Poul Anderson's texts capture human life.
"'Let us drink something hot and remember earlier times.'" (p. 440)
The Anses:
"'...too shall perish in the wreck of the world.'" (p. 442)
"'World after world has gone down in ruin ere now, my son, and will in the years and thousands of years to come.'" (p. 443)
(In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, the Inn of the Worlds' End is perpetually renewed because worlds are ending all the time.)
"Hathawulf's wife Anslaug...suckled their firstborn. The Wanderer gazed long upon the babe. 'There lies tomorrow,' he whispered. Nobody understood what he meant. Soon he was walking off, he and his spear-staff, down a road where lately fallen leaves flew on a chill blast." (ibid.)
Firstborn: a beginning; fallen leaves: an ending. Although beginnings and endings are perennial, the Wanderer alone knows that a greater ending approaches. He has made preparations for those of his Goths who can to move west but is unable to disclose his knowledge of what is to come.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Carl has become almost as tragic a "causal nexus" as Lorenzo in "Amazement of the World."
Ad astra! Sean
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