Tuesday 29 November 2016

The Ship Of Odysseus

OK. I have missed a connection here and I had better draw attention to it before anyone else does. We are connecting:

"The Old Ships" by James Elroy Flecker;
"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" by Poul Anderson;
the Nantucket Trilogy by SM Stirling.

"The Old Ships" refers to Tyre by name and to Odysseus by description;
Tyre is the setting of "Ivory...";
Odysseus is a character in the Nantucket Trilogy.

However, there is more:

"The Old Ships" speculates that one very old ship might have been the ship of Odysseus;
"Ivory..." contains this passage -

"Far and far away, a sail passed by. It could have been driving the ship of Odysseus." (Time Patrol, p. 326) 

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Considering how Poul Anderson was an enthusiastic fan of Rudyard Kipling, I've wondered if any of the latter's poems or stories shows us King Hiram and Odysseus? I know one of Kiplling's poems has a line mentioning Tyre and Nineveh.

Sean