At The Moment Of Death

Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012).

While Kossara Vymezal holds the dying Trohdwyr, she manages to "...croak..." (p. 412) an Eriau phrase. We do not know what the phrase means but it is meaningful to us because we have already been told that it is a lullaby that Kossara's mother sang to her.

While Dominic Flandry holds the dying Kossara, she says, "'Dominic, darling...I wish -" (p. 562).

These deaths affect the reader because we have learned to care about Kossara and Trohdwyr.

While Kossara lies in a half-open coffin in St Clement's Cathedral, Flandry tells her that he had wanted her ashes scattered on Dennitza but he now understands the Dennitzans' decision to build her a big tomb on Founders' Hill. He asks her to help him believe that she still is but:

"His sole answer was the priest's voice rising and falling through archaic words." (p. 577)

He had not expected anything more but he even apologizes to her for not receiving an answer. If there is any hereafter, there is no guarantee that Kossara can hear Flandry's thoughts from it. The Orthodox practice of "...a priest chanting behind the iconstasis..." (p. 576) is at least potentially an effective dramatic presentation of the idea of a voice from another world.

In the Greek tradition, drama grew from religious ritual. An epic was ceremonially recited. The addition of extra speakers for the characters, then of actions, transformed narrative into drama. To this day, a clergyman officiating in any tradition should enact the role of a human being approaching the divine.