Sunset ends a day and autumn ends a summer so either can symbolize the end of a life or a civilization. When describing a Ramnuan landscape, Poul Anderson makes clear that only one detail recalls Terra:
"Niku stood at early afternoon, ruddy-aureate in an opalescent heaven; its light suffused the hazy air in a way to remind of autumn on Terra. Nothing else was like home." (VII, p. 98)
Nothing else needs to be. All that the novel needs for its pervasive symbolism is autumnal colour. Flandry is sixty-one, the civilization that he defends is far gone into its decline and, at the very end of this novel, we will be told of Flandry and his new partner that:
"They walked on into the autumn." (XIV, p. 188)
- back on Terra.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And, some twenty years before A STONE IN HEAVEN, we see Flandry developing at length the metaphor autumn being applied to Terra and the Empire in Chapter VIII of WE CLAIM THESE STARS: "We've grown too wise; we've studied a little psychodynamics, or perhaps only read a lot of history, and we can see that Manuel's Empire was not a glorious resurgence. It was the Indian summer of Terran civilization. (But you've never seen Indian summer, I suppose. A pity: no planet has anything more beautiful and full of old magics.) Now even that short season is past. Autumn if far along; the nights are cold and the leaves are fallen and the last escaping birds call through a sky which has lost all color. And yet, we who see winter coming can also see it won't be here till after our lifetimes...so we shiver a bit, and swear a bit, and go back to playing with a few bright dead leaves."
These reflections of Flandry are also very Hordian, worthy of his work tracing out how civilizations rise and fall. I would add as well that I don't think it's right to minimize so much the achievements of the Terran Empire. After all, it wasn't till more than four centuries had passed before it could be said the Empire was declining. An Indian summer of Terran civilization which lasted so long was no mean achievement! I might even call it a resurgence of Terran civilization after the chaos of the Time of Troubles.
Sean
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