Apparitions III

"The Sharing of Flesh."

I made a mistake when I cut short a quotation in Apparitions. The full passage runs:

"She could not entirely comprehend the fact that Donli was gone. It seemed as if at any instant yonder doorway would fill with him, sunlight across his shoulders, and he would call to her, laughing, and console her for a meaningless nightmare she had had." (p. 671)

She imagines in detail that her just murdered husband enters, calls, laughs and consoles her. His murder was just a nightmare. It is easy to see that Evalyth could vividly imagine such an occurrence, then think that it had happened. Although I do not suggest that Poul Anderson had this in mind when he wrote the passage, nevertheless I do think that the passage itself reflects the psychological processes that can generate an experience as of meeting the dead. Works of fiction can describe such experiences ambiguously.