From: Kieran Mullen <kieran@phyast.nhn.ou.edu>
Subject: (whorl) Re:  Digest whorl.v001.n076
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 01:46:05 


[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

>
>From: "Alice Turner" <al@interport.net>
>Subject: Silk vis a vis God
>Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 12:05:17 -0400
>
>With regard to the identity of the Outsider, let me remind you of Lake,
>285, where Silk is telling Crane about his enlightenment:
>
>"Voices...One spoke into each ear most of the time. One was very
>masculine--not falsely deep, but solid, as if a mountain of stone were
>speaking. The other was feminine, a sort of gentle cooing; yet both voices
>were his...I believe, too, that the Outsider has a great many more voices
>as well. I could hear them in back of me at times, although indistinctly.
>It was as if a crowd were waiting behind me while its leaders whispered in
>my ears; but as if the crowd was actually all one person, somehow: the
>Outsider...."
>
>If that isn't Severian, I'll eat my mouse.

    How would you like it cooked?

    "Cooing" seems more like a reference to the Holy Spirit, in RC tradition.
It has sometimes been thought of as the feminine part of the Trinity.  
I can't see how you could get Severian to have the voice of a mountain of
stone.  

    In Genesis, God often refers to him/herself in the plural.  (This in
itself has sparked much discussion).  This seems to me to be Wolfe's take
on this metaphor/image/idea.

              Kieran Mullen