Sometimes late at night, I want to add once last post for the day but don't want to have to do any complicated reading first. I am really going out on a limb with this one but I can't help it. Poul Anderson's texts really have sensitized me to the wind as a sound effect, as punctuating or underlining the dialogue, as commenting on the action, as pathetic fallacy, sometimes almost as an additional dramatic character. But this means that I notice the wind in other authors' works probably even where it has no significance whatsoever. Thus, the plant elemental, the Swamp Thing, has
greened Gotham City. The streets are full of trees with normal life at a standstill:
"I listen...to a city that has not known silence...since the coming of the automobile...
"The cars are dead now...and wind strums the high branches."
-Alan Moore, Swamp Thing: Earth To Earth (New York, 2002), p. 24, panel 5.
Yes. Wind strumming the high branches expresses and symbolizes the guardian of the environment triumphing over urban civilization!
(I would not have thought that without Poul Anderson.)
Alright. That's it. Normal service will be resumed tomoz or soon.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But I am sure there was plenty of background noise to be heard in New York City/Gotham circa 1880 before the coming of the automobile. Things like the rumble and clatter of trains, horses and wagons, human voices, whistles and horns, etc.
And I've not forgotten what Stirling said about the Great Manure Crisis of those years, which afflicted all major Western cities. The problems caused by untold millions of tons of animal wastes dropped in the streets. And millions of dead horses/mules. In many ways the advent of the internal combustion engine was a godsend.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Oh, yes. Not to take sides between Swampy and the city.
Paul.
However: see this for something saying the 'crisis' got exaggerated later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_crisis_of_1894
Kaor, Jim!
I looked up that link and it does not really seem to support those who might minimize too much the problems posed by the massive use of horses/mules in large Western cities. The article agrees both that problems were caused by animal wastes and that cars/trucks using IC engines resolved those problems.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment