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Sword of the Lictor, chapters 21 to 23
Severian finds the sorcerers have some actual magical power, much to his surprise, but he escapes into the mountains due to finding a way out of the initial cell, a touch of deception, and an attack by a notule, along with Little Severian. He speculates on whether his actions were selfish or to help Little Severian.
The two encounter an abandoned ancient settlement with buildings of metal and giant statues.
Comments
Do you think that the thing which attacked the magician was a notule? I must reread it as I thought it was another different beast and the notules were simply mentioned in passing?
Finally I had taken the reference to the mountain's head, shoulders etc to be purely metaphorical until a sudden moment of realisation that he meant it very literally as a mountain sized statue!
If the Conciliator is Christ (and I don't doubt you), what's the Claw? What does it correspond to in Christian mythology?
I thought this creature wasn't a notule, but was the same one that attacked Jonas in the antechamber prison in the Autarch's palace.
> If the Conciliator is Christ (and I don't doubt you), what's the Claw? What does it correspond to in Christian mythology?
>
The specific passage which clinched it for me was "Then his task was to forge a peace between humanity and the Increate, and he was called the Conciliator", spoken by Bug Severian to Little Severian during the magical duel. Though for me this was only the most definitive statement of a long series of hints.
But as for the Claw, I don't yet have any sense of what it represents. It always seems more than just a relic (like a piece of the True Cross or whatever) and more like the numerous parts of saints' bodies that were such a feature of medieval Christianity (finger bones that could effect healing, and such like). But I don't think Gene Wolfe has given any real clues yet, and I'm sure that's deliberate on his part
You're both right...I read the creature as being a notule, but it's something different.
The Conciliator feels very like post space-age Christ. Not the same as Jesus, but the same figure for a different era of history (and done infinitely more subtly than C.S. Lewis - we're not dealing necessarily with a literal fact here, but the continuation of a parallel to part of Christian belief unthinkably far in the future).
One thought...if the Claw is a relic, does it have any power in itself - and if not, where does the power come from? Though the Claw's power, though not completely reliable, feels much more impossibly advanced science than actual miracle.
That's the way I read it.
For example "Like the theologian Teilhard de Chardin, Wolfe speculated that as consciousness itself evolves, humanity might come closer to the divine. In his concern for the possible reinvention of tradition in the face of radical technological and civilizational change, Wolfe was aligned with fellow Catholics that included not only de Chardin but also Hugh Kenner, Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan" in the interview at https://www.google.com/amp/s/newrepublic.com/amp/article/153615/gene-wolfe-proust-science-fiction
For those unfamiliar, de Chardin was an unconventional Catholic thinker who among other things separated the human Jesus from the cosmic Christ in a more radical way than many of his contemporaries, and also argued for the spiritual evolution of consciousness as a parallel to biological evolution. He posited an "omega point" at which consciousness would pass some critical threshold.
His thinking has met more resonance with New Age thought than Catholic theology, especially with people who believe we are heading for a "singularity" in which mind and technology will increase at a more than exponential rate and effect some kind of dramatic change in humanity.
I suspect that de Chardin (and certainly many of his New Age advocates) were not thinking of an omega point anywhere near so far in the future as Gene Wolfe has placed it! But maybe that's where Severian is heading?