-John, xvii, 22-23.
"I will grow with you, and you with me, and they with us, until mankind is not only worthy to be received into Oneness, it will bring thereunto what is wholly its own."
-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 1, p. 76.
Plato expressed his own philosophical arguments by putting words into the mouth of Socrates;
the authors of Mahayana sutras expressed their own spiritual/metaphysical understanding by putting words into the mouth of the Buddha;
the author of the Fourth Gospel expressed his own theological reflections by putting words into the mouth of Jesus (there was no tape recorder or short-hand secretary at the Last Supper);
Poul Anderson wrote a fictional dialogue between Caruith and Jaan.
Anderson's fictional dialogue is a "play within the play" because the Caruith persona within Jaan is an artificially induced delusion. Reading Caruith's words, we might suspect that whoever has induced the delusion is deliberately echoing Biblical language.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Of course we should later discover in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN how, given the structure and plot of the book, how it was Aycharaych who insinuated subtly warped via the false Caruith persona into Jaan's mind. It's also my belief Anderson had the early life of Mohammed in mind when giving us some knowledge of Jaan's earlier years.
Sean
I forgot to include "ideas" after "subtly warped" in the first sentence of my first comment. Drat!!!
Sean
There are recurring archetypes in the lives of prophets and "foretold saviors". The Moses thing (the abandoned child raised elsewhere, for instance), which Poul uses in "Brave to be a King" in the Time Patrol series.
They're sort of like pre-established tropes, waiting to be activated.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Good analogy, comparing Moses with Cyrus the Great. A theme I agree Poul Anderson used in "Brave To Be A King."
Sean
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