Entering Faerie

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER SIX. 

deepening twilight

prickling scalp

warming air

incense-like odours

unknown blossoms

rolling valley

no identifiable light source

deep blue sky

blueness pervading the air

shadowless light

changeless luminance

long, soft, silver-hued, pale green grass

white Ashphodels and roses

tall, slim, milky-barked trees

a musical brook

white, green and blue phosphorescence

Holger thinks that he has seen it before. Does it seem as if it should be familiar to us? Holger is attacked by an animated empty suit of armour.

Holger, Hugi and Alianora proceed through a wilderness of hills, woods and uncultivated valleys. Hugi explains that the inhabitants acquire food and drink by magic and from tributary realms and also hunt weird beasts. They are warriors and sorcerers who enslave goblins, kobolds etc. They neither age nor grow ill but are soulless. (That last sentence also describes some sf characters.)

Alianora Or So

Three Hearts And Three Lions. 

(Following up on recent posts, Lancaster has a Golden Lion pub, a Duke of Lancaster pub and a Duke's Playhouse.)

Alianora is a swan may. She wears a magical tunic of white feathers that enables her to change between human and swan forms. When making the latter transformation, the body lengthens, the neck shrinks, the wings narrow and a woman appears. Sometimes, she transforms to human in midair and falls nearly to the ground before changing back.

Maybe Alianora warrants a post unto herself but I mention her here for the sake of yet another Anderson-Gaiman parallel:

"Even Dream's former lover Alianora is hard to pin down - in chapter 2 of Brief Lives she's referred to as Eleanora, and in part 12 of The Kindly Ones as Alianore; i.e., her name is spelled a little differently every time it appears."

-Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion (London, 2000), 7, p. 116.

For previous blog references to Alianora, see here. (Scroll down.)

Horses' Hooves

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER SIX.

Sir Holger rides his black horse, Papillon, with the dwarf, Hugi, seated in front of him. I can usually find something to say about any Andersonian passage but sometimes what I have to say reflects my own experiences and not what Anderson is writing about! In this case:

"Their descent next morning was rapid, if precarious. Often Hugi yelped as Papillon's hoofs slipped on the talus and they teetered over a blowing edge of infinity." (p. 38)

Unusually, horses' hooves are on my mind today but only because I have been in a situation where policemen had to warn us not to walk behind their horses which might have kicked backwards...

Horses are such big animals to control.

It is time for me to stop blogging and to think about something else for the rest of this evening.

Twilight

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER FIVE.

Alianora to Holger:

"'All folk know the Pharisees canna endure broad daylight, so 'tis forever twilit in their realm.'" (p. 37)

Queen Titania to Hamnet Shakespeare:

"There is no night in my land, pretty boy, and it is forever summer's twilight."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Dream Country (New York, 1995), p. 78, panel 7.

The first denies day, the second denies night, both affirm twilight.

When Timothy Hunter asks Titania whether her palace is far, she replies:

"It is as close as the harvest moon in the evening sky, as distant as a dream on wakening; near as a rainbow, and so remote you could walk for ever and never reach it.

"Is it far?

"No, Timothy. Not far." (Pointing at the palace.)

-Neil Gaiman, The Books Of Magic, Book III, The Land Of Summer's Twilight (New York, 1991), p. 33, panels 4-5; p. 34, panel 1.

Anderson and Gaiman! When I finish blogging this evening, I will return to The Sandman.

Many Details, Four Senses And One Metamorphosis

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER FIVE.

There are more descriptive details than you might expect. On pp. 30-34:

higher country

open forest

meadows

wildflowers

sunlight

lichenous boulders

clumps of trees

hills

purple distance

leaping, flashing streams

rainbows over bluffs

blue kingfishers

soaring hawks and eagles

loud wild geese

reeds in a mere

rabbits

deer

bears

white clouds

cloud shadows

many colours

cool wind

lowering sun

fire-like light on a lake

brant whirring from rushes

good ale

a yellow leopard

evening light golden on a swan's plumage

the swan becomes a woman...

twilit glimmer

darting, swooping swallows

quietness

night

stars

dew

familiar constellations

no mosquitos

The following morning, on pp. 34-35:

higher in the hills

rough land

wind

scarred boulders

waterfalls 

ravines

long, harsh grass

gnarled copses

a dark horizon

a thicket by a cave

a dwarf emerging from the cave...

"'They do say elves an' trolls ha' made allayance,' said Unrich. 'An' when them thar clans get together, 'tis suthin' big afoot.'" (p. 35)

That is of interest to us here, having just read of the elf-troll wars in The Broken Sword!

Three Lions

The crest of the Duchy of Lancaster is three golden lions on a red background. See the attached image. Knowing nothing of heraldry, I cannot say whether there is any connection between three lions for Lancaster and Three Hearts And Three Lions for Holger Danske.

The King of England is the Duke of Lancaster. He must visit Lancaster Castle at least once in his reign to be given the keys to the castle and has already done so. I saw a waving arm through a car window.

As Alan Moore argues, we can see ourselves either as trapped rats or as legendary beings walking streets of:

"...jewelled histories and secret legends..."

-Alan Moore, I Hear A New World (London, 2026), p. 327.

It is down to us.

A New World

To those who read, good flight. 

Judge, O blog readers! We had a few days in Wales, then, on returning to Lancaster, I was called upon to address another literary matter. Family members buy me Alan Moore's prose works. Yossi, granddaughter, had just bought me Moore's second Long London volume, I Hear A New World. After reading through this just-published novel, I wrote two snail-mail letters to their author, the first on the philosophy of consciousness, the second on other aspects of this and two earlier works by Moore.

Tomorrow, I will visit Blackpool and we approach the end of the month when my posts usually slow down but an extended break from regular blogging is ok. We had begun to reread Poul Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions and can now contrast this 1953 novel with Alan Moore's newly published novel.

In Three Hearts..., Holger Carlsen is transported from World War II Denmark to the Carolingian universe and back whereas, in I Hear A New World, Dennis Knuckleyard interacts with fictional and historical characters in late1950's London and makes several excursions into the fantastic archetypal "Long London." In terms of character interactions, ...A New World displays more of the features that have come to be associated with the term, "novel," although, since a novel can be identified only as a long prose fiction, both of these works are indeed novels. We value variety.

Knuckleyard interacts with:

Austin Osman Spare

Peter Rachman

Ron Kray

Joe Meek

Moore gives us something of 1950's London as well as its fantastic counterpart.

(Each reference to Alan Moore links to a different other blog.)

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.