Gene Wolfe and Sevarian’s Coin
A reader with the uncomplicated but noetic name of Simplemind asks:
I have always wanted someone to explain this Gene Wolfe passage spoken by his character Severian the torturer. I do not know philosophy but is he talking about gnostiscm? Knowing the right words vs that things unfold according to free will/plan?
It always struck me as a beautifully written and pregnant with a meaning I could not quite deliver into my own mind.
“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life-they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.”
It is an excellent question.
The quote immediately follows the moment when the young Severian, having accepted a coin from the dashing rebel Vodalus, puts it unthinkingly in his pocket.
Without knowing it, he is now a soldier of the rebel forces, a Voladarii. This is just as he just pretended to be a paragraph before: as often happens in life, the pretense becomes reality.
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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.