Coventry

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWELVE.

Alianora:

"'As evil waxes, the very man who stand for good will in their fear use ever worse means o' fighting, and therefore give evil a free beachhead.'

"Holger thought of his own world, where Coventry had been avenged upon Cologne, and nodded." (pp. 71-72)

But people can create symbols for completely contradictory circumstances. St Paul's Cathedral surviving the Blitz boosted morale and symbolized proud resistance whereas Coventry Cathedral destroyed but later rebuilt came to symbolize peace and reconciliation. In Britain, the Dunkirk evacuation symbolizes not defeat and retreat but rescue and survival - waxing evil transfigured.

The Unicorn

Three Hearts And Three Lions.

I am back home from the Gregson. It is getting late. I am not going to research this post, just write from memory. 

Alianora rides a unicorn. Holger does not understand her affinity with it. I think that readers are supposed to understand that virgins have an affinity with unicorns?

In Larry Niven's The Flight Of The Horse, a male character describes a female character who has not come on-stage yet as a "frigid bitch." When this young woman does come on-stage, she is a cheerful and sympathetic character - and has an affinity with a unicorn.

When Holger and Morgan le Fay embrace, Alianora approaches on her unicorn which throws her and bolts, never to return! The two women insult each other like fishwives and Holger must choose between them. He does not side with Chaos.

There. That is a short post before returning to late night other reading. There is always something to write about although it is never predictable what it is going to be.

Valduma

We find that we have compared the legendary Morgan le Fay and the Andersonian villainess, Raor, twice.

See:

Raor And Morgan Le Fay

Morgan Le Fay And Raor

An earlier Andersonian villainess named Valduma is also of their ilk.

See:

Whimpering Wind, Different Species And Primeval Chaos

Wildness And Domesticity

Sargasso: Some Details

Ambiguity

Jansky, Valduma And Morzach

Wildness And Un-Men

Freedom And Chaos

Rereading "Sargasso of Lost Starships" would probably give us some appropriate quotation from Valduma. However, I am on my way out to the Gregson which is why I have resorted to a few blog links. And I am amazed at how much completely forgotten information is to be found in earlier posts.

Morgan Le Fay And Raor

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Queen Morgan le Fay tries to win Holger for Chaos:

"'What is there about dull Law that drives you to defend it?...

"'...the mirth and thunder and blazing stars of Chaos would be yours...

"'You could hurl suns and shape worlds if you chose!'" (p. 68)

She sounds like Raor of the Exaltationists:

"'We would have made [the universe] what we chose, and unmade it and remade it, and stormed the stars as we warred for possession, with an entire reality the funeral pyre of each who fell and entire histories the funeral games, until the last god reigned alone.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), PART TWO, 209 B. C., p. 118.

The former reminded me of the latter.

It is time to eat and drink something and to say good night until tomorrow.

Holger Philosophizes

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

"The symmetry was suggestive. In Holger's home world, physical forces were strong and well understood, mental-magical forces weak and unmanageable. In this universe the opposite held true. Both worlds were, in some obscure way, one; the endless struggle between Law and Chaos had reached a simultaneous climax in them. As for the force which made them so parallel, the ultimate oneness itself, he supposed he would have to break down and call it God. But he lacked a theological bent of mind. He'd rather stick to what he had directly observed, and to immediate practical problems. Such as his own reason for being here." (pp. 66-67)

No, he does not have to call ultimate oneness "God." 

See:

Words And The Word II

The One

Metaphor And Myth

Two propositions seem intuitively valid: first, that all is one; secondly, that change occurs because opposed forces interact. However, I suggest that energy and inertia are more fundamental than Law and Chaos - and they are definitely preconscious. 

See:

Energy And Inertia

Energy And Inertia

Ultimate Social And Cosmic Developments

Philosophy

Philosophy II

How to deal with a dragon: throw water in its mouth. (CHAPTER TEN.)

Inspired By MAGIC, INC.

(i) In the introduction to his collection, Operation Chaos, Poul Anderson writes that Robert Heinlein's Magic, Inc. is set in a world where magic not only works but also is treated matter-of-factly as a set of technologies but that Heinlein did not develop all the possibilities of this idea so Anderson himself developed some further possibilities in his Operation... series.

(ii) Anderson adds that Harry Turtledove has also presented a treatment of the same idea.

(iii) "The double-page spread on pages 12 and 13, by the way, is a direct steal from Robert Heinlein's novel Magic Incorporated."

-Neil Gaiman discussing The Sandman, issue 4, in Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion (London, 2000), 3, p. 35.

That double-page spread depicts a gathering of all the demons in Hell.

We keep finding Anderson-Gaiman parallels: two great imaginative writers in different media: verbal and visual-verbal.

Again The Two Inns

In Poul Anderson's "Losers' Night," people from different historical periods converse in the Old Phoenix.

In Anderson's "House Rule" and A Midsummer Tempest, people from different histories converse in the Old Phoenix.

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Worlds' End, people from different histories tell stories in the Inn of the Worlds' End. Thus, the Worlds' End sequences are both a framing device and an additional story.

In A Midsummer Tempest, the Old Phoenix is almost a framing device although it appears in the middle and at the end instead of at the beginning and the end.

Both series could have been extended indefinitely, the Old Phoenix as short stories, Worlds' End as very high quality monthly comic books, with some of the same historical characters visiting both.

Happy June.

Poets And Hack Writers

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TEN.

When enough evidence has accumulated, Holger deduces that he is in a universe where the myths of Charlemagne are literally true just as later, in A Midsummer Tempest, Valeria Matuchek deduces that Prince Rupert is from a universe where the plays of Shakespeare are literally true. 

"'...that what was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.' PERELANDRA"

-CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1983), pp. 124-132 AT p. 124.

(Lewis based a short story on a quotation from his own novel, Perelandra.)

Holger goes further:

"The mystics, dreamers, poets, and hack writers of home had in some unconscious way been in tune with whatever force linked the two universes; the corpus of stories which they gradually evolved had been a better job of reporting than they knew." (ibid.)

- which is precisely how DC Comics explained the differences between the Golden Age and Silver Age versions of their superheroes.

This idea covers a lot of territory and can unite a lot of literature.

Place Names

With names alone, we connect places in our minds -

York in England, New York (formerly New Amsterdam) in the US, New New York (I think) in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles;

New England and Nova Scotia;

Lancaster City District includes the seaside town of Morecambe - while based in Lancaster but spending three nights each week in Liverpool, I found myself walking past a Lancaster Street and a Morecambe Street;

in Three Hearts And Three Lions, Hugi tells Holger:

"'Avalon lies far, far in the western ocean, a part of the world wha' we've nobbut auld wives' tales aboot here.'" (CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 51)

Poul Anderson's readers have become more familiar with Avalon as a biracial extrasolar colonized planet in his Technic History. The planet is named from the legend so that the entire story of Arthur etc is implicit even though never articulated.

Unpredictability

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER SEVEN.

Hugin advises Holger:

"'Ye canna guess wha' the Faerie folk will think or do. They know not themselves, nor care.'" (p. 45)

One fairy, Menton, to another, the Cluracan:

"But Cluracan: we are creatures of anarchy and madness. We are the wild. How can you possibly describe us as creatures of custom?"

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (New York, 1996), Part 10, p. 9, panel 3.

The Cluracan's point is that the fairies have been anarchic, mad and wild for so long that that has become their custom and "...dull routine." (panel 4)

In any case, Hugin's and Menton's accounts agree and their "anarchy" explains why the fairies, at least in the Carolingian universe, take the side of Chaos against Law.

It is good to find some order in disorder.