Saturday 14 December 2019

Not Peace But A Sword

The Day Of Their Return.

Jaan tells the multitude:

"'Like one who spoke upon Mother Terra, long after Caruith but long before Jaan, I bring you not peace but a sword.'" (10, p. 151)

We recognize again Poul Anderson's use of the Bible and also a link to another future historian. One of Olaf Stapledon's mentally time traveling Last Men performs a psychological experiment by inducing a mystical experience in Lenin who, after fully surrendering to the experience, quotes, "Not peace but a sword....," and continues his polemical writing.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Matthew 10.34 is undoubtedly one of the hard sayings of Christ. Read in context with the next several verses, I understood that to mean the Lord was warning that the Faith he was bringing would cause strife and controversy. Because not everyone would agree with Christianity. And history has certainly borne that out!

And it would have been far better for the world (never mind Russia!), if Lenin had become a man of peace and renounced his polemics, intrigues and schemes for gaining dictatorial power, etc.

Ad astra! Sean