Again Daniel Holm looks out his window:
Gray is shadowed;
dawn sheens the bay;
the sky is purple;
negagrav screens, changing pattern to circulate air, blur the stars;
restless winds are cold and damp;
but the country remains serene;
"The storms were beyond the sky and inside the flesh." (p. 529)
There is war in space and turmoil in Holm.
Often, in Anderson's texts, nature seems to sympathize with and to express the characters' thoughts and feelings: the Pathetic Fallacy. At other times, inner states are described as if they were external conditions. There is a "storm" in Holm and:
"Every planet in the story is cold - even Terra, though Flandry came home on a warm evening of northern summer. There the chill was in the spirit."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry:The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT I, p. 342.
3 comments:
Paul:
I kind of like Terry Pratchett's version, in which it's not a fallacy: the scenery is "psychotropic," which means that if you say portentous things such as "the dark eyes of the mind" (pseudo-Transylvanian accent left out), there will be a sudden crash of thunder. If you point out a spooky castle, a wolf will howl mournfully. Of course, Pratchett's way only works in humorous or at least satirical fantasy.
David,
Check out A VOYAGE TO PURILIA by Elmer Rice: a planet based on silent films - the landscape enlarges for close-ups etc.
Paul.
Kaor, DAVID!
I think the closest we come to seeing humor (satirical or not) in Anderson's fantasies would be in a few short stories like "Pact" or the incidents about the giant and the dragon in THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS.
Sean
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