Thursday 1 March 2018

The Evening Star

On Earth, in a prayer addressed to "Mary, mother of God...":

"Pure as yourself, your evenstar shines above the sunset."
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT p. 640.

On Aeneas in the Terran Empire:

"Above a last greenish trace of sunset, beneath a wan flicker of aurora, burned pure white Dido, the evening star."
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT Chapter Six, p. 425.

However, Dido, tragic heroine of the Aeneid, contrasts sharply with Mary, the Messiah's mother in the New Testament.

Meanwhile, the sun is long set here...

1 comment:

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Kaor, Paul!

And JRR Tolkien also used the evening star, Venus, to telling effect in his Middle Earth mythos. The Valar set Earendil the Mariner, with the Silmaril wrested from Morgoth by Beren and Luthien, in the skies as a sign of hope for the peoples of Middle Earth.

Sean