A View on "The Tale of the Student and His Son" (including first Severian)

"The Tale of the Student and His Son," a story from the brown book, is the one that Severian reads to Jonas when they are trapped in the antechamber.

I will start with a New Sun reading of the Tale: it is how the New Sun (in this case, the Student's Son) will fight with the monstrous enemies (here the Naviscaput) and win, a victory of holy light over unholy darkness.

Next, the first Severian angle. Recall my terms: I claim the first Severian is just and only Severian who is in the future by at least ten years. He is not from a different universe; he is not a different incarnation; but he has altered history which alters his own timeline, which causes certain effects that might reasonably be conflated with "different universe" and/or "different incarnation."

In the Tale, the Student is the first Severian. He shapes and forms an idealized younger self, the hero. The hero is successful and then the Student kills himself.

I see two readings of this. One matches Severian's initial theory that Apu Punchau (first Severian) sacrifices himself to save narrative Severian (in the battle with Hildegrin). In other words, Severian believes he has seen his own future and he looks forward to going out in a blaze of self-sacrificing glory.

The other reading is that, naturally, the first Severian is being himself "rewritten" by all this timeline manipulation, so in a metaphorical sense the first Severian has "killed himself," to be replaced by an improved first Severian.

In this I am focusing on the larger, less-detailed scale, on how a time-loop story is perhaps being told without time travel machinery. To extend it one more story, always a risky thing, this could be used to cast the twins Fish and Frog (of the brown book story "The Tale of the Boy Called Frog") as first Severian and narrative Severian.