Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 13:20:28 -0800
From: Michael Andre-Driussi 
Subject: (urth) Typhon's vanity and Pas's Two Heads

I dunno, Roy, but it seems to me that the same vanity of Typhon would make
him more inclined to create a two-headed Pas.

(I guess this is one of those "It isn't a bug, it is a feature!" answers.)

We know that Typhon planned to be one-headed asap.

We know that Typhon had the mountain carved in the shape of his one-headed
form.

We sense, iirc, that Typhon's two-headed phase was something of a secret,
something that was disturbing to those who knew and guarded from the bulk
of the population.

So it seems easy to imagine Typhon saying, "Yeah, watch this: I'll make
them all worship this transitional, inferior form of me!"

That is to say, the Mountain and other things that remain in the solar
system are more important to Typhon than the Whorl.  The only important
thing about the Whorl is that Typhon had the power and prestige to send it
out -- it is kind of like a potlatch, in that sense.

It seems to me that a scan of one-headed Typhon might actually threaten
Typhon's sense of self: if we get beyond simple narcissism, I think we can
agree Typhon is not narcissistic, and if he met a true equal he would react
in a kill or be killed sort of way.  Because Typhon w/ two heads is a
transitional stage, and Typhon fully expects to be much bigger and better
in the near future, Typhon would make Pas as a two-headed god.

(As for Typhon's self-stimulation in audience with Severian, Greg Feeley
first pointed out many years past that this scene is rather close to a
Satanic scene in James Blish's BLACK EASTER.  FWIW.)

=mantis=


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