Case in point for those who have read TBOTNS - little is made of it, but Severian sleeps with both his grandmothers. Dorcas, who he raised from the Lake of Birds, was Ouwen's mother. He (Ouwen) first recognizes her while he Waits (tables) at the Inn of Lost Loves by the Sanguinary Field. Dorcas follows Severian the Thrax, but then journey's back down Gyoll looking for her real lost love.
In Thrax, Severian meets a beautiful older woman at an evening masquerade, Cyriaca. He allows her to seduce him and then cannot kill her as he is supposed to. He learns of her lost love, her daughter Katherine, sent to the Matachin Tower of the Torturers for occasioning some killing or other as a young beauty.
Finally he learns that Ouwen had slept with Katherine when she stayed at the Inn, in time for him to be born to her before her excruciation and death.
Waiting at the Inn of Lost Loves is so innocuously presented that I only realised it was symbolic in writing this. Is there something in the intimate relations with Dorcas and Cyriaca? Until I find something, I'm a little itchy too.
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Thinking on this problem, my only candidate theory (other than general creepiness) is Severian's place in the cosmology. The universe of TBOTNS exists between a big bang and a big crunch, and each universe is a Great Day or Great Year. Once a species that we could call human brought forth a different kind of creature (the God Tzadkiel). In the next universe, Tzadkiel and his kind labour to bring forth a humanity fit to bring forth Tzadkiel again. In this way, humanity becomes its own grandparent.
ReplyDeleteSeverian is the apotheosis human, the first sign of the fitness of humans to bring forth Tzadkiel, and so Urth is granted a new sun.
It's possible that the two universes are the same universe running forward and backward, so that Tzadkiel's concluding work is the big bang and humanities concluding work is the formation of Tzadkiel in the big crunch.