In the Psychotechnic History, on a paradisal planet in the Great Cross:
"Ilaloa danced before her companions, laughing aloud, wild with the sudden joy of release. Like a wood nymph, thought Trevelyan - and any moment Pan might come piping from the brush."
-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), Chapter XV, pp. 133-134.
Is Pan present? Yes. In the mind of Trevelyan, where all gods are. The One imagines that It is us and we imagine the gods so They are in us and we are in It.
In the Technic History, Flandry summarizes and Aycharaych quotes an English poem about Pan. See here. Aycharaych claims the role of Pan - to make beauty through suffering.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And Aycharaych also implicitly conceded playing a SATANIC role as regards his schemes and plots against the Empire.
Sean
Pan's traditional appearance carried over into depictions of Satan in medieval Europe. He was originally a wildwood god, the deity of uncontrolled passion and things and deeds beyond the settled, human-mastered tilled fields. Hence "panic".
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I noticed the things you listed about Pan when I looked up that mythological figure. A crude, rustic god, worshiped mostly by peasants. Albeit, my image of Pan was colored by Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument," of him being a patron of music and poetry. A great artist, but also cruel and callous.
Sean
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