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the-story-of-ymar.md

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+---
+title: The Story of Ymar
+description: >
+  An excerpt from Chapter 17 of _The Shadow of the Torturer_ by Gene Wolfe,
+  with my analysis in comment blocks.
+---
+# The Story of Ymar
+
+Now I begin again.
+It has been a long time
+(twice I have heard the guard changed outside my study door)
+since I wrote the lines you read only a moment before.
+I am not certain it is right to record these scenes,
+which perhaps are important only to me,
+in so much detail.
+I might easily have condensed everything:
+I saw a shop and went in;
+I was challenged by an officer of the Septentrions;
+the shopkeeper sent his sister to help me pluck the poisoned flower.
+I have spent weary days in reading the histories of my predecessors,
+and they consist of little but such accounts.
+For example, of Ymar:
+
+<!--
+Severian is speaking of his predecessors _to the autarchy_.
+Without knowing this, Ymar and "the Autarch" read as separate characters.
+-->
+
+> Disguising himself, he ventured into the countryside,
+> where he spied a muni meditating beneath a plane tree.
+> The Autarch joined him and sat with his back to the trunk
+> until Urth had begun to spurn the sun.
+> Troopers bearing an oriflamme galloped past,
+> a merchant drove a mule staggering under gold,
+> a beautiful woman rode the shoulders of eunuchs,
+> and at last a dog trotted through the dust.
+> Ymar rose and followed the dog, laughing.
+
+<!--
+- muni: An inspired or holy man; a sage; an ascetic or hermit.
+- oriflamme: A banner or standard.
+-->
+
+Supposing this anecdote to be true, how easy it is to explain:
+the Autarch had demonstrated that he chose his active life by an act of will,
+and not because of the seductions of the world.
+
+<!--
+Analysis 1:
+Ymar ignored the mortal pleasures of glory, wealth, and beauty
+simply for the sake of it.
+-->
+
+But Thecla had had many teachers,
+each of whom would explain the same fact in a different way.
+Here, then, a second teacher might say
+that the Autarch was proof against those things that attract common men,
+but powerless to control his love of the hunt.
+
+<!--
+Analysis 2:
+Ymar ignored the mortal pleasures of glory, wealth, and beauty
+but broke for an equally base indulgence.
+-->
+
+And a third, that the Autarch wished to show his contempt for the muni,
+who had remained silent when he might have poured forth enlightenment and received more.
+That he could not do by leaving when there was none to share the road,
+since solitude has great attractions for the wise.
+Nor could he when the soldiers passed, nor the merchant with his wealth, nor the woman,
+for unenlightened men desire all those things,
+and the muni would have thought him one more such man.
+
+<!--
+Analysis 3:
+Ymar ignored the mortal pleasures of glory, wealth, and beauty
+to prove to the wise man that he could resist temptation.
+-->
+
+And a fourth, that the Autarch accompanied the dog because it went forth alone,
+the soldiers having other soldiers,
+the merchant his mule and the mule his merchant,
+and the woman her slaves;
+while the muni did not go forth.
+
+<!--
+Analysis 4:
+Ymar wasn't ignoring the other travelers at all,
+only waiting for one to walk with.
+-->
+
+Yet why did Ymar laugh? Who shall say?
+Did the merchant follow the soldiers to buy their booty?
+Did the woman follow the merchant to sell her kisses and her loins?
+Was the dog of the hunting kind, or such a short-limbed one
+as women keep to bark lest someone fondle them while they sleep?
+Who now shall say?
+Ymar is dead, and such memories of his
+as lived for a time in the blood of his successors
+are long faded.
+
+<!--
+Severian is focused on details irrelevant to the parable.
+-->
+
+So mine in time shall fade too.
+Of this I feel sure: not one of the explanations for the behavior of Ymar was correct.
+The truth, whatever it may have been, was simpler and more subtle.
+Of me it might be asked why I accepted the shopkeeper's sister as my companion--
+I who in all my life had had no true companion.
+And who, reading only of "the shopkeeper's sister,"
+would understand why I remained with her after what is,
+at this point in my own story, about to happen?
+No one, surely.
+
+I have said that I cannot explain my desire for her, and it is true.
+I loved her with a love thirsty and desperate.
+I felt that we two might commit some act so atrocious
+that the world, seeing us, would find it irresistible.
+
+No intellect is needed to see those figures who wait beyond the void of death--
+every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright,
+wrapped in authority older than the universe.
+They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions.
+Rightly we feel our lives guided by them,
+and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them,
+the builders of the unimaginable,
+the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.
+
+The difficulty lies in learning that we ourselves encompass forces equally great.
+We say, "I will," and "I will not," and imagine ourselves
+(though we obey the orders of some prosaic person every day)
+our own masters, when the truth is that our masters are sleeping.
+One wakes within us and we are ridden like beasts,
+though the rider is but some hitherto unguessed part of ourselves.
+
+Perhaps, indeed, that is the explanation of the story of Ymar.
+Who can say?