Wednesday 4 July 2018

Myth And Reality

"Reid drew his cloak tighter about him against the chill. Was Atlantis no more than this?"
-Poul Anderson, The Dancer From Atlantis, CHAPTER TWELVE, p. 93.

Reid feels a chill when he sees the reality. The myth of Atlantis is vast. The original island was small.

Passing between cliffs and a lesser island, he enters a mile-wide lagoon and realizes:

"...that here was indeed a place legend would never forget."
-op. cit., p. 94.

A carefully designed and many-colored city at least as big as Athens covers the hills that rise from the blue seawater where air is warm, breezes are soft, several pleasure boats cruise under sail and two fish-tailed, eagle-prowed warcraft are moored.

We have read about Atlantis before. This is Poul Anderson's version.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And I'm inclined to believe the island of Thera and the eruption there was the origin of the legends about Atlantis. As so often happens in cases like this, the stories about Atlantis increasingly described it more and more as a magnificent city and powerful empire as time passed. Till at least we get to the story as narrated by Plato in the TIMAEUS.

Sean