
It raises questions of the same sort as when you find out that Thecla and the Old Autarch are sort of involved in the writing of The Book of the New Sun. But, for me, it resolves almost all of the big questions in Shadow that are directly connected to Severian. (Hethor and Agia are left unresolved.)
- Questions it provides straight-forward, literal narrative explanations for:
- Severian's memory lapses, how he can remember when he remembered things differently, how his memory can be pristine but it might be lying to him.
- Severian’s inability to precisely remember when Master Malrubius died.
- How Severian knows that Thea has violet eyes though he could only recognize Hildegrin by his voice.
- Severian's strong visceral lust for Thea, that often supersedes his desire for Thecla -- such as when Severian sees False Thea when he is following False Thecla to her room, and when Thecla does her hair in a way that suggests Thea.
Shadow, chapter 09
""You see now what you might have had if you'd only waited for one more to come out." A smile I had learned to know elsewhere lurked at one corner of my paphian's mouth.
"I would have chosen you still."
"Now that is truly amusing [...] You kept a perfectly straight face, but your eyes rolled like a calf's. She's pretty, isn't she."
Shadow, chapter 10
"Her hair, which she often let fall free, today was bound about her head in a dark aureole. She had never more closely resembled her half-sister Thea, and I felt such desire for her that I seemed to be spilling my blood upon the floor, growing weaker and fainter with each contraction of my heart.
- Severian's dream/vision in the Gyoll
- The erratic nature of the Claw: Seeming to work or not of it's own will.
Additionally, this explanation integrates the Claw into the described in-world science.
...that the First Severian is nearby, interacting from the Mirror realm -- as in the Urth story "The Cat" -- which also helps clarify what Jonas's intent was in entering the mirror and why Severian knew he was nearby when he was talking to Miles.
- Why is Triskele a recurring character in this story?
- Why don't Gunnie and Burgundafara's timelines match up?
- In The Urth of the New Sun, why does Severian not end up at the Necropolis.
- How is it that the Severian that we encounter in The Book of the Short Sun is so different from the Severian we meet in BotNS. (Already has his dog as a child, already has met Merryn. Celinia is in his mausoleum.)
- How is the Rajan in The Book of the Short Sun "Master Malrubius' Ghost?"
- Gene Wolfe’s declaration that there is a member of the Torturer’s Guild on the Whorl: Silk.
What’s deal with Malrubius?
Notice that while Sev with his perfect memory is NOT SURE if he met Vodalus the night before. By the same token, Severian is not able to remember when Malrubius died beyond “I must have been very young.”
Like the strange nature of Severian’s memory — which while “perfect” might lie to to him and can even remember when he remembered an event differently — I think Malrubius is best explained by the First Severian whose existence is revealed in the final chapter of Citadel of the Autarch — a man whose past is similar to Severian’s but different in significant ways.
I’m working on a full first draft timeline exegesis of the First Severian with the textual inductive-deductive proofs. But as I am enduring long layovers at the airport, and I see some one asked, about Malrubius on Reddit, I thought I’d jot down a summary of the life.
Master Malrubius' Timeline
Universe 1
First Severian grows up in the Matachin but there’s no Conciliator or New Sun religion. There are no Pelerines because there was no Claw. He plays in his mausoleum but there’s no body there or symbols posted outside. As young teen, he and his friends encountered and adopted Triskele for a time. He wasn’t found dead on a refuse pile.
He is assigned to the cell of an exultant woman who was arrested as a Voldalarii. She converts him as a follower of Vodalus. He falls in love with her and plots to escape with her — drugs her guards etc. What he did not know was that the day he picked to rescue her was the day of her ordered excruciation (and that's why Our Sev knew he would find her orders on Gurloes desk). She’s not in her cell when he comes. So he’s caught and she dies horribly as expected from the Revolutionary. And that woman’s name was THEA.
This explains why Severian is so greatly sexually attracted by the IDEA of Thea. He loves Thecla but he's turned on by Thea. He's never so turned on by Thecla as when her appearance suggests Thea. He suggests he was first attracted to Thecla because of her resemblance to Thea -- her violet eyes. But it is impossible for Severian to have seen her clearly in the dark necropolis -- certainly not well enough to have determined that her eyes were violet. In the Botanic Garden, he could only recognize Hildegrin by his voice.
He’s exiled and meets Agia and Baldanders. I don’t know if there was a Talos or Agilus. He and Agia go to the Botanic Gardens so she must have planned to kill him. He doesn’t acquire the Claw because there is no Claw. They don’t meet the old man looking for Cas’s body because her body had not been moved. He doesn’t resurrect Dorcas. I'm less certain all the time about the relationship between Agia and the First Severian. Nor is it clear what all the connections are between Severian and Hethor. Whether and what were the connections betwenn Severian and Agia and Hethor is not clear.
Due to his indoctrination by Thea First Severian seeks out Vodalus and participates in the ceremony that joins him and Thea. He goes on to Thrax and soon has to flee for unknown reasons. He continues north (Severian supposes it could have been to join the war on one side or the other, but it wasn’t to return the Claw, as Severian seems to confirm, because there’s no Pelerines or Claw.). He encounters Baldanders and they fight and he kills him. Baldy doesn’t escape his gravity belt to jump into the sea, so his body just floats up up up as Sev saw in the puppet show in the Undines Dream.
It’s unclear WHEN First Severian defeats the Ogre in the Tale of the Student and his Son (before or after Yesod), but every story we have in the Brown Book is directly or incidentally about Him. Certainly, Jonas was in that story. The Ogre appears to be Erebus and is chained at the man-ape's cave -- in fact the cave itself is part of the mountain-sized Ogre's body.
Then he meets the Autarch by pure chance, and becomes Autarch. He’s dropped off at the shore PRICKS HIS FINGER ON A THORN AND KEEPS IT. His blood is on the Claw. And that is the origin of the Claw.
Universe 2
He eventually goes to Yesod and (I say) achieves the New Sun. Then they drop him off in the SUBSEQUENT universe iteration in the time of Typhon ("He was not returned to his own time but became himself a walker of the corridors."). He becomes the Conciliator, meets Typhon, and hands off the Claw. Now there is a New Sun religion. He goes back in time (same universe) and becomes Apu Punchau, the Heiros split off an aquastor who takes off as a true Walker in the Corridors of Time.
Sometimes he walks the corridors and sometimes he travels in mirrorworld “circumfused to the borders of Briah” (ala the short story “The Cat”) so that he can interact with Our Severian without catastrophic results. If he is interacting with Our Severian and the Claw is present, the blood on the Claw (FS’s blood) glows with a light like the one in Father Inire’s Presence Chamber. Via Inire’s mirror world or the Corridors, he travels through the events of young Severian’s life and attempts to change things for the better (as he sees it). Naturally, being merged to Thea, he ensures that she is not arrested. But Our Severian will still need that special sauce to win the New Sun so they force mean ol’ Thecla (little does she know) into the job. The Old Autarch is integral to Severian’s mind so they go and tell him what is going on with a torturer apprentice at the Matachin.
It seems likely that the First Severian served for a time as the Master of the beekeepers before the young apprentice Appian became the Old Autarch. So when the Old Autarch encounters First Severian he recognizes him as his Master Paon. After being told about Severian, the Old Autarch goes to meet Sev’s mother in her cell (arrested for treason as a runaway khaibit). He falls in love with her and when she dies he eats her (thus the rumor he was a woman in disguise). Then “they” open House Azure so the Autarch and Sev’s mother can keep an eye on their boy.
From mirrorworld, First Sev resurrects Triskele and adopts him in the tunnels. He knows that his father Ouen has always missed his mother, so he moves Dorcas’s body after she’s immersed in the Lake of Birds (he didn’t plan for grandpa to search for her for 40 years). When Our Severian reaches the part of the path FS knows he will cross, from mirror world, he pushes him in. Then he resurrects Dorcas. The plan was that Dorcas and Ouen would be reunited at the Inn of Lost Loves. Instead there was a series of confusions and Our Sev and granny became lovers.
At some point, he establishes the Guild’s patroness as Holy Katharine — perhaps the first guild patron—in honor of his mother.
He heals the children in Thrax. He resurrects the uhlan. He changes the water to wine (for some reason I don’t know, I’ll acknowledge). He doesn’t resurrect or heal Jolenta either because she wouldn’t want it or because she is not a character in his life. He doesn’t resurrect Little Severian because if he had Our Severian would have killed himself — because he’d assume it meant he could have resurrected Thecla — which was technically possible for FS but not part of the plan.
It is often surmised that the First Severian did not achieve the New Sun. But this seems unlikely. 1) He needs the New Sun’s power to be a Time Walker. 2) He sends Juturna the Undine back in Time to rescue child Severian from drowning. And this happens as Urth is being flooded.
In the end, First Severian, now an old man by Commonwealth standards, becomes Master Malrubius at the Matachin, looking after his childhood self. It seems entirely likely that Palaemon and Gurloes saw the resemblance between the two and understood they were important — but did not understand how.
When Severian’s mother, Catherine, is imprisoned at the Matachin, Malrubius cannot free her without spoiling the whole New Sun deal in the current universe. But he offers her the opportunity to watch her child grow up, by participating in the elevation ceremony every year until he’s grown — over the course of a single day.
When First Sev/Malrubius died, he was buried in his favorite mausoleum where he played as a child and had the brass plate installed there. Our Severian will play there for the same coincidental reasons that the child First Severian did, but now it is more literally "his" mausoleum in an entirely deeper sense. It’s just the sort of cause and effect irony Wolfe loves, and is the sort of thing the “symbols make us passage” refers to.
And now we can understand, Severian’s vision as he drowns in the Gyoll — Malrubius looking for “him”, he’s strapped to a table in the examination room, a woman is crying. This is a “memory” of the First Severian’s failed rescue of Thea. He is remembering both sides of the event. Woman crying is Thea (himself) crying.
After his death, the Yesodis created an acquastor of Malrubius/First Severian and Triskele to more directly observe and instruct Our Severian. Although, he knows what he is, his motivations are no less those of Severian than were Our Severian’s when he awoke next to Apu Punchau in his house. If he is a manipulation, he is no more a manipulation than the original First Severian.
Universe 3
When Our Severian goes to Yesod and is dropped off in the Commonwealth, that Commonwealth was again in a universe subsequent to his own. He passes off his thorn which will become the Claw. He becomes the Head of the Day who will surely encounter the New Severian as yet unborn, who will also marry Valeria and bring the New Sun. Although many of the major acts performed by him are like those of First Severian, there is no reason to suppose that his acts there are JUST like First Severian’s anymore than his past life was like the First’s. His relationship with Burgundafara does not appear to have taken the path that Gunnies’s and First Severian’s had. What Our Severian does to manipulate the subsequent Severian’s life is unrecorded beyond inducing Juturna the Undine to rescue him in the Gyoll. Finally the end of Urth of the New Sun seems to imply Our Severian will not be buried in the Necropolis of Urth, but in the Cemetery of the Gods of Ushas.
One major difference between Our Severian’s travels through the Commonwealth in The Book of the New Sun vs those in Urth of the New Sun, is that in “Urth” there is no First Severian looking over him. He has left FS behind in his original universe. And in tUotNS, as Severian sleeps under the stars, he speculates whatever happened to that fellow.
Silk As Malrubius
In Return To The Whorl, there is an event that strongly implies that Silk looks like Malrubius. Blonde Silk does not look like Severian. This is not a problem. because the Severian in Return To The Whorl is not the Severian of The Book of the New Sun. He is a young boy who already has a dog. He encounters Merryn already, while our Severian doesn't meet her until he is exiled.
The answer is that this Severian is the First Severian. And this solves the puzzle Severian left for us in the last chapter of The Book of the New Sun: "How did the First Severian not drown? There was no one to send Juturna back to save him?"
Now we understand that the First Severian had a Master Malrubius as well. He was the Rajan traveling through time in dream travel. It was THAT Master Malrubius who saved FS.
And this is the answer to puzzle Gene Wolfe himself posed in an Urth List Q&A after the publication of the final volume of The Book of the Long Sun:
Q: "Are there any members of the Guild on the Whorl?"
A: "Of course!! Silk!"
And when First Severian achieved the New Sun and traveled to the subsequent universe, he discovered that his alternate self did not have a Master Malrubius, so he became the Malrubius of Our Severian.
Comments
Fr. Anthony
Well, I do like it! It's hard to wrap my head around all the details you have given regarding the First Severian's life, but I do plan on thinking about it all. I like that you've incorporated a lot of little details regarding Silk!
I think I've arrived at how Silk is Malrubius. I've added a final section. What do you think?
Well, yes, but… how do we make it fit with everything else we know about Malrubius? To say that the Raja — after Short Sun — goes back in time to be a Master Torturer at the Matachin and dies there. That just doesn’t feel like the guy I know from that book. But what’s the motivation? Alternatively, maybe Malrubius was a clone of Typhon? But, why? And why wasn’t Sev thrown when he meets his mentor with an extra head on Mt Typhon? Wolfe threw me a curve by implying that the Raja was Malrubius in the text and saying Silk was a guild member in an interview — but I have no more clue what to do with it than anyone else. -J
Fr. Anthony
Wait, what about Silk as Malrubius?
Yeah. I confess that I still haven’t worked that out. That one seems to be a monkey wrench in everybody’s theory.
Dunstan Thorn
Aw raspberries. I finished Short Sun recently and there’s that bit near the end about whose bird Oreb is that’s....inconclusive
Now you’re thinking! That’s the way to approach this book, I think. Alas, at the end of chapter 2 of Shadow, Roche makes a definite acknowledgment of Malrubius. Also, I think an acquastor requires an original person (who I think perhaps must be dead). - James
Dunstan Thorn
I’m starting to doubt that that ever was a “Master Malrubius” at the guild—irrespective of whether he was a version of Severian, he was an eidolon who Sev knew as a child, for an indeterminate period. But there’s really no reason to think this apparition interacted with anyone BESIDES Severian, besides taking Sev at his word as a narrator that there was a Master Malrubius at the Matachin, now dead. And why would we do that?
Ha! I've noticed that I often come into this book as one for whom it is not his favorite Wolfe book. I say "I've finally fixed this passage so it makes comprehensible sense!" To which ardent lovers of this book respond "This book does not need fixing." ~ James
Dana F
Yeah I think this twinning business is just saying 'this is a linear-time interpretation of multiple timelines' in a fun way.
Dana F
I really like this. I don't think there's supposed to be a clear explanation because in my humblest of opinions, Wolfe was crossing many times and probabilities and there's no such this as a wrong answer. My own personal theory is the Claw represents the ideal timeline in some way but there have been infinite unsuccessful New Suns.
I don't see these models as incompatible. They seem to vary only in the number of Severians, and otherwise James's model is more or less a step-by-step execution of Snorlax's excellent summary. And when you examine them from the perspective of the work required from the author in each case, James's is actually simpler. Sure, you could argue that each time Severian's memory "betrays" him he is influenced by a different #Sev, but then why do the Severians collapse so easily into one? And does it matter? How would Wolfe even have tracked them all without an Excel spreadsheet? This model explains the theme and function of all the doublings and twinnings and double-takes: the sisters, the eidolons, the old master, the young apprentice, Ouen and Sev, Dorcas and Dorcas, maybe even Agilus. They are telling us something. Everyone is always also someone else---it's not just Severian and his multitudes who have other or past or twinned identities.
I fall more on the side of Snorlax. Bring The Flood.
God bless, snorlax. You will be destroyed with the rest. - James
snorlax
I find this all to be admirably good natured hogwash. :) To me it’s actually quite straightforward. Tzadkiel knows that in order to bring the new sun its necessary for someone to be able to pull the trigger and execute Urth. Pretty much no one can actually do this, so the hieros look for someone with the necessary qualifications. They find a bright boy with an eidetic memory who is being raised “to obey”. Unfortunately he drowns (the skull in UofNS). So the walkers keep tweaking things to help him until he can finally succeed in the roguelike speed run all the way to Yesod - to me, that is the test. It’s an almost open book test with all the help he can get. So there have been many Severians, each getting a bit farther, and then each failing in some way, until we hit our narrator. All the others timelines end in Master Ash’s world. As far as the manipulation from James’ First Severian - that’s also straightforward to me. It’s Aquastor Sev from UotNS - he becomes Apu Punchau, etc, he give the claw to his first apostles (the chilliarch and guards), and then continues to pop in and out of history as The Concilliator. Don’t get me wrong, unhinged speculation is a good time. But for me this stuff gets a little too close to “Varys is a merman” level theorycrafting.
(We didn't agree to post this! I thought we said we'd only be posting TRUE things! heh heh heh - Craig)
