From: "Tony Ellis" <tony.ellis@futurenet.co.uk>
Subject: (urth) re: Messianic
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 17:55:17 +0000

Rostrum wrote:

> You're touching on my main gripe about URTH.  I wasn't
> convinced that the
> stuff Severian did in his "career" as the Concilator was
> enough for him to
> be remembered all the way to Severian's original time.
> It's just a bunch
> of Jesus-mimicking wonder working without any apparent
> purpose to it all.
> There's no set of memorable teaching to be passed on;
> there's no sense
> that his actions have some Greater Purpose that would make
> him significant
> to subsequent followers.  It all seemed too perfunctory,
> too brief.

As I understand it, what we see of Sev's Conciliator career
is just the start. He can travel the Corridors of time, so
he can pop back any time he likes to visit pre-deluge Urth,
and we're given at least two clear hints that he does.
Dorcas, asked by Sev about the Conciliator, says that he
used to appear and disappear unexpectedly. And then Sev says
of the Chowder Pot:

"Often I have dreamed of going back, and perhaps sometime I
shall. Certainly more guests came to our aid when Zama broke
our door  than there were any reason to expect, and I would
like to think that one or even several of them were myself.
Indeed it sometimes seems to me that I caught a glimpse of
my own face in the candlelight that night." Urth XXXII.


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