Philosophy On The Nile II

"Son of the Sword."

Death is an issue in religion, philosophy and detective fiction.

Thoas to Ankhsenamen:

"'...you Egyptians think too much about the next life. You should cling to this one and enjoy it as best you can and forget about the rest.'" (pp. 133-134)

Enjoy, yes. Forget? Explore everything beyond our lives including any alleged evidence for survival. Genuine objective research into the paranormal is almost impossible in the present climate! The Society for Psychical Research did a good job on the deceased CS Lewis' appearance to JB Phillips. (Mrs Phillips confirmed that her husband spoke as if conversing with someone but also that she herself neither saw nor heard Lewis.)

One of the worst features of religion is Christians gloating at the supposed fates of unbelievers and even of heretics in the hereafter. Milton did it in Paradise Lost. An American Evangelical told me online that she would love to see my face on the Day of Judgement... Right. Let's all keep trying to find the truth for ourselves. If the ultimate reality is after all a person, then He or She will sort everything out. 

Philosophy On The Nile

"Son of the Sword."

Thoas is alone on deck on the Nile:

false dawn

moonset

darkness

vaulting sky

wheeling stars

unseen banks

glimmering fires

gleaming river

lapping wavelets

cool, wet, low, sad, murmuring wind

howling dogs or jackals

slapping crocodiles

splashing hippopotami

sleeping men

dream whimpering

Ankhsenamen joins him and says in part:

"'...I don't know what to believe. Was Amen or Aton the false god, or were all gods a lie and this life a brief meaningless accident...'" (p. 133)

How the question is put is culturally conditioned. We do not now speak about Amen or Aton but the names do not matter. Gods are lies when used to oppress but not when they delight or enlighten. Life is a brief accident but not meaningless. It alone bestows meaning.

Thoas says that he has:

"'...heard nothing from the lips of any who have themselves died. So I will wait and see.'" (ibid.)

Or not see.

Wind And The Crew

"Son of the Sword."

One factor in whether Thoas' ship can escape to Cyprus is:

"'...whether we get a wind or not.'" (p. 130)

Egyptian slaves can outrow Thoas' mixed crew but, with a good breeze or in the open sea, the latter can outrun the former.

Consequently, we are reassured when the following narrative passage opens with:

"Toward morning the breeze stiffened to a murmuring wind that filled the sail, and Thoas let his weary oarsmen sleep." (p. 131)

Poul Anderson's winds nearly always mean something. This wind murmurs, so it maybe comments on the action, but it does not roar or threaten and might confirm their escape.

That mixed crew - described as barbarians, as port sweepings and as "...a mixed and ragged band..." (p. 127):

Syrians

Cretans

Cyprians

Nubians

Phoenicians

indescribables

robbers

paupers

runaway slaves

- all armed with edged metal.

Thoas might not be safe captaining them.

An Acknowledgement And A Contrast

Before we return to our usual topic of Poul Anderson, let me record that I have received an acknowledgement from British author, Alan Moore, although it was not addressed just to me. At the end of three pages of ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

"And thanks to the tiny percentage of you readers who have read to the end of these acknowledgements. To be honest I usually skip them, so your efforts are truly appreciated.

"Alan Moore

"Northampton

"January, 2022"

-Alan Moore, Illuminations (London, 2023), p. 456.

Back to "Son of the Sword":

Unusually, Thoas has the same memory twice in the space of a few pages:

"He thought of the timber hall that was his, that his father had built in the wild hills of Cyprus, and of the windy trees and the long slope of mountain down to the sea, salt air and anchored ships and gulls flying overhead." (pp. 116-117)

"Thoas remembered again the great draughty hall on the heights of Cyprus and the far blue sea and sunlight streaming down windy slopes to shatter in a million pieces on its waves." (p. 126)

Deja vu. We're like "Have I already read this?" The Cyprian scene is well worth describing twice in different words.

Each time, the memory has both a context and a corollary. 

First context: Thoas has just reflected that the Egyptian palace is built of mud that could crumble after one or two generations of weather.

First corollary: "Suddenly Egypt was stifling." (p. 117)

Second context: Thoas has just reflected on the strangeness of Egypt, "...riotous with life..." (p. 125) but brooded over by death, and the Nile of laughing lotuses where crocodiles eat murdered corpses.

Second corollary: "Aye, it would be good to come home, if ever they did." (p. 126)

Escape, Fight And Flight

"Son of the Sword" presents an early Anderson escape and fight scene. As Thoas and his men leave the palace, the guard captain pulls the veil from the face of the woman who accompanies them and sees that they are smuggling out Ankhenamen. Thoas kills the captain and another guard with his sword. One of his men kills a third guard by crashing the loaded treasure chest that he carries onto the guard's head, thus losing the treasure which spills out onto the street. Ankhenamen's Kushite dwarf slave, Pepy, who is accompanying the escape, kills the fourth and last guard with his dagger. Abandoning another treasure chest which now would be too much to carry, they run, the two remaining chests each carried by two of the men. People scatter and a horn sounds behind them but Pepy knows which way to go and I must now go to the kitchen, leaving Poul Anderson's characters in flight until they next time that we open their book.

Good night, folks.

Two Mid-Narrative POV Shifts

Regular blog readers know that we study Poul Anderson's texts very closely because such study is rewarding.

In "The Star Beast":

Avi, already distraught, comes face to face with a tiger and almost screams but then realizes that this can only be her friend, Harol, who had become a tiger and whom she had fed raw meat when he had visited her in this form. This is Avi's pov (point of view).

Without any break in the narrative, she addresses him and he remembers sounds which we, the readers, recognize as words although they have become meaningless to him. This is his pov.

In "Son of the Sword":

Thoas looks at Ankhsenamen and finds her:

"...lovely to behold." (p. 117)

This is his pov. In the next paragraph, Ankhsenamen looks at Thoas and his men. She is not used to the hardness that she sees in his face and, as for the men, they are:

"...uncouth and ill-favored, and she wondered with a brief chill if this was the best way after all." (pp. 117-118)

This is her pov.

OK. We notice this, or at least some of us do, but we also know that povs are nearly always fully controlled in Poul Anderson's later works.

The Old Days

 

"Son of the Sword."

In ancient Egypt, someone thinks:

"Truly the old days were gone." (p. 116)

Has that been thought in every age? In 464 AD, another character thinks:

"All these newfangled notions!"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 5, p. 36.

A local Asian businessman remarked, "The younger generation have a different attitude." I replied, "Usman, I am seventy-three [or whatever age I was at the time] and people have been saying that since I was seven!" However, I think that he had a point. He was of the generation that had come to Britain and had set up businesses and established themselves. Of course the next generation who grew up here had a different attitude! But that is a one-off case.

But nevertheless we are always remembering the old days and the times:

"...when all the world was young." (p. xiii) (See here.)

Revisiting "Son of the Sword"

Poul Anderson," "Son of the Sword" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 103-160.

After Pharaoh's burial, his widow stands in what had been their bedroom and wonders how long she has to live. She thinks:

"He has not come..." (p. 103)

Does she expect an apparition of the dead? No. The text clarifies that she has sent for someone living who has not yet responded - also that her husband was Tutankhamen.

A breeze enters the room - winds or breezes are constant companions of Poul Anderson's characters - and she thinks:

"I am afraid to die..." (ibid.)

- echoing a sentiment expressed in "The Star Beast," which we have just reread.

This widow might have become superfluous now that her husband is dead. Someone enters the room.

OK. The scene is set. That is the first page of the text. Let's take a break and do something else before proceeding any further.

For more on this story, see also:

Alight In The Void

Forwards And Backwards In Time

In Poul Anderson's Alight In The Void:

on p. 102, a man who has been transformed into a tiger confronts a woman, many centuries in our future;

on p. 103, "They had buried Pharaoh..."

p. 102 concludes an sf story whereas p. 103 opens a historical fiction story. In a Poul Anderson collection, we can jump forwards or backwards by many centuries just by concluding one narrative and commencing another. The next story after these two, "Flight to Forever," is again sf and is about time travel, which enables the characters themselves to traverse centuries and millennia. Anything is possible.

See:

Son Of The Sword Spoilers

Street Life

History And Monotheism

The Past

Past And Future

- as preparation for another rereading of "Son of the Sword," the story that begins just after Pharaoh's burial.

Onwards (and sometimes pastwards).

Two Texts Worth Rereading

We regarded "Terminal Quest" and "The Star Beast" as unpromising texts but reread them anyway. There is always more to be found in any Poul Anderson work.

In "Terminal Quest": Psychology

The dispossessed of Earth became exterminators on New Terra. (Parallels in Terrestrial history?)

Rugi:

is not human;

was orphaned when very young;

is ignorant of his own cultural heritage;

has been deprived and persecuted;

displays less resentment and hostility than we would usually expect from a human being - although our species varies considerably;

has become the last of his species;

dies saving the life of a human child that had tormented and wonders why he is doing it.

Will New Terrans respect Rugi after his death or deliberately forget him?

"The Star Beast": Psychology

Two cultures: militaristic and leisured.

Two attitudes to death: fear and acceptance.

The militaristic Procyonites are defeated by their own contempt for decadent Terrestrials. The Terrestrial Coordinator, Ramacan, easily disarms and stuns his single careless guard. This is yet another Andersonian "escape" sequence but a plausible one.