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avramFinished The Claw of the Conciliator on the way up to my parents’, started Sword of the Lictor. A bit of speculation, and some note-taking:
The Claw
I really ought to have kept a list of all the times Severian uses the Claw, or tries to, so I could maybe figure out if there’s a pattern to its working or not working. My current theory is that it doesn’t work on Jolenta because she’s lost the will to live — the Cumaean says of her “She may live, though she does not wish it.” I don’t know how this ties in with the people the Claw brings back from the dead, who presumably have no will one way or the other. Maybe it’s the presence of an active wish to die that keeps the Claw from working.
And, of course, it’s not just the Claw, but Severian himself who’s doing this, but he doesn’t know that yet, though his mere touch raised up Triskele before he ever got near the Claw, and Dorcas while he was carrying the Claw unaware.
I think the first use is when Severian is in the Autarch’s treasure cave, facing the glowing ape-men. He holds the Claw aloft as it is glowing, and it heals his arm: “In the dark I bent, and putting the Claw back into the top of my boot, took up my sword; and in doing so I discovered that the numbness had left my arm, which now seemed as strong as it had before the fight.” [pages 248, 249 of Shadow & Claw]. One ape-man, whose arm he had cut off in the fight, follows him out of the cave hoping he’ll heal it, but Severian doesn’t understand at the time what’s being asked of him [page 254].
Actually, before that, the Claw glows while Severian is examining it in the room he shares with Jonas, and it turns the water in their water-pitcher to wine. The wine is mentioned early [page 218, “As Jonas had discovered the night before, our water-ewer held wine.”], but the transformation isn’t till much later. I’m pretty sure he mentions the Claw glowing, but I can’t find the reference.
The next is the uhlan killed by the notules on the road [pages 287-289]. This is deliberate: “I laid it on the uhlan’s forehead, and for an instant tried to will him alive.” The gem flashes in the sun. The uhlan, when he’s risen, doesn’t seem to know where he is. He gives his name as Cornet Mineas, but we’ve no way to know if this is the name he had before he died. (The word uhlan originally meant a Polish lancer.)
In the antechamber, Severian uses the Claw to heal both himself and the cyborg Jonas the wounds they took from the young exultants who torment prisoners for fun in the night [pages 301, 302]. He pulls the Claw from his boot, and his pain fades immediately; there’s “a rush of azure light.” He sticks the Claw back, finds Jonas, takes the Claw back out, and touches him with it. He aren’t told whether the Claw glows, but Jonas is shortly sitting up, though he’s ranting. (The reader recognizes that he’s talking as if he’s on a spaceship.) Severian takes the Claw out again, and it doesn’t glow. He touches Jonas with it anyway, to no apparent effect. The next morning, Severian notices a tear in Jonas’s tunic, and a long black burn-wound, and uses the Claw, which “sparkled in the light much more brightly than it had the evening before,” and heals Jonas‘s wound, but not completely. Jonas’s acts oddly for the rest of the time Severian and he are together. He still knows who he is, but he seems depressed — he’s listless, often inert, and Severian describes his voice as having “a flatness I had not heard before” [page 319]. I wonder if Severian has repaired some robotic component, or otherwise altered the balance between Jonas’s machine and biological parts, to intensify Jonas’s desire to be a complete machine again.
Severian offers to use the Claw to heal Baldanders’s wounds, but the giant refuses (perhaps not understanding what’s being offered) [page 378].
When Jolenta’s arm is bleeding, Severian touches the Claw to her cuts, but they don’t heal [page 388]. We aren’t told whether the Claw glows. Severian says she’s been bitten, and Dorcas mentions “blood bats” [page 390], which have poisoned spittle that keeps their bite-wounds from clotting, but I’d expect the Claw (which can close wounds in seconds and raise the dead) to be stronger than any mere anti-clotting agent. I can’t help but think of the inhumus from the Short Sun books, but that explains nothing, and therefore complicates matters needlessly.
Severian uses the Claw to tame a wild bull [page 393], and inadvertently command wild birds. He also feels the torments of a trapped animal as he passes it while carrying the Claw.
He heals the wounded man Manahen in the sod hut [pages 395, 396]. The Claw “flashes” with a “searing, cyaneous flame”, and the man is healed without Severian even having to touch the Claw to him, but Jolenta, in the same room, is unhelped. The next day, Severian sees that the sod hut’s walls have grown green. Manahen seems to know on sight who Severian is — “it is the new lictor of Thrax! They have sent for one, and the clavigers say he’s coming.” — though there ought to be no way for him to know it. (A claviger is someone who carries keys, or a club.) Manahen and his father presumably work for someone who sympathizes with the prisoners held in Thrax. The next morning, Severian touches the sleeping herdsman’s arm (which he’d broken when the man had a knife at his throat) with the Claw, but we aren’t actually told if it glows or heals the arm.
The stone town
This scene confused me terribly on my first reading of the series. This time through, having read Urth of the New Sun, it’s more apparent what’s going on. It’s also apparent that the scene in the jungle hut is something similar (Severian even says as much: “In a way it was like the little drama in the house of yellow wood in the Botanic Gardens” [page 408]).
Severian awakens before the other from the Cumaean’s seance-trance. They seem transparent to him, and he sees that Jolenta has wires and bands of metal beneath her flesh [page 407]. Might this be why Jonas fell in love with her? Did he sense that she was a sort of cyborg as well?
The Claw
I really ought to have kept a list of all the times Severian uses the Claw, or tries to, so I could maybe figure out if there’s a pattern to its working or not working. My current theory is that it doesn’t work on Jolenta because she’s lost the will to live — the Cumaean says of her “She may live, though she does not wish it.” I don’t know how this ties in with the people the Claw brings back from the dead, who presumably have no will one way or the other. Maybe it’s the presence of an active wish to die that keeps the Claw from working.
And, of course, it’s not just the Claw, but Severian himself who’s doing this, but he doesn’t know that yet, though his mere touch raised up Triskele before he ever got near the Claw, and Dorcas while he was carrying the Claw unaware.
I think the first use is when Severian is in the Autarch’s treasure cave, facing the glowing ape-men. He holds the Claw aloft as it is glowing, and it heals his arm: “In the dark I bent, and putting the Claw back into the top of my boot, took up my sword; and in doing so I discovered that the numbness had left my arm, which now seemed as strong as it had before the fight.” [pages 248, 249 of Shadow & Claw]. One ape-man, whose arm he had cut off in the fight, follows him out of the cave hoping he’ll heal it, but Severian doesn’t understand at the time what’s being asked of him [page 254].
Actually, before that, the Claw glows while Severian is examining it in the room he shares with Jonas, and it turns the water in their water-pitcher to wine. The wine is mentioned early [page 218, “As Jonas had discovered the night before, our water-ewer held wine.”], but the transformation isn’t till much later. I’m pretty sure he mentions the Claw glowing, but I can’t find the reference.
The next is the uhlan killed by the notules on the road [pages 287-289]. This is deliberate: “I laid it on the uhlan’s forehead, and for an instant tried to will him alive.” The gem flashes in the sun. The uhlan, when he’s risen, doesn’t seem to know where he is. He gives his name as Cornet Mineas, but we’ve no way to know if this is the name he had before he died. (The word uhlan originally meant a Polish lancer.)
In the antechamber, Severian uses the Claw to heal both himself and the cyborg Jonas the wounds they took from the young exultants who torment prisoners for fun in the night [pages 301, 302]. He pulls the Claw from his boot, and his pain fades immediately; there’s “a rush of azure light.” He sticks the Claw back, finds Jonas, takes the Claw back out, and touches him with it. He aren’t told whether the Claw glows, but Jonas is shortly sitting up, though he’s ranting. (The reader recognizes that he’s talking as if he’s on a spaceship.) Severian takes the Claw out again, and it doesn’t glow. He touches Jonas with it anyway, to no apparent effect. The next morning, Severian notices a tear in Jonas’s tunic, and a long black burn-wound, and uses the Claw, which “sparkled in the light much more brightly than it had the evening before,” and heals Jonas‘s wound, but not completely. Jonas’s acts oddly for the rest of the time Severian and he are together. He still knows who he is, but he seems depressed — he’s listless, often inert, and Severian describes his voice as having “a flatness I had not heard before” [page 319]. I wonder if Severian has repaired some robotic component, or otherwise altered the balance between Jonas’s machine and biological parts, to intensify Jonas’s desire to be a complete machine again.
Severian offers to use the Claw to heal Baldanders’s wounds, but the giant refuses (perhaps not understanding what’s being offered) [page 378].
When Jolenta’s arm is bleeding, Severian touches the Claw to her cuts, but they don’t heal [page 388]. We aren’t told whether the Claw glows. Severian says she’s been bitten, and Dorcas mentions “blood bats” [page 390], which have poisoned spittle that keeps their bite-wounds from clotting, but I’d expect the Claw (which can close wounds in seconds and raise the dead) to be stronger than any mere anti-clotting agent. I can’t help but think of the inhumus from the Short Sun books, but that explains nothing, and therefore complicates matters needlessly.
Severian uses the Claw to tame a wild bull [page 393], and inadvertently command wild birds. He also feels the torments of a trapped animal as he passes it while carrying the Claw.
He heals the wounded man Manahen in the sod hut [pages 395, 396]. The Claw “flashes” with a “searing, cyaneous flame”, and the man is healed without Severian even having to touch the Claw to him, but Jolenta, in the same room, is unhelped. The next day, Severian sees that the sod hut’s walls have grown green. Manahen seems to know on sight who Severian is — “it is the new lictor of Thrax! They have sent for one, and the clavigers say he’s coming.” — though there ought to be no way for him to know it. (A claviger is someone who carries keys, or a club.) Manahen and his father presumably work for someone who sympathizes with the prisoners held in Thrax. The next morning, Severian touches the sleeping herdsman’s arm (which he’d broken when the man had a knife at his throat) with the Claw, but we aren’t actually told if it glows or heals the arm.
The stone town
This scene confused me terribly on my first reading of the series. This time through, having read Urth of the New Sun, it’s more apparent what’s going on. It’s also apparent that the scene in the jungle hut is something similar (Severian even says as much: “In a way it was like the little drama in the house of yellow wood in the Botanic Gardens” [page 408]).
Severian awakens before the other from the Cumaean’s seance-trance. They seem transparent to him, and he sees that Jolenta has wires and bands of metal beneath her flesh [page 407]. Might this be why Jonas fell in love with her? Did he sense that she was a sort of cyborg as well?
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Date: 2003-12-14 05:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-14 11:22 am (UTC)Urthgirl here
Date: 2003-12-15 09:50 pm (UTC)Allowin's Necklace: Google -- I hear you. I found one possibility, though. St. Allowin, more commonly known as St. Bavo, did penance for selling a man into serfdom by having that man lead him to jail by a chain around his neck.
Pelerines: I think the order took their name from their garments, the way that some orders are colloquially known as the "Blue Nuns" -- The Domnicellae is described as wearing “a narrow cape that trailed long tassels” (Vol I Ch 18), i.e., a pelerine. (What I *don't* understand is why Apu-Punchau leaves one behind in the stone town ...)
Valeria and the Atrium of Time: Valeria doesn't do much in _Coriolanus_; Volumnia, Coriolanus' mom, steals the show. On the other hand, Valeria is the wife of a leader/soldier who gets exiled, and she hangs around Rome hoping he'll come back.
You're right, Valeria's translations are very loose. My Latin is reallyreallyreallyreally rusty, but I think the third one is "I watch so that I may be watched" -- i.e., the sundial keeps the time so that people will look at it. That seems appropriate for Valeria and the Atrium of Time, in a really ironic way, doesn't it?
The Claw and the uhlan: The thing that struck me here is that the uhlan gives A name -- true, it isn't necessarily his, but at least he came up with one. The soldier resurrected in _Citadel_ ends up adopting the one Severian gives him, Miles, even though he insists that he wasn't really dead.
Happy reading. I love Wolfe. Lovelovelove. Can't wait for _Knight_ to come out.