We know the Garden of Eden from the Book of Genesis and the World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil, from the Eddas. Thus, a modern author incorporating such well-known locations into a new narrative must get them right.
CS Lewis discusses John Milton's description of Eden:
"Of course, the trees have golden fruit. We always knew they would. Every myth has told us so; to ask for 'originality' at this point is stark insensibility."
-CS Lewis, A Preface To Paradise Lost (London, 1967), VII, p. 50.
Again:
"...the unexpected here has no place. These references to the obvious and the immemorial are there not to give us new ideas about the lost garden but to make us know that the garden is found, that we have come home at last and reached the centre of the maze - our centre, humanity's centre, not some private centre of the poet's."
-ibid., p. 51.
So how well does Poul Anderson describe Yggdrasil? (Scroll down.)
For War Of The Gods, see Yggdrasil.
For Operation Luna, see:
Norse Myths In Modern Fiction II
Yggdrasil II
Under Yggdrasil
Mimir
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I had never known or that of that before, re the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil being legendarily described as golden! I had hitherto thought, from the frequent references to them in literature as apples, for that fruit to have LOOKED like apples. True, some apples are golden in color.
Ad astra! Sean
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