On the present rereading, I want to follow events in Ys so I skip past the chapter sections set in Eriu although I can return to them later.
Heavy summer rain in Ys:
a cataract concealing sky and sea
water rushing and gurgling along streets
noise of downpour on roofs and paving
waves crashing against the rampart
The crashing of the waves is described as "...remote and eternal..." (p. 132) This sound is "remote" because it comes from outside the city and because it is "below" (less noisy than) the downpour. But is it eternal? Not literally. But aspects of our environment are described as "eternal" if they remain unchanged through many generations. The most obvious example is the stars:
Destruction: I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out.
But from here, I can pretend...
I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments.
Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade.
Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust.
But I can pretend.
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Brief Lives (New York, 1994), chapter 8, pp. 12-13.
We recognize some themes common to Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman:
gods come and go;
endings, even on a galactic scale.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Irritatingly frequent and prolonged rains this spring and (so far) summer in Massachusetts. I've been longing for one little week of dry weather!
I recall Flandry thinking somewhere in the stories that the stars were eternal--but no, they too faced their own Long Night.
Ad astra! Sean
I should have remembered Flandry. Highly relevant.
Although -from a human standpoint- stars -are- eternal -- or "close enough for Government work', as the saying goes.
I'm going to live another 20 years or so. Worrying about stuff a billion or six billion years down the road seems sort of... wasteful.
I expect another 21 years. A Romany woman said that I would make it to 95 and, provisionally, I accept what she said.
Kaor, to Both!
After my unfortunate experience with cervical myelopathy last year I am not so confident of my own life span!!!
Ad astra! Sean
There's an old English saying: "Farm as if you were going to live forever, but live as if you were going to die tomorrow."
That reference to 'farming' is metaphorical, of course -- but it's an old enough proverb that rural metaphors were natural.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I agree with the point of that metaphor and saying. I cannot claim to always live up to it!
Ad astra! Sean
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