Experiencing And Expressing Endings

(Nottingham Cathedral.)

The previous post was about space and spaces. This post is about time and times.

Everyone experiences endings and novelists write about them. This post, occasioned by rereading Poul Anderson's Mirkheim, combines personal reminiscences with reflections on the novel. Blog readers might substitute their private reminiscences for mine.

Everything that we do we will one day do for the last time. There will be a last post on this blog. One day, I will walk out of the front door of this house, where we have lived since 1979, for the last time ever. These times are not yet and usually we do not think about them. We can do something for the last time either knowing or not suspecting that it is the last time.

Reminiscences
(i) Many years ago, I walked out of a school in Merseyside on a Friday afternoon, fulling expecting to return to that school the following week. However, a minor injury over the weekend delayed my return to Merseyside for several weeks. Meanwhile, circumstances changed and I was never in that school again. Thus, unbeknownst to me at the time, that Friday had been the last time ever.

(ii) Less long ago, leaving a school, I returned the key of an outbuilding to Reception. I knew that that would be the last time that I would do that but did not tell the receptionist. I preferred that my last time be no different from any other.

(iii) When my father died, I was asked to choose a passage from scripture to read at his funeral in Nottingham Cathedral. I chose the Parable of the Good Samaritan as relevant to my father's charity work. I was told that, in the Catholic Church, only the priest reads from the Gospels and I was asked to choose another passage. I replied that I had chosen an appropriate passage and was happy for the priest to read it. Before reading the parable, the priest said, "This would have been the last Gospel reading that Douglas heard in church because it was appointed to be read in Catholic churches in England and Wales the Sunday before he died." I had not known that. Thus, my father heard that reading knowing neither that it was his last nor that it would be read again soon afterwards at his funeral.

Incidentally, my father was cremated on a Friday and his fifth grandchild was christened on the Sunday. The priest at the christening pointed this out: an ending and a beginning.

Mirkheim
This novel was written as an ending not of the Technic History but of the Polesotechnic League sub-series within the History. It is much more than just a last installment. The characters are all too aware that they are experiencing the beginning of the end of the League. At the same time, Poul Anderson knew that this was the last time that he would write about his series characters, Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan - and also about Sandra Tamarin who had appeared once before. He gives them all a good send-off:

van Rijn in conversation with Sandra;
Falkayn in conversation with Eric, son of van Rijn and Sandra, introduced in this novel;
Adzel in conversation with Chee Lan.

They tell each other, and thus us, what they will do next:

van Rijn will try to patch up the League for a little while longer, then will lead an expedition outside known space;

Sandra, Grand Duchess of Hermes, might abdicate in favor of Eric and join van Rijn's expedition;

meanwhile, Eric will be a special envoy to Earth with guidance from Falkayn;

Falkayn will run van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors Company, then will settle with his family somewhere other than Earth or Hermes;

Adzel and Chee Lan will return to their home planets but will also stay in touch with each other, helping to prepare their planets for the bad times ahead.

An installment of a future history series can either refer to an installment written earlier and set earlier or anticipate an installment written earlier but set later. The latter process goes on with Falkayn in the concluding chapter of Mirkheim, published in 1977. In "Wingless," published in 1973, set on Avalon, young Nat Falkayn reflects that Ythrians visiting Chartertown have business with his grandfather David or his father Nicholas but not with him.

A new generation in a new world...