There are other long sequences.
A Torah scroll in a synagogue
A Bible on an eagle lectern in a church
A Koran in a mosque
A Granth in a gurdwara
Milton's Paradise Lost, retelling the Biblical narrative
fiction quoting scripture
The Bible incorporates the entire text of the Torah.
The Koran incorporates Biblical stories and the prophetic line.
Some Granth hymns were written by Muslims.
Poul Anderson frequently quotes the Bible.
James Blish quotes the Bible and, in The Triumph Of Time, the Koran.
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss
Genesis by Poul Anderson
Anderson's Genesis asks whether it would be right to re-create human beings and thus, by implication, whether it would have been right to create us in the first place. Milton's Adam, quoted on the title page of Frankenstein, asks:
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man? did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me...?
To mould me Man? did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me...?
-copied from here.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Besides the literary analogies you thought of in this and the preceding blog post, I would have included Dante's DIVINE COMEDY. He drew on both the Bible and Virgil's AENEID for his poem, and made use of the story of Odysseus in the INFERNO.
Dante would not have agreed with the sentiment Milton (and by extension, Shelley) has his Adam saying. Here I have in mind what Dante wrote in PARADISE XXIX, 13-18 (translation by Dorothy L. Sayers): "Not to increase His good, which cannot be,/But that His splendour, shining back, might say:/BEHOLD, I AM, in His eternity,/Beyond the measurement of night and day,/Beyond all boundary, as He did please,/New loves Eternal Love shed from His ray."
As Dante, and all orthodox Catholics would argue, existence and life is good, not something to be despised. And I think Anderson would agree with that and my additional belief that was one of the points he made in GENESIS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that Adam's (mankind's) problem is not with life as such but with its contradictory demands:
Oh wearisome condition of humanity
Born under one law, to another bound
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity
Crated sick, commanded to be sound
What means Nature by these diverse laws
Passion and reason, self-division's cause?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
and that brings us back to our old argument about how or why the human race is so flawed and imperfect. And to my contention that imperfection is innate and present in all human beings.
Ad astra! Sean
The author of the AENEID becoming a character in the INFERNO is a major connection.
Kaor, Paul!
And Virgil was a character in Dante's PURGATORIO as well.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Oh, yes. It is only Paradise that the good pagan can't go into.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm not entirely sure Dante was right about the eternal fate of virtuous pagans who lived before the time of Christ, assigning them to simply a place of perfect natural happiness called Limbo. I think the general view in the Church is that God judged such persons mercifully, according to what they had known or could have known.
We don't see Dante mentioned very often in the works of Anderson. I do recall him being mentioned in OPERATION CHAOS. So Anderson might have read the DIVINE COMEDY.
I've tried, and I managed to slog thru Milton's PARADISE LOST once (and part way, a second time), but aside from some striking passages here and there, I did not like it. I found PL a heavy, ponderous, mostly boring read. My loss, I'm sure!
And I don't recall Anderson ever mentioning Milton anywhere in his stories. But I would not be surprised if he too had read PARADISE LOST.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think it is critically agreed that PL is of high quality only in about the first three Books.
Satan speaks in Miltonic verse at the end of Blish's THE DAY AFTER JUDGMENT.
CS Lewis's idea of Limbo in a letter to a friend: the season is always Autumn; there is a feeling of having missed the boat but it inspires good poetry.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Noted, commentators tend to have a high opinion only of the first three Books of PL.
I recall that speech of Satan in blank verse in Blish's story.
Interesting metaphor used by Lewis for Limbo, about it being "autumnal," and of having that "feeling" of missing the boat (or bus!). I did not get that autumnal feeling from Dante's depiction of Limbo. A pleasant, mild, gentle but sad state of existence.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course the bus is relevant to Lewis's THE GREAT DIVORCE.
Paul.
I've always liked Satan's final speech in the BLACK EASTER books:
AND NOW I KNOW THE LAST AND MOST BITTER OF ALL MY FELL DAMNATIONS: THAT I NEVER WANTED TO BE GOD AT ALL.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Correct! I did have that bus we see in Lewis' THE GREAT DIVORCE in mind.
Mr. Stirling: And I'm reminded of how Catholic theologians have pondered the question of why Satan rebelled against God. Envy, jealousy, pride?
Ad astra! Sean
Mike Carey's Lucifer is cannier than Blish's Satan. Knowing in advance that he no longer wants to be either God or Adversary, he makes sure that there is someone else ready to take over when the time is right: God's granddaughter, Michael's daughter, Lucifer's niece. Hail Elaine!
Sean,
And how could envy, jealousy or pride exist in a pure spirit created by God? God would give His creature motivations but those divinely created motivations would not include envy etc. But without such motivations, the creature would not act enviously, jealously or pridefully. I think that you assume a familiar situation, a conscious being acting wrongly, while denying the conditions necessary for that situation - like a square without sides. An infinite square or circle would not be a square or circle.
A subject without objects (God before the creation) would have nothing to know and thus would not be omniscient (or even just "scient"). If there were no changing objects of consciousness and no past experiences to remember, then the subject would have no time and therefore would not be "without beginning or end," i.e., existing through beginningless and endless time.
Paul.
Post a Comment