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CHAPTER IV SUMMARY
CHAPTER IV SUMMARY
The next winter, Severian wanders into a lost part of the citadel searching for his dog Triskele and meets a young woman named Valeria near the Atrium of Time.
TERMINOLOGY
TERMINOLOGY
Triskele (29.3/3) three-legged (see Post Reading Notes for further thoughts).
thylacodon (29.6/6) a giant prehistoric opossum. These ratty sons-of-bitches weighed between 200 and 300 pounds.
carnificial sword (30.2/9) an executioner's sword.
gnomon (32.6/24) the piece at the center of a sundial whose shadow indicates the time of day.
krater (33.7/25) a punch bowl used in ancient Greece.
barylambda (33.7/25) large, primitive herbivores; think five-toed ponies with powerful tails.
glyptodon (33.7/25) another big ol' beast from prehistory. This quadruped was the size of a Volkswagen, had the head of a cat, a clubbed tail, flutes teeth, and the body of an armadillo - solid carapace and all. They roamed South American. Quite frankly, I'm glad they're extinct. How would you like to be dropping a deuce in relative privacy beneath the fronds of a giant fern and have one of these things lumber by?
smilodon (33.7/25) a happy robot. Just kidding. This is another prehistoric megatherian. We commonly refer to them as sabre-toothed tigers.
glaive (33.7/25) if you poured over the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook as much as I did, you remember the page with all of the polearms. One of those was a long pole with a broad-bladed sword on the end. That's a glaive.
Aspice ut aspiciar (34.3/38) Latin, "Look at me so that I may be looked upon," (see Post Reading Notes for further thoughts).
castellan (34.5/40) the commander of the Citadel at Nessus, (see Post Reading Notes for further thoughts).
POST READING THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS
POST READING THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS
Gene Wolfe was a devote Catholic. The Book of the New Sun is laced with references to Christianity, but not just in the particulars. No, no. In grand sweeping themes. The Book of the New Sun the post-historical memoir of a lowly torturer who becomes the Autarch. Severian is, in many ways, a Christ figure. When we read New Sun, we can also read New Son.
This - the third chapter - is heavy with significance. For one thing, the Triskele is a three-legged emblem that figured prominently in Apollonian cults. Apollo was worshiped because he was a New Sun. He replaced Helios, but he was also a New Son.
Aspice ut aspiciar. Look at me so that I may be looked upon. Sounds like a weird thing to be written on a sundial in Latin.
Sundials traditionally have morbid sayings on them:
Time flies.
Tempus fugit.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away.
Tempus breve est. (Time is short.)
Life is but a shadow: the shadow of a bird on the wing.
Aspice ut aspiciar, brings a few things to mind. I think about the old philosophical saw, If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? It is as if the sundial does not exist unless unless someone is there to bear witness to it serving it's function.
At the same time, it makes me think of the poem Ozymandias by Shelley.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Easter is nigh upon us. Doubtless the movie King of Kings will roll on some television station. King of Kings, a movie about Jesus. Ozymandias is also Ramessess II, the third pharoah of the nineteenth Egyptian dynasty. (Remember the number 19.) Ramessess II was also known as The Chosen One of Ra. You know Ra ... the Egyptian Sun god.
Castellan of the Citadel. A castellan takes care of a castle in the regent's stead. Think Denethor (Boromir's dad) in The Lord of the Rings. Here Wolfe hints that the real seat of the Autarch should be the Citadel in Nessus, but it is not.
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