We began by discussing how this story fits into the interstellar scenario of Anderson's Rustum History and wind up discussing archetypes. I wrote in Summer's Twilight that Sherrinford destroys an illusion but understands myths. His way of putting it is:
"'We live with our archetypes but can we live in them?'" (p.227)
He lists archetypes suggested by people we meet:
the rational detective
Christ
Buddha
the Earth Mother
Hamlet
d'Artagnan
- and adds first that historical, fictional or mythical figures crystallize aspects of the psyche and secondly that our response to met persons who suggest such figures "'...goes deeper than consciousness.'" (ibid.)
Is the Fat Merchant an archetype? Is Flandry a d'Artgnan? Are stereotypes related to archetypes? In Anderson's Technic History, Noah Arkwright tells us that some aliens talk and act like the stereotypical Warrior, Philosopher, Merchant or Old Space Ranger but this is because we cannot see their nonhuman aspects so that they come across as two-dimensional or even comic.
We have not yet plumbed the full depths of "The Queen of Air and Darkness."
(CS Lewis said that one of his friends was the sole Horatio in this age of Hamlets, which sounds a bit pretentious. Did Lewis and his contemporaries go round soliloquizing about being or not being?)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And of course almost everyone should immediately realize that Sherlock Holmes is the very archetype of the Rational Detective. Dang it, I should make a point of rereading some of the Holmes stories despite now rereading Alexis de Tocqueville's THE OLD REGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Sean
The Fat Merchant stereotype is common well beyond Western civilization -- you meet the same thing in India and China -- because, for a very long time, being fat was a mark of wealth. It meant you could eat as much of whatever you wanted as you pleased, and that you could purchase exemption from physical effort via personal service.
And merchants didn't have the direct incentive warrior-aristocrats did to maintain high physical fitness -- aristocrats often had to fight with their own hands, and their recreations (hunting, tournaments) had the same incentives.
Also, culturally merchants represent "consumption", the pleasure-principle.
Van Rijn is the ultimate expression of that stereotype and is also capable of physical effort and combat when necessary.
Post a Comment