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‘The Garden of Everlasting Sleep’
Impressions of Chapter 23 of Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer
© 2019 James LaFond
MAY/18/19
Reading from pages 141-146 of Shadow & Claw
Hildegrin
A fully fleshed out supporting character, in the person of a ditcher poling a raft about the watery necropolis, appears like one of the author’s dead end rabbit holes into the human condition and then serves to bring together some of the loosely hanging narrative threads of the story. The big man serves his dual narrative purpose and also illuminates yet another corner of the shadow-fraught world of Urth:
“There’s a great deal said against Death. I mean by the people that has to die, drawin’ her picture like a crone with a sack, and all that. But she’s a good friend to birds, Death is. Whenever there’s dead men and quiet, you’ll find a good many birds, that’s been my experience.”
Amidst his meeting with Hildegrin, Severian becomes something of a boy again, concerning himself obsessively with the artifice of his social identity, Terminus Est, his wife as sword.
Diction of note
-angelus, angelic being
-pelycosaur, a jungle creature in the botanic gardens
-somnambulist
Drink Deep of Night: Song of the Secret Gardener
‘A Dark Lake in an Infinite Fen’
before the rising sun
‘The Language of Sorrow ‘
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let the world fend for itself
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hate
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when you're food
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honor among men
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america the brutal
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solo boxing
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your trojan whorse
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z-pill forever
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thriving in bad places
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logic of steel
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masculine axis
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fate
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fanatic
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ranger?
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into leviathan’s maw
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the lesser angels of our nature
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time & cosmos
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menthol rampage
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the year the world took the z-pill
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dark, distant futures
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predation
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barbarism versus civilization
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fiction anthology one
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song of the secret gardener
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cracker-boy
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winter of a fighting life
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night city
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the first boxers
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the gods of boxing
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within leviathan’s craw
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the greatest boxer
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the combat space
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on combat
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all-power-fighting
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triumph
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the sunset saga complete
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logic of force
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son of a lesser god
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taboo you
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sorcerer!
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advent america
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orphan nation
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book of nightmares
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by the wine dark sea
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wife—
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the greatest lie ever sold
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on the overton railroad
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blue eyed daughter of zeus
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songs of aryas
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broken dance
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the fighting edge
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under the god of things
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