This story is constructed around cross-purposes in conversations when words are used in different, sometimes conflicting, senses. One task would be to list every word or phrase involved. Not tonight. However, it is a problem that we can encounter when travelling around Europe:
"...when I asked for 'petrol,' he only stared, for petrole is not petrol, but paraffin. Of such is the curse of Babel."
-Dornford Yates, Shoal Water (London, 1942), CHAPTER III, pp. 64-65.
Indeed. And Babel is an apt myth. In CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength, the returned Merlin puts the curse of Babel on a bunch of bad guys and calls out:
"Quis Verbum Dei contemserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis."
-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 16, 2, p. 718 -
- translated in a footnote as:
"They that have despised the word of God, from them shall the word of man also be taken away." (ibid.)
Have Poul Anderson's characters despised the word of God by reaching higher into heaven than the Tower of Babel?
It is night here so we can sleep on that.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think one answer to your question can be found in Genesis 1.28. Using this text the late James Baen wrote an editorial for the December 1976 issue of GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION called an "Epistle to the Christians. I'll copy that editorial, with some comments of my own, and send it to you.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Thank you.
My question, of course, was an absurd late-night juxtaposition between two texts. I did not even know that I was going to arrive at that conclusion when I started to write the post.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Iow, SERENDIPITY, to use a word taken from SATAN'S WORLD!
Ad astra! Sean
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