Monday 14 September 2015

Countryside And Beach

Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991) presents historical information, temporal paradoxes and scenic descriptions:

"Sunlight torrented from the east. Downhill the land tumbled away in heights and hollows, brightness and shadow, valley where streams threaded with silver a patchwork quilt of fields, orchards, vineyards. Villages nestled white. [Wanda] glimpsed two distant castles. Above and beyond the farms, wild brown pasture mingled with remnants of forest, among whose greens lay the first faint tints of autumn. Birds winged and cried multitudinous overhead. The air was cool but rapidly warming, overwhelmingly pure." (p. 420)

Three senses: seen sunlight and landscape; heard birds; felt coolness and warmth. Or four - is the pure air tasted? Silver, white, brown and green with autumnal tints.

"The wind...shrilled and boomed above rumbling surf, sheathed faces in cold, laid salt on lips, ruffled hair. Gulls took off, soared, mewed. The tide was flowing but had not yet come far in and they walked on the darkened solidity of the wet sand. Occasionally underfoot a shell crunched, a kelp bladder popped. On their right, and immensely ahead and behind, dry dunes lapped the cliffs. On their right the maned waves marched inward from the edge of sight. A single ship yonder looked very alone. The world was all whites and silvery grays." (pp. 431-432)

The description continues in considerable detail every time that I expect to close the quotation marks. Everard and Wanda:

hear wind, surf, gulls, crunching shells and popping bladders;
feel cold, ruffled hair and solid sand;
taste salt;
see dunes, cliffs, waves, a ship, whites and grays.

The concluding sentences about the ship and the colors are unexpected. When we think that Anderson has described the scene abundantly, we receive yet more details, the full picture.

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