Tuesday 26 April 2022

Blue Twilight

War Of The Gods, X.

Gangleri lets Hadding recuperate in a mysterious place. They seem to be in a hall but Hadding is not sure. The ceiling is too high and the end of the building too far for him to see. Also, it is:

"...full of a blue twilight." (p. 74)

Why? I find this intriguing. The first time CS Lewis read the phrase, "The Twilight of the Gods," he thought that it meant the twilight in which the gods dwelt. Maybe there is something in that idea? In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Titania's realm is the Land of Summer's Twilight. The mere mention of twilight is always evocative. (Also: WB Yeats' "Celtic Twilight.")

The hall of blue twilight is like Anderson's Old Phoenix Inn in that the hero is taken there for a brief respite but must then return to the battlefield. Shortly, Hadding, captured, will recount a myth to his guards so we will return to our "Myths Retold" theme.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I also thought of the twilight of Faerie that we see in THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS.

Btw, I wanted to ask if the list I made below of the Time Patrol stories was correct, as regards their internal chronology:

Time Patrol
Brave To Be A King
Gibraltar Falls
The Only Game In Town
Delenda Est
Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks
The Sorrow of Odin the Goth
Star of the Sea
The Year of the Ransom
THE SHIELD OF TIME
Death and the Knight

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

I think that the order should be:

Time Patrol
Brave To Be A King
The Only Game In Town
Delenda Est
Gibraltar Falls
The Sorrow of Odin the Goth
Star of the Sea
The Year of the Ransom
Ivory and Apes and Peacocks
THE SHIELD OF TIME
Death and the Knight

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Many thanks! I've started a second "volume" of my CODEX ANDERSONIANUS and I've been wanting an accurate listing, from the POV of Manse Everard's "chronology" of the Time Patrol stories. Also, the next time I reread those stories I would like to do it in chronological order.

At least any listing of the Rustum stories will not present the kind of difficulties we had with the Technic stories! They were arranged chronologically in ORBIT UNLIMITED and in NEW AMERICA (the first four stories plus "The Queen of Air and Darkness").

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

The place Hadding is taken is Asgard, of course.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

With Asgard meaning Valhalla, which is why I did not feel a strong need to comment directly on this blog piece of Paul's.

Ad astra! Sean