From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 
Subject: RE: (urth) catamites and narrators
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 14:07:26 -0700

Things are arriving at my machine in weird, random order.

> > Incidentally, if by incest and "a kind of adultery" you mean
> > his relationship with Dorcas, I really think those are Not
> > His Fault.
> 
> I agree. 

As do I, regarding incest. And so what? Consider Oedipus. Incest 
appears to be so vile that even unknown, it pollutes the world. 
Yet this is that world's savior ... go figure.

As for "a kind of adultery," what I basically meant was infidelity
in his going after Jolenta right after his reunion with Dorcas.


> It is certainly an original situation, and one that could only
> occur in SF. 

True; and only because Dorcas is not (or does not appear to be)
a timewalker is Severian prevented from singing the old convention
favorite that ends "... I am my own grampaaaaw!"


> If "a kind of adultery" refers to Cyriaca, well, I 
> can't get too exercised about that, either. 

Good heavens, I'd forgotten that. Skip "a kind of."


> Nor rape if that refers to Jolenta, good grief! And
> fornication--since when do we start bleating about 
> that? Yikes.

Since we are speaking of traditional Catholic sexual morality,
that's since when. Not late-twentieth/early-twenty-first-
century American secular humanist morality. In which case the
content of sin is not only intentional but formal; and my point 
is not whether Severian is "guilty" (the issue of intention) 
of any or all of these things: it is that he formally does 
commit them, but somehow homosexuality seems to be left out of 
the mix.

--Blattid


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