"...we're holding our own against the Old Man...Why not? What's his hurry? He's hauled in Kossara and young Dominic and Hans and - how many more? I can be left to wait his convenience."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 31.
Nowadays, I hear of the deaths of people that I knew at school and University. I googled a former friend only to read an account of his death at the age of fifty nine. Flandry and I grow old together. I will be extremely surprised to find myself still conscious after physical death but, if I do, then I will try to move towards the light as I have been advised.
I find this not morbid but intriguing. "Grow old along with me..." We are moving towards the point where all previous generations have been and where all future generations will go. Death is a transformation and a change of scene although I think that memory, and therefore the sense of identity, must be part of the scenery. The waters of Lethe...
Age and death affect organisms and civilizations. Anderson shows us Ys, Rome, the Solar Commonwealth and the Terran Empire.
For a personification of Death not as an Old Man but as an ever young woman, see here.
No comments:
Post a Comment