How can we convey the detail of Poul Anderson's descriptions without quoting some at length? Instead of composing the following paragraph, Anderson could simply have written that the warriors embarked:
"On a night just after sunset, the warriors embarked. A moon newly risen cast silver and shadow on the crags and scaurs of the elf-hills, on the strand from which they rose, on the clouds racing eastward on a wind that filled heaven with its clamour. The moonlight ran in shards and ripples over the waves, which tumbled and roared, white-maned, on the rocks. It shimmered off weapons and armour of the elf warriors, while the black-and-white longships drawn up on the shore seemed but shapes and light-gleams.
"Skafloc stood wrapped in a cape, the wind streaming his hair..." (p. 65)
Two paragraphs: two references to wind. Colours, clamour, cape, wind, waves, white manes, weapons, warriors... And at last a conversation in which Leea warns Skafloc not to go. He goes.
We know only that doom awaits.
12 comments:
Doom and heroes went together, in Norse folklore...
And, of course, "doom" meant whatever was fated to happen, not necessarily "doom" in our sense, although the Ragnarok still lay ahead.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I had almost that idea in mind as well: the hero is fated to go where his doom awaits him.
Similar ideas can be found in other cultures. I think Virgil wrote in his AENEID that Aeneas was not fated to live with Queen Dido in Carthage, his doom was to go to Italy and become the ancestral founder of the Romans.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that the Aeneas legend tied the Romans more closely to the Greeks.
The link between Troy and Rome impressed me when I was at school.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Except the Trojans were the enemies of the Greeks. And I think old saws like "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" came from Virgil.
Ad astra! Sean
"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes."
Yes, but the Aeneas legend "mixed" the origins of the two peoples.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I'm convinced I saw that somewhere in the AENEID.
Mr. Stirling: I don't think Homer and Virgil clearly grasped how different peoples like the Greeks and Trojans could have different origins. Culturally they are much the same in the ILIAD and AENEID.
Ad astra! Sean
It is in the AENEID.
Note that in the Iliad and Odyssey the Trojans and Greeks both speak the same language -- there's no problem of communication.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That expressed more clearly what I was trying to say.
Ad astra! Sean
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