What It Means (Or The Meaning Of It All)

The Night Face, III.

Raven, the Lochlanna Commandant, works hard to understand the Gwydiona, especially since they are so unusual to begin with. He tells his men:

"'They say, "Man goes where God is," and it seems to mean...'"

(We have been wondering what "God" means so here we go...)

"'...that work and play and art and private life and everything else aren't divided up; no distinction is made between them, it's all one harmonious whole.'" (p. 566)

Oneness, harmony, wholeness: yes, we can associate these qualities with "God," although some might say that the use of this word with only that meaning is metaphorical.

The Gwydiona fish (work) in elaborately carved and decorated boats (art) with multiple symbolisms to musical accompaniment (more art) and claim that this multifaceted activity is more efficient than compartmentalization. Raven is even prepared to concede that:

"'They might be right...'" (ibid.)

The transcendence of the distinction between work and leisure should be a future social goal. Drudgery should be eliminated. Enjoyable and self-realizing activity, whether "work" or creative leisure, should be maximized. Years ago, my friend, Kevin, sat on a park bench watching his grandchildren on the swings on a Saturday morning while simultaneously selling an electric balance to a customer over his mobile phone. His work and leisure were seamlessly blended. Before mobile phones, he would have had to go home and use the land line: more of a distinction between work and leisure. A trivial example, of course.

I think that the Gwydiona vision is realizable without the downside, the Night Face, which we learn that it has.

God(s) And A Horn

In James Blish's The Triumph Of Time, Jorn the Apostle says, "Go with God." In Poul Anderson's The Night Face, the Gwydiona say, "'Man goes where God is.'" (III, p. 566) They sound the same. However, Jorn is described as a Fundamentalist. The Gwydiona are anything but Fundamentalists. Their God has Aspects which are clearly symbolic. That word, "God," gets a lot of use. And the Gwydiona are misusing the word because their supposed annual ascent into God is really a temporary descent into insanity. "God" has to mean something transcendent - Someone, according to theists - or it means nothing.

A particular bush on Gwydion has:

"...a green fragrance..." (ibid.)

After that combination of colour and scent, we expect a third sense and are not disappointed. In the very next sentence:

"Then far off and winding down the slopes, a bronze horn blew, calling antlered cattle home." (ibid.)

Poul Anderson knew exactly what he was doing in every sentence. He went with God in creativity.

Gwydiona Mysticism

The Night Face.

Gwydiona mysticism is another much-posted topic. See:

Gwydiona Symbolism

Gwydion Mythology

Symbolism

Rather than add more philosophy to these posts, I have just now added to the combox for "Gwydiona Mythology." 

Young Flandry And Bond

Poul Anderson, having written about Captain Flandry, then backtracked and wrote about seventeen-year-old Ensign Flandry. Ian Fleming, having written about Commander Bond, did not backtrack but kept Bond's assignments about a year apart in sync with his book publications. However, in his fifth instalment, Bond remembers his skiing and rock-climbing seventeen-year-old self, imagines meeting that younger self and wonders what the two Bonds would make of each other but then dismisses such thoughts as a waste of time. Subsequently, someone else has been authorized to write Young Bond novels. We age and remember and novelists find different ways to express these universal experiences. 

The year 1956 returns to our attention when Fleming footnotes that it was in March of that year that he wrote a passage in which Bond speculates that Guy Burgess would be driven to make contact.

Symbolism

The Night Face, II.

"...Dawyd knelt to light a candle before a niche. The shrine held a metal disc, half gold and half black with a bridge between the Yang and Yin of immemorial antiquity." (pp. 562-563)

A disc half gold and half black sounds like Yin and Yang but what is the bridge? 

Dawyd explains the elaborate symbolism in the designs on a bronze and tooled leather chair. The Burning Wheel is the sun, all suns, time and thermodynamic irreversibility. Interwoven vines which bloom during hay-gathering also mean time which destroys and regenerates. Leather from wild areas recalls Night Faces, the other side of Day Faces. Bronze, man-made, says that man embodies meaning and structure. However, that same bronze, by turning green as it corrodes, says that all structures vanish into new life. Trying to summarize, I have omitted references to two Aspects of God, the Green Boy and the autumnal Huntress.

Too elaborate? Gwydiona psychology has constructed complicated structures to control its own "Night Faces," supposedly acknowledged but in fact suppressed most of the time.

The Buddhist monastery visited by our meditation group displays detailed images of both historical and mythological figures but the images are intended to elucidate, not to conceal, and the meditation practice is focused on inner reflection facing a blank wall, not on visualization. (Visualization is used in another tradition. Everyone finds the practice that helps them.)

Light Be Yours

The Night Face, II.

The immediately preceding Technic History instalment, "A Tragedy of Errors," is about misunderstandings caused by linguistic changes. The Night Face might involve the same problem:

"'Evidently, the meaning of the word "government" has diverged in our language from yours. Let me think, please.' Dawyd knitted his brow." (p. 557)

However, it will emerge that the problem runs deeper.

When the Gwydiona, Dawyd, welcomes the Namerican, Tolteca, into his house, he recites a formal greeting:

"'O guest of the house, who may be God, most welcome and beloved, enter. In the name of joy, and health, and understanding, beneath Ynis and She and the stars; fire, flood, fleet, and light be yours.'" (p. 562)

Ynis is the sun. She, IIRC, is the single moon. Thus, "beneath heaven." Why is this elaborate greeting not abbreviated? Why does he wish fire, fleet and flood for his guest? There are further refinements. Dawyd crosses himself, then draws a cross on his guest's brow with a finger. Furthermore, and this is surprising:

"The ritual was obviously ancient, and yet he did not gabble it, but spoke with vast seriousness." (ibid.)

Surely you or I would tend to gabble if we had to repeat that regularly? It is not a mere ritual. The psychology of the Gwydiona is such that, without any apparent effort on their part, they maintain elaborately civilized behaviour most of the time but go insane once a year and then forget. Even they do not know what their problem is. The Night Face is hidden.

Someone might ask, "Wasn't there a Star Trek like this?" But we have already covered that! See here.

Through Time

Sf shows cultural collisions, clashes etc when:

space explorers reach inhabited extrasolar planets;

time dilated space travelers return to Earth;

time travelers arrive in historical or future periods.

The conclusion of the preceding post reminds us of time travel stories by Poul Anderson:

"Welcome"

Time travelers to a near future are welcome to share a cannibalistic meal.

"Time Heals"

Increasing incomprehension with increased futurity.

"The Man Who Came Early"

A modern man does not succeed in an earlier period contra Mark Twain.

"The Little Monster"

A young boy's effect on proto-men.

"Flight to Forever"

Succeeding civilizations, either hostile or indifferent.

Also:

The Quincunx Of Time by James Blish

Not time travel but nevertheless increasingly incomprehensible messages from further futures.

Conflicting Cultures In Two Future Histories

The Night Face, II.

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

Solarians

Nomads

Erulani

Alori 

- see The Peregrine II

- and also:

Stellamont

- see Conflicting Cultures

In Anderson's Technic History, Namericans are enthusiastically welcoming and sociable whereas Lochlanna are elaborately and guardedly courteous and Gwydiona are both friendly and hospitable but in an unusual, almost alien, way that extraplanetary visitors must try to fathom.

Cross-cultural contacts across space and time are one theme of sf, e.g., the Time Traveler and the Eloi.

What We Did Not Say In The Previous Post...

...but have said often enough before.

Poul Anderson addressed the Frankenstein question, "Is it right to create human beings?," in his posthumously published novel, Genesis.

Anderson wrote several future histories and his Technic History is longer and more complicated than Heinlein's Future History.

Wells hinted at time travel paradoxes whereas Anderson fully developed both such paradoxes: circular causality and causality violation.

Anderson retold Norse myths and sagas.

The surprise in the previous post came when I realized that Buck Rogers, although not originally a space traveller, had inspired several later space travelling science fiction heroes and therefore that Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry might be regarded as one culmination of this tradition in popular fiction. 

Literary Traditions And Culminations

As we have seen, some works by Poul Anderson can be regarded as culminating points in particular literary traditions. 

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the first science fiction novel.

Robert Heinlein's Future History was the first future history series.

HG Wells' Time Traveller was the first fictional character able to move backwards and forwards in time at will, thus the first time traveller as opposed to a temporally displaced person.

We know of Anderson's contributions to science fiction, to future histories and to time travel.

Also, like Tolkien, he brought Norse mythology into modern fantasy. 

Anderson's Dominic Flandry is a space adventurer so who was the first of those? I think that it was Buck Rogers even though the earliest version of this character:

was called Anthony Rogers;

was born in 1898;

was a veteran of World War I;

survived into the 25th century by suspended animation;

did not travel through space;

was revived by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle;

was loosely connected by them to their Lucifer's Hammer.

A fascinating piece of science fiction history.