Coffee, World War II And Romances

 

Poul Anderson, Three Hearts And Three Lions (London, 1977).

"Holger consumed the meal with appetite and afterward thought wistfully of coffee and a smoke. But wartime shortages had somewhat weaned him from those pleasant vices." (CHAPTER THREE, pp. 23-24)

We have noticed the absence of coffee in other times and realms here but have not previously mentioned wartime shortages. Holger is not the only fictional character to depart for another world during World War II. See also CS Lewis':

The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe

Perelandra

The Great Divorce

The Lion... mentions the Blitz. Perelandra mentions blackout restrictions. The Great Divorce ends with an air raid siren. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters is also set during WWII.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrolman, Manse Everard, visits London during the Blitz.

Holger:

"...had never gone in for reading romances, scientific or otherwise..." (CHAPTER TWO, p. 20)

Scientific romances are what Lewis knew as "scientifiction" and what we call science fiction.

In an early edition of a novel by HG Wells, the list of other titles by the same author included not the heading "Science Fiction" but the sentence, "Mr. Wells has also written the following fantastic and imaginative romances."

John Buchan wrote not "The King liked my books" but "He did me the honour to be amused by my romances."

Three Hearts... is a romance, scientific or otherwise...

Absent Heroes And Unwritten Sequels

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword and his Three Hearts And Three Lions have in common that:

each implies a sequel that remains unwritten;

however, their main characters do appear briefly in later volumes, Skafloc and Mananaan in The Demon Of Scattery and Holger Danske in A Midsummer Tempest.

Three Hearts... concludes:

"...meanwhile new storms are rising. It may be that we shall need Holger Danske again."

-Poul Anderson, Three Hearts And Three Lions (London, 1977), NOTE, p. 156.

A fantasy novel can comment on the real world by highlighting the absence of a hero when one is needed. John Brunner was quoted as saying that Grendel is loose and there is no Beowulf.

Fantasy or sf - CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy is both - can hint that its fantastic content relates to real life:

"What neither of us foresaw was the rapid march of events which was to render the book out of date before it was published. These events have already made it rather a prologue to our story than the story itself. But we must let it go as it stands. For the later stages of the adventure - well, it was Aristotle, long before Kipling, who taught us the formula, 'That is another story.'"

-CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet (London, 1963), XXII, p. 180.

What rapid march of events? Out Of The Silent Planet was published in 1938.

Holger had lived through World War II, and also through the parallel conflict in the Carolingian universe, but new storms were rising.

Relaying The Story

Often in fantasy or sf, a character travels to another world or to another time and the story is somehow relayed to us as readers. Of course there are many examples.

The outer narrator relays the Time Traveller's account of his time travelling.

Poul Anderson relays Robert Anderson's accounts of Jack Havig's time travelling. (And one of Havig's fellow time travellers gave the time travel idea to Wells.)

An unnamed first person narrator relays Holger Carlsen's account of his time in the Carolingian universe.

The omniscient narrator describes Holger's later visit to the Old Phoenix inn between the universes.

We notice similarities between the introductory passages of Three Hearts And Three Lions and of There Will Be Time, e.g., physical descriptions of Holger Carlsen and of Robert Anderson.

This a quick post between preparations to travel tomorrow.

Conclusion And An Unwritten Sequel

Was the conclusion of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword predictable: that the sword, Tryfing, would kill the Elven-Fosterling, then the Changeling? Yes, if we could think in terms of weird instead of in terms of happy endings or of any other kind of story resolution, then this double killing should have been predictable.

In which god should we place our trust? Skafloc tells us!:

"'A true friend is Mananaan. He is the only god I would trust.'" (XXVI, p. 189)

Freda winds up with Mananaan. Asking Christ to forgive her because she loves Skafloc more than Him, she goes to seek Skafloc and Mananaan sees to her welfare after Skafloc's death.

Odin speaks the sequel that Poul Anderson never wrote:

"'Skafloc must fall, and this child whom I wove my web to have begotten and given to me must one day take up the sword and bear it to the end of its weird.'" (XXVI, p. 196)

Such an early work implying such an obvious sequel - that was never written.

It is getting late here.

Summer Wanes, Wind Screams

The Broken Sword, XXV.

Pathetic fallacy highway:

"...the summer was waning at last. But so was Trollheim." (p. 183)

Valgard is drunk and despondent:

"Would the rain never end? He shuddered at the wet breath through the window. Lightning glared blue-white and his bones shook to the thunder." (ibid.)

When he enters his bedroom:

"Lightning blazed anew. Thunder sent quiverings through the floor. Wind screamed and dashed rain against glass. Tapestries fluttered and candles flickered in a cold draught." (ibid.)

We read it and want to see it on screen.

When Valgard screams that he is "'...but the shadow of Skafloc...'":

"Lightning leaped and flamed, hellfire loose in heaven. Thunder banged. Wind hooted. The rain flung itself down rivering panes. A gust within the walls blew out the candles." (p. 184)

There is an exact parallel between inner and outer turmoil.

Before even hearing their message, Valgard has killed one of the messengers that had come to tell him that the elves have landed in England and that the Sidhe from Ireland are in Scotland. Only two of a band of fifteen messengers had survived attacks by elven outlaws.

Chapter XXVI begins:

"Under cover of an autumn storm, Skafloc led the best of the elf warriors across the channel." (p. 185)

The storm both reflects Valgard's inner conflicts and works against him.

Earlier in Chapter XXV, we were told how Skafloc appears to his enemies:

"A demon on a giant horse, with a sword and a heart from hell, led the elves to victory over twice their number." (p. 180)

It can be amusing to hear how we are seen by others. In Lancaster, someone said, "One of the big leftists in town was there...," then added, "Eugene, I think he's called." Yes, I know Eugene!

Summer Past; Red And Gold

The Broken Sword.

Two more passages in Chapter XXIV:

"...the memory of Skafloc was becoming a summer that was past, recalled in a new year." (p. 179)

The narrative has combined the passage of the seasons with the feelings of the characters. Now, a past season becomes an analogy for a changed feeling. Both the text and the analogy continue:

"He warmed her heart without searing it, and her longing for him was like a still tarn whereon sun-glints had begun to dance." (ibid.)

A longing that has become still and is like dancing light - has ceased to be a longing.

Over the page:

"There came an evening when they two stood on the shore, the waters murmurous at their feet and the sunset red and gold behind them." (p. 180)

They two are Freda and her new suitor, Audun. He proposes and she accepts. But an elemental, non-human viewpoint would focus on summers and sunsets and not on human relationships!

Winter And Spring

See:

Weather And Seasons

Winter

The Structure Of Star Of The Sea

Poul Anderson's works set in historical or prehistorical periods often describe seasonal changes particularly at the beginning of a chapter or of some other discrete narrative passage.

In The Broken Sword, XXIV:

"Winter bled away under the joyous weapons of spring." (p. 176)

"As the weeks passed into months, [Freda] felt the same stirring within her that brought back the birds and called forth buds like clenched baby fists." (p. 177)

"Winter went in rain and pealing thunder. The first soft green spread over trees and meadows. The birds came home." (p. 178)

"[Freda] stood in twilight with the blossoms of an apple tree overhead, drifting down on her at each mild breeze. The winter was gone. Skafloc lived in the springtime, in cloud and shadow, dawn and sunset and high-riding moon, he spoke through the wind and laughed through the rain. There would be winter, and winter again, in the great unending ring-dance of the sun. But she bore the summer beneath her heart, and every summer to come." (ibid.)

"The days lengthened and earth burst into its fullness. Warm winds, shouting rains, birdsong and deer and fish silvery in the rivers, flowers and light nights - More and more Freda felt her baby stirring." (p. 179)

Chapter XXV begins:

"In late summer the northland weather turned rainy. For days and nights on end, wind scourged the elf-hills and veiled them in lightning-blinking grey." (p. 180)

The Earth His Work

The Broken Sword, XXIV.

Freda reflects - and this can also be our evening reflection -:

"Dreary was a church after the woodlands and hills and sounding sea. She still loved God - and was not the earth His work, and a church only man's?" (p. 177)

I essentially agree. Earth, sky and sea are our place of worship. But "God" is anthropomorphic - a person literally making everything? The reality that appears to itself as woodlands, hills and sea is THAT, not He. Or so I now think. However, no one's creed is identical with the whole truth.

A Magic Sword

The Broken Sword, XXIII.

John Carter, the self-proclaimed best swordsman of two worlds, could defeat any number of sword-wielding antagonists. He thought that he and his friend, Tars Tarkas, would have been able to fight their way across Mars killing all before them.

Some fantasy heroes are not only blessed with fighting skills but also cursed with magical swords. (I do not honestly know how many magical swords are cursed but Skafolc's is.) Shortly after he has attacked and killed six trolls, Skafolc is stalked by two more. He hews through the shield, shoulder and heart of the first and the second spits himself on the upraised sword which simultaneously gives Skafloc an "...unearthly strength..." (p. 169) enabling him to withstand the impact.

Again, two perceptions of reality: snow-devils whirl on a mountain and trolls storm an elvish fortress. Skafloc's horse leaps a ravine and gallops through the troll camp as Skafloc burns the tents. He kills three besieging trolls while his horse tramples three. He mows trolls down. They cannot touch his iron. He severs a head, opens a belly and cleaves through a helmet, skull and brain. His horse mortally kicks and bites most of the infantry.

Metal clangs and screeches. Blood steams. Snow is trampled. Corpses wallow. Trolls panic and scramble between burning tents and castle wall, recognizing a Jotun horse and a haunted sword. Skafloc rides back and forth. His mail gleams. Trolls think that he is Odin, Thor, Loki, a possessed man, Death...

Elves sally. The Erlking leads. Swords and axes rise and fall. Metal is shattered. Spears and arrows cloud the sky. Horses trample. Warriors die. Illrede leads a wedge to split the elves. Skafloc charges. Man and troll-king fight. Illrede's axe splits Skafloc's shield and dents his helmet but:

"...the uncanny strength lent by the sword kept Skafloc from swooning." (p. 173)

Axe bursts on sword. Skafloc kills Illrede.

There are nuances but this is a summary.

Before their fight, Illrede says that it was a wicked deed to bring back that sword:

"'Whatever his nature, which the Norns and not himself gave, no troll would do such a thing." (pp. 172-173)

I agree with Illrede that fate or destiny made us what we are. Although I meditate, I do not buy into the idea of previous lives. But we are responsible now for cleansing our karma. 

A Brief Andersonian Fight Scene

The Broken Sword, XXIII.

Now armed with the re-forged sword, Skafloc meets six trolls:

(i) he cleaves a helmet and skull;

(ii) he beheads another;

(iii) he cuts through an axe and a chest;

(iv) he splits one from shoulder to waist;

(v) his jotun horse rears and crunches a skull;

(vi) he throws his sword through the one that flees.

I said it was brief.

Description, then action.

A Detailed Descriptive Passage

The Broken Sword, XXIII.

When Skafloc, returned from Jotunheim, rides to the Erlking:

his horse is gaunt and hungry;

his clothes are ragged and faded;

his armour is battered and rusty;

his cloak is worn thin;

his weight is down;

great muscles lie under tight skin over big bones;

his face is lined and aged;

his fair hair is wind-tossed.

"So might Loki look, riding to Vigrid plain on the last evening of the world." (p. 167)

I think that that is an authentic touch. In the Sagas, a comparison would be made with a mythic story.

Next comes a description of nature:

air is chill;

wind is strong;

spring wind frolicks and shouts;

sky is high and blue;

sun strikes through clouds;

wet grass gleams and sparkles;

thunder rolls;

the southeast is dark;

a rainbow shines;

geese honk;

a thrush sings;

squirrels play;

warm days, light nights, green woods and nodding flowers approach;

Skafloc remembers Freda.

Don't read past. Reread.

The Power And The Inn

I am searching for blog references to the power unknown that granted the charter for the Old Phoenix, e.g.:

Powers Unknown 

The Taverners' Charter And Sagittarius 

Moving Between The Universes

After Or Between

The Time Patrol And The Old Phoenix

"Anomalous Variations In Reality"

That seems to be all.

In A Midsummer Tempest, xii, Valeria Matuchek tells Prince Rupert that the Old Phoenix is in "'...a pocket universe...'" (scroll down)

A "power unknown" controlling a pocket universe in a multiverse that contains not only high tech civilizations but also gods... Whatever the source and purpose of this power, it seems clear that the inn can be kept supplied with food and drink without the Taverners needing to collect coinage from diverse periods from their customers.

See the question in the combox for Telling The Tales.

Ragnarok

The Broken Sword, XXII.

Skafloc and Mananaan take the broken sword to Bolverk, the giant who had made it and who alone can mend it. Skafloc speaks a verse that makes Bolverk think that Loki needs the sword soon for Ragnarok! Of course the giant works hastily to make the sword ready. He also does something that I think is a feature of the Eddas and Sagas. While working, he summarizes an account of the Ragnarok:

"'So it is the end,' he whispered. 'Now comes the last evening of the world, when gods and giants lay waste creation as they slay each other, when Surt scatters flame which leaps to the cracking walls of heaven, the sun blackens, earth sinks undersea, the stars fall down. It ends - my thralldom, blind beneath the mountain, ends in a blaze of fire! Aye, well will I forge the sword, mortal!'" (pp. 163-164)

Although this account is not complete, it does incorporate several elements of familiar end of the world scenarios:

last evening

last battle

flame reaching to heaven

sun, earth and moon ending

How does this specifically Eddaic apocalypse fit into the mixed mythology of The Broken Sword? This question becomes even more acute in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Season Of Mists where Lucifer Morningstar has, at least temporarily, expelled all the demons and damned from Hell and Odin hopes to acquire this now empty infernal realm so that his pantheon can shelter from the Ragnarok there!

Poul Anderson, unlike James Blish, was not focused on any imminent end of the world scenario. The universe will end eventually and that ending is reached by time travel in one work and by time dilation in another but the ending does not come to us here and now whereas Blish has:

a cosmic collision in Cities In Flight, Volume IV;

Armageddon in After Such Knowledge, Volume II;

ecological collapse of Earth in "We All Die Naked."

Telling The Tales

 

Unfortunately, the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, appears only in:

"House Rule"

"Losers' Night"

A Midsummer Tempest, xi, xii and Epilogue.

xii concludes:

"Valeria and Rupert settled themselves for conversation. The landlord listened." (p. 106)

I would resent being listened to but that is part of the deal. The landlord listens and learns instead of charging for food, drink and accommodation!

In the Epilogue, a larger number of guests exchange stories. Impatient to hear from others, Valeria Matuchek concludes her tale, and thus also the novel, abruptly:

"'Enough. I hope you've enjoyed my story.'" (p. 229)

Mister Gaheris: "There.

"That's my tale told. Who's next?"

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 41, panels 5-6.

Valeria surprises us by saying that she had spent some time in the Shakespearean timeline:

"'...learning how things worked out.'" (p. 228)

After conversing with Rupert, she had consulted history books elsewhere, then travelled "'...through that universe...'" (ibid.) before returning to the Old Phoenix. So she has control over her inter-universal travel unlike Holger, whom she tries to help.

Inter-universal inns are more crowded at some times than at others:

Chiron the centaur: "I have never seen the inn so full."

-Worlds' End, p. 141, panel 5.

"There were many gathered this evening, to sit before the innkeeper's fire, enjoy his food and drink and regale him with their tales."

-Epilogue, p. 228.

"About a score of people were present..."

-Poul Anderson, "Losers' Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, May 1997), pp. 105-123 AT p. 108.

Misquoting Shakespeare

 

Will Fairweather misquotes Shakespeare here.

So did a guy in a dream that I had just before waking this morning. He said:

"The time is out of joint. O cursed spite.

"I have refused to stand against the night."

For the original, see Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5, lines 210-211.

I would have forgotten this if I had not written it down so I might as well write it here.

Returning to Poul Anderson, I am amazed at how much is to be drawn out of his texts by rereading them carefully and by comparing, e.g., his A Midsummer Tempest with his Time Patrol series and with Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Worlds' End, to cite just these two examples. I will finish rereading the Old Phoenix chapters of A Midsummer Tempest before either returning to The Broken Sword or moving on to something else.

Facsimiles And Verse

Valeria Matuchek:

"'...the theorems I do know let me cross from continuum to continuum, with a fair probability of landing in whichever one I want, or a reasonable facsimile of it.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), xi, pp. 95-96.

The hostess of the Inn of the Worlds' End:

"You will return to the worlds from which you came, or ones very similar."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 158, panel 3.

Here is another parallel. In either multiverse, a traveller might arrive not in the intended world but in one so similar that any differences do not matter or might not even be noticed.

The landlord of the Old Phoenix:

"'...I'm a fat and cunning spider, albeit male,

"'which weaves a subtle web bedewed with ale

"'and wine and stronger waters, and thus ensnares

"'a singing swarm of lives,

"'to batten on the fables that they bear.'" (xii, p. 97)

We saw before that much of the text is verse laid out as prose. I have rearranged this passage according it to its rhythm, as far as I have been able to. 

When the landlord introduces Clodia Pulcher from Rome, Prince Rupert protests that she has been dead for sixteen hundred years. The landlord replies:

"'Not in the world that is her own, my lord.

"'And here may come, from every time and clime,

"'aye, every cranny of reality,

"'whoever finds a way to find the door

"'And brings uncommon tales wherewith to pay.'" (ibid.)

(And I need a food break after that.)

N And Lincoln

The Wardens and Rangers and later "time wardens" of Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time inhabit a single immutable timeline.

The mutant time travellers of Anderson's There Will Be Time inhabit a different single immutable timeline.

His Time Patrollers believe that they inhabit a single mutable timeline although it is impossible to formulate a coherent account of all the events that are described as occurring in the Time Patrol series.

The patrons of Anderson's Old Phoenix inhabit multiple timelines.

An immense dimensional framework would be necessary to incorporate such diverse scenarios into a single multiverse.

However, we find similar theoretical language and practical examples in the Time Patrol universe and in the Old Phoenix multiverse.

According to a Time Patrol instructor, both instantaneous transportation and travel into the past require infinitely discontinuous functions for their mathematical description and also involve:

"'...the concept of infinitely-valued relationships in a continuum of 4N dimensions, where N is the total number of particles in the universe.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 9.

According to Valeria Matuchek:

"'Nobody's proved, in my world, whether there's an infinity of [universes], or whether the number's finite but enormous - N factorial, to be exact, where N is the total number of matter and energy particles that exist....'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), xii, p. 101.

OK. "N" means the same in both cases but, in the first case, there is a single continuum with 4N dimensions whereas, in the second case, there are possibly N factorial continua!

Secondly, there is a common practical example.

As far as the Time Patrol is concerned:

"'...suppose I went back and prevented Booth from killing Lincoln. Unless I took very elaborate precautions, it would probably happen that someone else did the shooting and Booth got blamed anyway.'"

-"Time Patrol," 2, p. 15.

And for Valeria:

"'...suppose I happened to meet Abe Lincoln here...given a lot of time together, I probably couldn't resist warning him against Ford's Theater. Lord knows what that might do to his world. Make a new continuum? I'm not sure if that's possible.'"

-A Midsummer Tempest, xi, pp. 93-94.

The host of the Old Phoenix performs the same function as the Time Patrol by preventing conversations that would result in an Abraham Lincoln that was going to be assassinated by Booth not being assassinated by Booth.

And the scenarios have similarities because they have a common creator.

(Lastly, Sheila and I now live on Lincoln Rd, Lancaster.)

Basia, Fanden, Holger And Valeria

We will be away from Lancaster, and I will be away from this computer, from early on Saturday, 23 May, until late on Wednesday 27 May. That will be a welcome break.

Blogwise, the discussion of a single phrase, "strange dimensions," has diverted us from Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword into several multidimensional narratives. But that is what happens when we follow lines of enquiry on the blog. As Le Matelot says in Trader To The Stars, "We are on our way." (But we don't know where we're going.)

Combining this with our interest in languages, we find that, in the Old Phoenix, a woman says:

"'Da mi basia mille.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), xi. p. 94.

She means: "Give me a thousand kisses."

The man whom she addresses responds:

"'Det var som Fanden!'" (ibid.)

He means: "It was like damn" or "I'll be damned."

He continues:

"'I've forgotten practically all the Latin I ever had, except for church.' Slowly: 'However, is language required?'" (ibid.)

However, another woman with whom he has been conversing reminds him that they have serious matters to discuss. He addresses her as "Valeria" and she has already addressed him as "Holger." Thus, they have identified themselves as characters from other novels by Poul Anderson.

The plot thickens.

What Readers Contribute

Readers' imaginations embellish fiction. Let us consider:

Poul Anderson

Neil Gaiman

CS Lewis

HG Wells

Poul Anderson Appreciation appreciates Anderson in the context of other fantasy and sf writers and indeed of literature in general.

When I reread that passage about Old Phoenix guests "...fully of small starlike sparkles..." (see here), I began to think that maybe I had seen those same beings in Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End. However, a check through The Sandman: Worlds' End confirmed that, although the hostess, who is Kali, deals with some non-human guests, they do not include such starlike sparklers.

Near the end of Anderson's A Stone In Heaven, Dominic Flandry and Chives would have died in space if Miriam Abrams had not disobeyed Flandry's orders and returned to rescue them. While drifting in space, Flandry reflected on his life. I had imagined Flandry as alone at this time. That seemed appropriate. However, Chives' silent presence is also appropriate. Stories exist in different versions, sometimes just in our heads.

When we had read to the end of CS Lewis' seventh and last Narnia book, my daughter said that she had seen an eighth Narnia book with Aslan and soldiers on the cover somewhere around the house and that we would read it when we found it but there was no hurry. The story continues...

When rereading The Time Machine, I expected the Time Traveller to see a black object flopping on a sandbank. Instead, he fancied that he saw such an object but then judged that he had been deceived and that the object was only a motionless rock. I thought that I had misremembered. Then, a page later, he sees it again and it is indeed moving. I was making the imaginative journey with the Time Traveller.

Two Inns

As we have seen, one idea common to Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman is an inn between the worlds - 

Anderson: the Old Phoenix; 

Gaiman: the Inn of the Worlds' End. 

Gaiman's Inn is not only between worlds but also at the end of every world. However, it is being continually created because worlds are continually ending and those who travel between the worlds encounter it occasionally whereas the Old Phoenix is a place to which a favoured few from different worlds are invited for an occasional overnight stay. There are differences as well as similarities. Valeria Matuchek deduced the existence of an inter-universal nexus and of somewhere like the Old Phoenix whereas regular guests just find themselves entering the inn unexpectedly.

In an Anderson collection along the lines of Gaiman's The Sandman: Worlds' End:

each story would be narrated by someone from a different historical period or from a different alternative history;

there would be framing passages set in the inn and also an entire episode in which the guests discussed multidimensionality and similar concepts.

Thus, potentially, a series of instalments not only from different series but also from different kinds of series. We can only speculate about the possibilities.

Gap

Although I have both editions of Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, I have not been reading them in parallel. However, I wanted to check whether that anachronistic term, "dimensions," had been in the original text so here goes:

"Skafloc thought that the lands of the ice giants, like those of gods and demons, must not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions reached only by spells, out near the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos."

-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 2014), 22, p. 167.

"...strange dimensions..." is there but the rest of the sentence has changed. 

"...the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos..." became "..the edge of everything, where creation plunged back into the Gap whence it had arisen."

"...primal chaos..." (my emphasis) must be the chaos which preceded creation, thus by implication the chaos from which "creation," an ordered cosmos, arose. In the revised text, creation arose from a (capitalized) "Gap." A gap between what? Anderson refers to the Ginnungagap of Norse mythology which was a gap between extremes of heat and cold. Somewhere in that Gap, ice melted and moistened and life began. Of course, in a mythological narrative, the first life was not single cells but giants and gods! Nevertheless, this is a materialist account. Consciousness is not primary but emergent. The creation of a world with earth, sky and sea came later when gods killed a giant and made the world from his body - 

flesh: earth; 

skull: sky; 

brain: clouds;

hair: trees;

bones: mountains;

eyebrows: Midgard;

blood: sea; 

teeth: stones;

eyes: sun and moon;

maggots: dwarves.

Languages

As we have seen, other languages, whether ancient, alien or artificial, play some role in the kinds of fiction discussed on this blog.

See:

Interstellar Intercourse

Temporal

Eriau

Planha

Anglic (scroll down)

Fictional Lewis does not just quote fictitious Natvilcius. He first quotes the latter's Latin, then translates it for us. Later, another of Lewis' characters, Wither, addresses the man whom he thinks is the revived Merlin in Latin:

"'Magister Merline,...Sapientissime Britonum, secreti secretorum possessor...'"

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 12, 6, p. 626.

My Point? I wish that:

I had been taught French, Latin and (in our case, in the Republic of Ireland) Irish properly, to read and to speak them;

I had been helped to understand that this was worth doing.

Instead, we were force fed something that we neither understood nor wanted at the time. But our expected social role did not require us to speak or read anything other than English.

Strange Dimensions

The Broken Sword, XXII.

En route to Jotunheim, Skafolc and Mananaan sail further than any mortal ship ever can over chill, dead water under stars, moon and aurora. I think that, like some lost sailors in Tolkien's Middle Earth History, they sail not around the curve of the earth but straight out from the earth. 

"Skafloc thought this realm could not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions near the edge of everything, where creation plunged back into the Gap whence it had arisen. He had the notion that this was the Sea of Death on which he sailed, outward bound from the world of the living." (p. 156)

Maybe so but I am quite certain that Skafloc did not think of "dimensions"! This is sf terminology intruding into heroic fantasy. 

CS Lewis, not as author but as fictional first person narrator, quotes an entirely fictitious seventeenth century writer, Natvilcius, who hypothesizes that an angelic or demonic body:

"...exists after a manner beyond our conception in the celestial frame of spatial references."

-CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 145-348 AT 1, p. 158.

Fictional Lewis comments:

"By the 'celestial frame of spatial references' I take him to mean what we should now call 'multi-dimensional space'. Not, of course, that Natvilcius knew anything about multi-dimensional geometry, but that he had reached empirically what mathematics has since reached on theoretical grounds." (ibid.)

Skafloc also reaches out empirically, not theoretically. 

While we are outside our normal dimensions, let's take another look inside the Old Phoenix:

"...I suspect that besides being at a nexus of universes, the hostel exists on several different space-time levels of its own."

-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, September 1981), pp. 9-20 AT p. 10.

If each universe comprises a four dimensional space-time continuum, then the nexus is in a fifth dimension, neither spatial nor temporal but something else? Maybe. But what is a space-time level? The narrator retreats from this suggestion:

"Well, let's not speculate about the unanswerable." (ibid.)

See:

Knowledge And Understanding

Mananaan And The Wind

The Broken Sword, XXII.

Mananaan Mac Lir is an Irish sea god and the son of Lir, one of the Three of Ys. When Mananaan and Skafloc embark for Jotunheim, Mananaan sings to the wind, calling it to blow him on his quest. And indeed a strong breeze springs up so that the boat surges. The wind tosses Mananaan's hair.

He refers to the Tuatha De Danaan as no longer gods or at "'...their full might.'" (p. 155) These powers are fading.

The Demon Of Scattery by Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon (illustrated by Alicia Austin) is a tale told to Skafloc by Mananaan during their voyage to Jotunheim. Some of Anderson's works have extraordinary intertextual interconnections. (In sf, the Maurai future history is a work of fiction published during the course of the time travel novel, There Will Be Time.) 

Stars In People

The Broken Sword, XXI.

At the council of the Sidhe:

"Eochy Mac Elathan, the Father of Stars...sat wrapped in a cloak like blue dusk, and bright points of light winked and glittered in it and in his hair and deep within his eyes. When he spread his hands, a little shower of such glints was strewn to dance on the air." (p. 150)

Why have we never noticed this guy before? He reminds us of some guests in the Old Phoenix who:

"...were shadowy and full of small starlike sparkles."

-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 9-20 AT p. 10.

When I began to reread The Broken Sword this time, I had no idea that it was such a rich text. It seems that, in discussing it, we discuss everything else. We have mentioned Shakespeare, Aeschylus, the Elder Edda, Virgil, Neil Gaiman, Stieg Larsson, the New Testament etc.

One more word from the Old Phoenix:

"...keep yourself open to everything, and perhaps, just perhaps, you will have the great luck of joining us in that tavern called the Old Phoenix." (p. 9)

Good advice: keep yourself open to everything. We join them in that tavern if we read two short stories and one novel by Poul Anderson.

Skafloc In Ireland

The Broken Sword, XXI.

Acting on information imparted by the dead, Skafloc rows to Ireland where Lugh of the Long Hand, anticipating the arrival of:

"'...an elf...with strange tidings...'" (p. 148)

- has already:

"'...called all the Tuatha De Danaan to council in the cave of Cruachan, and the lords of other people of the Sidhe as well.'" (ibid.)

For some relevant references, see:

Snow, Sea, Sun, Stars And Sidhe

Angus Og

The Tuatha De Danaan remind us of Anglo-Israel theory. See:

A Midsummer Tempest II

British, English, Israelites And Trojans

But what I did not mention before was the extraordinary history of the Stone of Scone.

Wind And The Dead

The Broken Sword, XX.

When the sun sets:

"A wolf-toothed wind howled..." (p. 138)

When Skafloc and Freda depart by night to raise the dead:

"The wind skirled and bit at them. Sleet and spindrift blew off the waters in stinging sheets..." (p. 139)

"The night was gale and sleet..." (ibid.)

"...the wind skirls in icy branches..." (ibid.)

"The wind still drove sleet before it..." (ibid.)

When Skafloc prepares to raise the dead:

"Sleet blew in on the wind." (p. 141)

When he speaks the spell:

"The wind shrieked like a lynx..." (ibid.)

The wind ceases to be mentioned. One of the dead reveals that Skafloc and Freda are brother and sister. Their relationship ends but Skafloc's quest, and thus also the narrative, continues...

Scandinavian Countries

I feel that a contemporary novel or play set in a Scandinavian country and a fantasy novel based on Norse mythology are indirectly connected if only because the former is about the descendants of the people that had created that mythology. In Uppsala, where there is now a cathedral, there was a temple with idols of the Norse gods. When Stieg Larsson's Mikael Blomkvist travels north to the fictional town of Hedestad, he must pass through Uppsala. When Blomkvist investigates a series of Biblically based murders, he must consult a pastor - although about the Apocrypha, not about the Eddas. The national Church of Sweden is headquartered in Uppsala.

Odin and the Aesir are not mentioned although I sense their presence in the background. They were here in Northern Europe whereas it was a very different pantheon, the Olympians, that had held sway in Greece and Italy. This evening, I reread Poul Anderson's account of Odin appearing and intervening during the events of The Broken Sword, then  returned to rereading Larsson's Trilogy. Sometimes it is a relief only to deal with human beings!

Freda, Wind And Odin

The Broken Sword, XIX. 

While Freda waits for Skafloc to return from Elfheugh with the broken sword, wind fills a paragraph and comments on the action:

"A rising wind blew clouds ever thicker across the sky, so that the moon seemed to flee great black dragons which swallowed it and spewed it briefly back out. The wind wailed and roared (also here) around her, whipping her garb, sinking teeth into her flesh. Hoo, hoo, it sang, blowing a sudden drift of snowdrift before it, white under the moon, hoo, halloo, hunting you!

"Hoo, hoo! echoed the troll horns." (p. 136)

Freda stiffens as she realizes that the trolls are hunting and that their prey must be Skafloc. However, Odin - who, although it is not mentioned here, is the god of the wind - intervenes. Ancient heroes like, e.g., Aeneas, were guided and helped by regular divine interventions.

When Not To Kill

There are times when a character could have been killed but wasn't and we think about what might have happened if he had been. In The Broken Sword, XIX, Skafolc could have killed Valgard in his sleep but it:

"...would too likely make a noise and thus cost him the sword." (p. 130)

"Castelar wasted no time finishing [Varagan]."

-Poul Anderson, "The Day of the Ransom" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 641-735 AT 15 April 1610, p. 666.

Manse Everard has "already" met Varagan "later" so, although the latter could have been killed at Machu Picchu in 1610, we already know that he wasn't.

Lisbeth Salander:

"...opened the pistol and checked that she had one round left. and considered shooting Zalachenko in the skull. Then she remembered that Niedermann was still there, out in the dark, and she had better save it."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2009), CHAPTER 32, p. 562. 

So Zala survives into Volume III but Lisbeth does not wind up with a charge for murdering him.

You can probably think of other examples.

A New Way

The Broken Sword, XIX.

Skafloc reflects:

"Was Freda - was the White Christ of whom she had told a little - not right in saying that wrongs only led to more wrongs and thus at last to Ragnarok; that the time was overpast when pride and vengefulness give way to love and forgiveness, which were not unmanly but in truth the hardest things a man could undertake?" (p. 132)

The New Testament can be seen as fulfilling not only the Law and Prophets but also:

Virgil's Fourth Eclogue;

the transformation of the Furies into the Kindly Ones;

the mighty lord who comes on high, all power to hold, all lands to rule, in Voluspa 65.

A Christian missionary interviewed on British TV said that, in China, he learned of a mythological figure, the Old Grandfather, then identified this being with God the Father! You have to start somewhere.

Everything is the Old Testament if we see it that way.

"David's words with Sybil's blending..."

Ages Of Transition

As we have seen, some works by Poul Anderson are set during a period of transition from paganism to Christianity whereas others are set during the transition from Christianity to secularism. One passage in Hamlet expresses both these transitions:

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,

Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat

Awake the god of day, and at his warning,

Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,

Th’ extravagant and erring spirit hies

To his confine, and of the truth herein

This present object made probation.

MARCELLUS 
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is that time.

HORATIO 
So have I heard and do in part believe it.
-copied from here.

Relevant phrases:

"the god of day"

"our Savior's birth"

"in part believe it"

Relevant to Anderson's The Broken Sword:

"No fairy takes..."

"...nor witch has power to charm"

Outlawry And Realization

 

The Broken Sword, XVIII.

Skafloc and Freda live as outlaws:

"Dark and drear was that land, unpeopled by men or Faerie folk..." (p. 120)

"Dank and chill was the cave. Winds whittered in its mouth and surf pounded on the rocks at its foot." (ibid.)

They hunt game and kill trolls but a raven tells Skafloc that the trolls are winning the war. Despair? No, a moment of realization as Skafloc suddenly remembers the gods' gift of a sword. Freda feels him stiffen and tremble: yet another standard Andersonian moment... David Falkayn has at least two such moments (of realization) - and how many other Anderson characters also have them?

That is a fitting note on which to end for this evening. I am too head-tired for any more research and as always feel the call of other reading. Poul Anderson has to compete for attention - and always wins some of it.

Futureward.

Freda, Wind And Women's Weapons

The Broken Sword, XVI.

When Freda rides out from Elfheugh:

"The wind whined around her and bit through layers of fur." (p. 112)

When she realizes that she is pursued by trolls:

"The wind of her gallop screamed about her, nigh ripping her from the saddle, forcing her to shield her eyes with an upraised arm." (p. 113)

Air hoots and bites. During the prolonged pursuit:

"Time brawled past like the wind." (ibid.)

She is captured by a troll but immediately rescued by the returning Skafloc!

Meanwhile, elven women welcome troll invaders into Elfheugh. Leea has spoken of:

"'Women's weapons...'" (p. 110)

The trolls will be put off their guard and, in the fullness of time, slaughtered.

An Anomalous Apostrophe

The Broken Sword, XV.

Smiting Valgard during a sea battle, Skafloc shouts:

"'That for Freda!... I'll have you done to her.'" (p. 104)

What does that mean? There is a clue in Valgard's reply:

"'Not so ill as I think you have...'" (ibid.)

Ill? Yes. The original edition confirms:

"'That for Freda!' he shouted. 'Ill have you done to her.'

"'Not so ill as I think you have,' snarled Valgard..."

-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 2014), 15, p. 105.

It is helpful to be able to compare editions. I do not remember noticing that anomalous apostrophe on previous readings. For a summary of the entire sea battle, see:

Battle At Sea

The plot thickens.

Fictive References

Authors refer to other authors. Stieg Larsson's Mikael Blomkvist reads Val McDermid and sees The Lord Of The Rings for the first time. In the latter case, he reflects that orcs are simple creatures when compared to human beings. Of course, Tolkien's titles - and the films - are universally known so that every reader of Larsson immediately understands a reference to The Lord Of the Rings - as also to Mr Spock and Miss Marple. By implication, Blomkvist also has access to all other fictional works that are known to us - except, of course, for three novels by Stieg Larsson! (Addendum: And I should also have remembered to mention sequels by other authors but I don't read those.) Blomkvist could read not only JRR Tolkien's but also Poul Anderson's Norse-based fantasies and, in the latter, he would find creatures more complicated than orcs. The elves from Pictland have:

"...blood of troll and goblin and still older folk in them, as well as Pictish women stolen in long-gone days.'"

-The Broken Sword, XIV, p. 96.

Anderson imagines intricate details of his fictional world. And it suffices for Larsson's purposes to reference The Lord Of The Rings but not to mention any other fantasy writers that are known to us. They are all there but only implicitly.

Knowledge And Understanding

Are there things "that man was not meant to know"? Of course not. Not meant by whom for a start? Knowledge is good for its practical applications and, in my opinion, is a value in itself. We are better for knowing, since 1925, that our galaxy is not the entire universe. (I have met people who either disagree with me on that or do not even see the point of such a value judgment.) James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy addresses the question whether secular knowledge is evil.

Sometimes an author reaches a limit of what he is able to explain or account for within a given text. Discussing time travel paradoxes, Manse Everard of the Time Patrol breaks off and says:

"'I hope you understand what I'm saying. I don't.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), PART SIX, 18,244 B. C., II, p. 304.

His fellow agent, Komozino, helpfully adds:

"'It requires a metalanguage and metalogic accessible to few intellects...'" (ibid.)

- and besides:

"'We haven't time to quibble about theory.'" (ibid.)

So the text can move on to practical matters! (But one thing that they do have is time. Komozino might already have spent weeks, months or years of her lifespan on their current problem. Anderson's characters have come a long way from Wells' Time Traveller and his outer narrator wondering about curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion.) 

When Valgard asks Illrede about the new god, the troll-king replies:

"'Best not speak of mysteries we cannot understand.'"

-The Broken Spear, XIII, p. 92.

Indeed, none of us can understand such a mixing of mythologies!

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997):

"...there are some powers that no one, not even the Endless, seeks to inquire into deeply." (p. 17, panel 4)

Why not?