Concluding Details, Josserek And Van Rijn

Poul Anderson, The Winter Of The World.

Is this yet another description of the Milky Way?:

"...beneath a winter-stark Argent Way." (XXI, p. 190)

Sensory Descriptions
In XIX, p. 173:
the myriad greens of the prairie grass pale and shine almost silver;
the wind smells of grass and of sunlight;
red-patched blackbirds cry sweetly;
high above, swans are white amidst blue.

(Since wind is felt as well as smelled, this paragraph evokes four senses.)

In XXII, p. 200:
ridges and valleys glitter;
warmth grows;
mists glimmer and vanish;
the breeze ruffles pools in hollows;
grass is intensely green;
forget-me-nots are blue;
pines abide;
willows shake;
new birch leaves dance;
sun, wings and song fill a cloudless sky;
cows are red;
hares bolt;
pheasants fly;
bees and dragonflies quest;
eddying air smells of earth or of river.

(Again, four senses.)

Josserek concludes that "...Rogaviki are wild animals." (XXII, p. 207)

- whereas all other human beings are domesticated.

In Anderson's "The Master Key," Nicholas van Rijn concludes that, on the planet Cain, the dominant species, the Yildivians, are intelligent wild animals - wild in the way that tigers or buffalo are - whereas the subordinate species, the Lugals, are not slaves but intelligent domesticated animals. Van Rijn concludes the story by claiming that he and his friends are wild animals doing what they want or what is right but that most human beings are domesticated at heart:

"He glared outward across the city, where it winked and glittered beneath the stars, around the curve of the planet. 'Do you think they yonder is free?' he shouted. His hand chopped downward in scorn."
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 327.

I quote this passage partly because I like the image of the city winking and glittering beneath the stars around the curve of the planet, especially since we know that these characters travel to those stars and that their lives are a single phase in a long History.

Van Rijn is at least partly wrong. Wild animals do what they want but not what is right. Doing what is right, or even just knowing what is right and not doing it!, is specific to human beings and therefore is something that van Rijn shares with the scorned "domesticated" human beings who must include many of his co-religionists. The collective labor by hand and brain of human beings who stay at home and raise families builds and maintains a city that curves around the planet so I feel solidarity with them as well as with van Rijn's little band of wild adventurers.

In The Winter Of The World, at the end of Chapter XXI, Captain General Sidir, unwillingly plunged into a river, draws his saber and swims to the shore where his Rogaviki enemies wait. Will his story continue? Will the Rogaviki take him prisoner, then send him home to bear their defiant message to his Emperor? We should know better than that by now. The Rogaviki do not take prisoners.

On the concluding page, XXII, p. 208, the Rogaviki woman, Donya, demonstrates her "inhumanity" by tearing up the letter from her former human lover, saying that his words want their freedom.

This has been a long morning of blogging. My agenda for the rest of today is:

lunch with Ketlan;
start rereading and posting about Anderson's Twilight World;
read Leon Trotsky's My Life.

Onward, Earthlings!