"Manse Everard entered Pasargadae as if into a springtime of hope." (3, p. 67)
- like the Augustan Age when Virgil's Aeneid and the New Testament were composed or like the French Revolution when William Wordsworth wrote that, in that dawn, it was bliss to be alive.
Ages of hope contrast with ages of greatness:
"'The world's great age begins anew...'"
-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION HIDING PLACE IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 555-556 AT p. 555.
"'We've seen the great days pass...'"
-Dornford Yates, Ne'er-Do-Well (Kelly Bray, Cornwall, 2001), p. 7.
"'...after much tribulation and many years, the great days will come again.'"
-Ne'er-Do-Well, p. 11.
Yates' character, Jonathan Mansel, laments the passing of domestic servants and social deference.
In times of hope, the many hope. In the world's great age, a few achieve.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul! What a catastrophic, bloody JOKE the French Revolution was! The September Massacres, the Reign of Terror, the genocidal crushing of the Vendeans, the wars waged by the Revolution and then Napoleon against all Europe shows what a gruesome farce it was. I'll take Cyrus the Great or Augustus any day, over the blood drenched Robespierre! Ad astra! Sean
I'm inclined to agree with what Mark Twain's character in "A Connecticut Yankee" said.
That the horrors of the French Revolution, bad as they were, were tiny compared to the horrors of the previous centuries under nobles & kings.
I'm certainly glad for the passing of domestic servants & social deference. I like the point made somewhere in the 1632 series, that this 'social deference' involved the 'upper classes' being outrageously *rude* at best, to people in the lower classes.
Kaor, Jim!
And I disagree with you, both about the Old Regime and servants/social deference.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his detailed study of the last centuries of the old French state, THE OLD REGIME AND THE REVOLUTION, while fully cognizant of its flaws and weaknesses, did not consider it tyrannical or malevolent. And reread what Anderson had one of his characters in "Ramble With a Gambling Man" (one of the Flying Mountains stories) said about the uses and advantages of wealthy persons having domestic servants.
"Social deference" is merely to show reasonable courtesy in more or less official ways. I am an American, but I would not dream of addressing the Queen of Great Britain as "Betty"! And it's customary to address judges here as "your honor." And so on and on.
Mark Twain was a great writer, but some of his views are shallow and superficial. Such as his ridiculous comments about the Corpus Christi procession in Vienna.
Ad astra! Sean
Robespierre was a worse tyrant than any Bourbon king had been for centuries; and Napoleon was worse than Robespierre.
Not to mention that the wars he launched made Louis XIV look like a piker -- they killed 1.5 million Frenchmen, as many as the 1st World War, out of a much smaller population.
And left a trail of famine and bones in ditches and burned villages and wasted fields and inextinguishable hatreds from Cadiz to Moscow.
His lackey Fouché virtually invented the modern 'secret police' system.
Give me the mild faux-absolutist bumbling of the "Watchmaker King" anytime.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! The kindly, well meaning Louis XVI was vastly preferable to Robespierre, Napoleon, and Fouche!
Btw, I think Louis XVI had a passion for making locks, not watches.
Ad astra! Sean
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