Literary References

An Author's Note after Poul Anderson's "Rokuro" (All One Universe, New York, 1997) informs us:

"The traditional No play is full of allusions to classic literature and quotations from it." (p. 151)

- and adds:

"You may be interested to see what was intended in this case." (ibid.)

Yes, indeed, since I missed all the references as I read the play. I will mention only some of them here.

"Triumph and tragedy..." (p. 140) is from Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. V. Churchill drinks in the Old Phoenix in Anderson's "Losers' Night."

"They grind worlds forth..." (p. 141) is attributed both to Johannes V Jensen and to Vergil's Aeneid. Thus, Jensen is mentioned three times in All One Universe.

"With stars at its head..." (p. 142) is a reference to Dylan Thomas, "And Death Shall Have No Dominion," which, as Anderson points out, is cited in James Blish, They Shall Have Stars, the opening volume of Blish's interesting but shorter future history.

"'In Him the Way...'" (p. 144) is from Rudyard Kipling, "Buddha at Kamakura." Anderson discusses Kipling in an article in All One Universe.

"Into what wilderness..." (p. 145) is a reference to Tom o' Bedlam, which is quoted in Anderson's "Goat Song" and in the title of his A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

The Author's Note also mentions Archibald MacLeish, Frederic Brown, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand Of Darkness, Buddhist figures of speech, Pascal, haikus by Kyoshi and Basho and Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land.

Thus, "Rokuro" is a short but rich work.

Rokuro

Poul Anderson's "Rokuro" (All One Universe, New York, 1997) is a science fiction story in the form of a Japanese No play. I had skipped past it before because of its unfamiliar format and had not realized that it told a story. A technological theme familiar from other works by Anderson is placed in a Japanese Buddhist context.

The title character had copied his consciousness into a computer program in the mistaken belief that such a disembodied mind might more easily realize enlightenment, then teach him. Instead, the program remembers but does not feel and thus is not human enough to transcend humanity but to erase it would be murder since it is aware.

Years later, the preserved program asks a Buddhist priest whether it has a soul or a karma and he replies that he does not know. However, the Buddha taught that no being has a soul and that all beings act - action is karma. The program's first formulation of the question was whether he lives or whether his thinking and suffering merely happen like "...a flame in the wind." (p. 148) What is the difference? He is not biologically alive but his experience and thought do happen. The occurrence of experience is not an illusion even if its content is illusory. "I think, therefore I am..." At this point, the priest correctly replies that we are all flames in the wind. A candle flame is always moving and burning different wax and will burn out even when it seems to be solid and static. The Buddha, analyzing consciousness, found no permanent soul anywhere within it.

The program says, "If I am nothing, then to nothing I return, and shall no more know that I ever happened." (p. 149)

- to which the priest replies, "But if you are real -" (ibid.)

But, if by "real" he means a permanent consciousness retaining its memories and sense of identity indefinitely after physical death - after the candle has burned out-, then nothing is "real" in this sense.