"This warm, well-furnished, softly lighted room, where a recorded violin sang and from which a butler had just removed the dishes of an admirable rubyfruit souffle, was a very frail bubble to huddle in."
-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, VIII, p. 442.
(Warmth, light, music, food.)
Manse Everard and Janne Floris go out to dinner:
"Maybe the sense of evanescence, this warmth and light and savor no more than a moment in an unbounded darkness, something that could come to never having been, gave depth to pleasure."
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 6, p. 522.
(Warmth, light, savor.)
Maybe.
The Poul Anderson reader recognizes moments that resonate across two timelines.
In fact, see also Warmth And Light In Two Timelines.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteAnderson wants to subtly tell us that all these good things guarded by a civilization is so precarious and subject to destruction that we should not take them for granted. Because civilization itself is so terribly fragile.
Ad astra! Sean