From: Peter Stephenson <pws@ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Subject: Re: (urth) Green Man
Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 11:14:01 +0200

Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:
> Hello Timothy Reilly!
> 
> You wrote:
> >Why does the Green Man tell Severian that Agia can be found  "above ground"?
> 
> Since the Green Man can supposedly see into the future...
> 
> Or maybe the Green Man is just bluffing.

(late again, holiday trip to Ravenna, Urbino, life's hard. sigh.)

I haven't gone back to check, but reading the Book before my impression was
very strong (in fact, I was quite certain) that the Green Man was simply
giving out standard platitudes like any fortune teller in a fairground.  I
saw this as an example of Wolfe's brilliance with paradox --- he really
does come from the future and so can `predict' it, but of course he doesn't
know all the details about everyone's lives, so he has to make them up.
Then Severian's first guess, `he simply meant that she was alive', is the
right one; the entirely intentional oracular quality of the utterance has
allowed him to reinterpret it some other way.

corncrake

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