Contemporary And Cosmic In Amsterdam

Manse Everard contrasts the evanescence, the momentary warmth, light and savor, of the Ambrosia restaurant in Amsterdam with the surrounding "unbounded darkness."

This recalls a much earlier work on time travel:

"Man's works were so horribly impermanent; he thought with a sadness of the cites and civilizations he had seen rise and spend their little hour and sink back into the night and chaos of time." (Chapter 3, p. 238)
-copied from here.

However, this vaster cosmic perspective does not prevent Anderson from describing Amsterdam in substantial terms as if it were the setting of a contemporary novel none of whose characters ever considered the unbounded darkness or the night and chaos of time.

We Andersonians contemplate both perspectives.