Monday, 28 July 2025

List Descriptions And Three Senses

Conan The Rebel, XII

See previous list descriptions (scroll down).

Traffic into the Stygian capital, Luxur:

foot
cart
litter
chariot
horse
ox
donkey
camel
loinclothed labourers
ragged-tunic-clad drovers
robed desert nomads
colourfully garbed merchants
gossamer-clad courtesans
soldiers
hawkers
strolling performers
housewives
children
foreigners

They:

crowd
jostle
chatter
quarrel
scream curses
yelp laughter
importune
haggle
intrigue
shout
wail
croon

Dirty, littered, cobbled streets smell of:

smoke
grease
dung
roast meat
oils
perfumes
drugs
humanity 
beasts

This is all in Poul Anderson's continuous prose. I have merely extracted lists of nouns and verbs.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

These lists give good descriptions of what real cities were/are like. The Stygian setting made me think of one of the greatest cities of Pharaonic Egypt, No-Amon (Thebes), often the capital of Egypt and the seat of many dynasties. The real Thebes must have almost exactly matched these lists.

The Book of Nahum gives us a good example of the shock felt thru out the ancient Near East when the Assyrians of the merciless King Esarhaddon plundered and sacked No-Amon.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Preindustrial cities all stank. They were also demographic sinkholes. The first large city that -didn't- have natural decrease was, IIRC, Edo in Japan -- and that was sort of a by-product of the fact that all 'night soil' was recycled as fertilizer. In Shakespeare's time, there were five burials for every baptism in London.

Moving to a city (which 10% of each generation in England did) was a desperate gamble with your life, and even more with your childrens' lives.

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I agree, before about 1850-1860 American and European cities were death traps.

And the relative cleanliness of Edo was only possible because the Tokugawa shoguns harshly enforced the laws needed to make that cleanliness a reality.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

The Edo period was when Japan moved into a sort of ecological balance -- there were widely enforced laws on replanting forests, too, for instance, and population was limited.

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Because that "balance" would make it easier for the Tokugawa to stay in power.

Ad Astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Yes, but there was also a genuine element of preserving resources. Prior to the Tokugawa shogunate, the rival regional powers in Japan were exploiting the local resources past their carrying capacity, and that had bad consequences early in the Shogunate period.

Particularly given the policy of isolation from international trade.

If the Shoguns hadn't made that decision, Japan would probably have included Taiwan and Hainan and probably some of the Philippines.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

That makes sense, the end of the civil war era gave the Tokugawa time and opportunity for replenishing those resources.

There were attempts to conquer Korea, not long before the Tokugawa seized power. And I think the Ryukyus were at least semi-vassals of Japan.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Yes, they fought the Koreans and (somewhat indirectly) the Chinese. That was a bad decision. Taiwan was still unsettled by the Chinese when the Tokugawas took over Japan, Heinan was vulnerable, and the Spanish hold on the Philippines was weak. If the Japanese had built European-style ships (perfectly within their capacities) they could have overrun all those areas and settled them with their own people.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I think it was the costly defeat in Korea which persuaded the Tokugawa regime that aggressive foreign adventures were not wise. Hence the policy of isolationism.

Ad astra! Sean