Aycharaych
Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 458-465.
Flandry wears a mind screen. Aycharaych would like to be in true communion with him but that cannot be unless one joins the other's cause. He warns Flandry not to wall off his brain too long from the energies that inspirit the universe and comments that the brevity of human life keeps Flandry ever in haste but may also be the root of mankind's greatness.
Aycharaych appreciates Flandry's total personality and a bond has formed between them. He claims that most Chereionites laid aside ephemeral affairs when the human race were apes. He continues to partake in such affairs because there is art in action and every art is a philosophical tool for seeking deeper into mystery. He quotes "'...half a beast is the great god Pan...'" (p. 464) and comments that Flandry also plays a satanic role and might have lived more whole of heart if he had served Merseia. Flandry angrily rejects this last remark.
Aycharaych wants to discourse of Terra's former splendors and modern pleasures.
Blofeld
Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice (London, 1966), pp. 172-173.
Blofeld claims that his blackmailing of the Western World with hijacked atomic weapons might have led to disarmament negotiations, that his bacteriological warfare attack on England might have forced Britain out of its lethargy into the kind of community effort that had occurred during the war and that his Castle of Death is a humane project, offering free death to those seeking release.
Blofeld is far less cultured and much more self-serving than Aycharaych.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And as we later found out Aycharaych was the very last of his race, that the Chereionites were EXTINCT.
We also see Flandry and Aycharaych conversing in Chapter 1 of WE CLAIM THESE STARS. And his amusingly expressed skepticism of the faith placed by the Merseians in their computers estimate of when the Empire would fall. Naive and rather touching was how he put it!
I agree Aycharaych was less crassly or crudely self serving than Blofeld, but he did have a personal stake of his owe as regards Chereion. He didn't want Merseia to ransack and devastate his race's heritage.
Any nonhuman more than a thousands years from now who reads the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning would HAVE to be cultured!
Sean
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