Kit Marlowe In Two Inns

"Losers' Night."

"...I'd heard of what happened when Kit Marlowe showed up in [Francois Villon's] presence - one of Taverner's few mistakes, letting two alley tom-cats into the same room -" (pp. 111-112)

In another fictional inn, the White Horse, Shakespeare praises Marlowe's Doctor Faustus whereas Marlowe denigrates Shakespeare's first play. The same author informs us that the Library of Dreams contains Marlowe's dreamed but unwritten The Merrie Comedie of The Redemption of Doctor Faustus.

This author is, of course, Neil Gaiman. Anderson and Gaiman continue to parallel each other as we, editorially speaking, continue to reread both.

I have yet to reread my way to the end of "Losers' Night."

"Even The Dead..."

"Losers' Night."

On Losers' Night in the Old Phoenix, Francois Villon composes a song. The second stanza runs:

"At Stamford Bridge did Harald the tall

"Win him a grave as long as he.

"Dick Crookback's hissed from a theater stall.

"Lionheart beggared his monarchy.

"Athenian men fared valiantly

"To die in the quarries of Syracuse.

"Bolivar cried he had plowed the sea.

"Even the dead have much to lose." (p. 115)

Poul Anderson wrote a historical trilogy about Harald Hardrada. In Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," Manse Everard quotes Bolivar as having said that he had ploughed the sea. Anderson's multiverse is vast but also internally interconnected. How does Richard III's grave hiss and why from a theatre stall? He was buried in a church. What can the dead lose? These are people who have lost and then have died.

Further philosophical reflections:

"You don't see anything new by looking in the mirror, but by looking out the window."

-Poul Anderson, "Wellsprings of Dream" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 235-247 AT p. 238.

We need to look through (literal) windows and in (metaphorical) mirrors. We can indeed realize important facts about ourselves through meditation. "Know thyself." Knowledge of motor mechanics helps drivers. Knowledge of self must help selves. Let's not counterpose windows and "mirrors." Anderson argues that the universe is more complex than our minds. Is it? Our brains are the most complex part of the universe. The external universe and our minds are "one universe."

Plato: Philosophy is preparation for death.

Aycharaych: Death is completion of life.

Synthesis: Philosophy is preparation for completion of life.

Comment: Yes. But add meditation to philosophy.

Aycharych is an Andersonian alien but I make no apology for synthesizing his insight with Plato's.

"[Hans Moravec] sees artificial intelligence fully equal to the human in another 40 years or so. This optimism has its doubters, including me..."

-ibid., p. 242.

"Wellsprings of Dream" was published 30 years ago. Another 10 years? Anderson describes Moravec's Mind Children (1988) as authoritative history followed by "...enthusiastic forecasting." (ibid.) We need enthusiasm but not always in forecasting.

Who Are They?

"Losers' Night."

The answer to the following question might be somewhere on this blog but, if so, I can't find it. Who are these two historical characters?

A Frenchman from around 1820 converses with an Arabic-speaking North African Muslim. The latter says that, when desert nomads enter a civilization, they revitalize it with their "'...spirit of fellowship and obligation...'" (p. 113) but eventually are corrupted and enfeebled. The Frenchman replies that entire species can become extinct because they change either too well or too slowly to fit their environments but adds that societies must be as capable as species "'...of successful evolution...'" (p. 114)

Francois Villon tells the narrator:

that these two guys are among the greatest ever natural philosophers (we now call "natural philosophy" empirical science);

that the Frenchman wants to understand biology and the Muslim to understand humanity;

that both need information that will not be discovered until after their deaths;

that, therefore, they achieve nothing.

The Frenchman sounds as if he is discussing Darwinian evolution by natural selection but he can't be. The Muslim sounds as if he is making shrewd observations about social interactions but maybe he does not fully understand underlying economic or other factors? But, ok, I admit to a lamentable ignorance as to their identities.

(Charles Darwin and Adam Smith came later.)

Information Overload

I am experiencing information overload and can only enumerate several disparate inputs, mostly Poul Anderson-related, whether directly or indirectly.

(i) SM Stirling's and David Drake's Raj Whitehall is a military leader mentally advised by a self-conscious strategic computer, the technological equivalent of supernatural inspiration, which is what he regards it as. A neat idea.

(ii) Today, I visited the Old Pier Bookshop in order to buy a few remaining Dornford Yates titles but also found a copy of Isaac Asimov's Universe, Volume I: The Diplomacy Guild, containing "The Burning Sky" by Poul Anderson.

(iii) I also visited Andrea who lives above his brother's bookshop. Andrea told me of another reason for war-time French resentment of Britain. French POWs understood that they would be released at the end of the war - which the British indefinitely prolonged! (Like Anderson's Avalon refusing to surrender when expected.)

(iv) Yates mentions Francois Villon.

These inputs will generate further posts.

Two Surprises In The Old Phoenix

Poul Anderson's "Losers' Night" is an extremely compact text. A full analysis of the story would be longer than it, especially if every historical reference were to be followed up. I want to focus just on the conclusion.

When Francois Villon has sung about Christians "'...burning heretics, hanging Jews...'" (All One Universe, p. 123) -

- the first person narrator comments:

"I thought his mind had slipped back to his medieval realm, until I remembered what world it was whereon Winston Churchill now opened the door. The envoi sums up the entire ballade." (ibid.)

(Do we need that last sentence?)

This is a double surprise ending. First, it is possible that some readers have not realized that the "John Bull" Englishman in the story is Churchill. Any such readers will be pleasantly surprised by the second half of the second last sentence. Secondly, however, their pleasurable recognition of a historical figure might distract their attention from the reason why the narrator remembers the world to which Churchill returns: Europe between the Wars. Mass murder of Jews was not solely a medieval aberration.

But there is more. In the Old Phoenix, Churchill has met van Gogh and their conversation has inspired him not to "'...surrender...'" (p. 122) despite his current political setbacks. World War II awaits.

Anonymous Historical Characters III

See here.

Despite the general anonymity, the narrator names Francois Villon (see image). However, most of the others remain a guessing game. A rugged Edwardian Englishman's dreams will end in ice and hunger. Shackleton? The rugged Englishman converses with a "...dark man in a form-fitting glittery coverall..." (All One Universe, p. 111), whom I take to be fictional.

Kit Marlowe is mentioned although not present on this occasion.

Another man has "...bony head, craggy nose, ruddy beard..." (p. 112) - and both ears. Shouldn't he have had? The narrator quotes, as if relevant:

"The light, the coals, like the sun." (ibid.) - and then quotes the bony-headed man himself as saying, in Dutch:

"'White, Theo. All colors go up together in the white heat." (ibid.)

Van Gogh? (Later we learn that Bony Head painted self-portraits.)

A French-speaking European in early nineteenth century garb with failing sight sips wine while conversing with an Arabic-speaking North African Muslim who drinks fruit juice. The Muslim remarks that nomads revitalize civilization but later in turn become corrupt and feeble. The European compares extinctions in other species with human degeneracy.

Villon sings of Harald Hardrada dying at Stamford Bridge and mentions Simon Bolivar whom the Time Patrol helped.

The John Bullish Englishman who enters next is named at the end of the story - Winston Churchill.

There are more. We can discuss which characters could profitably visit the Old Phoenix but we should mainly appreciate how well Anderson blends together those that he does send there.

Multiverse

Poul Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, is the setting for:

"House Rule"
"Losers' Night"
A Midsummer Tempest, xi THE TAPROOM OF THE OLD PHOENIX.
A Midsummer Tempest, xii LATER.
A MidsummerTempest, Epilogue THE TAPROOM OF THE OLD PHOENIX.

In A Midsummer Tempest, the inn is a meeting place for:

Prince Rupert from the Shakespearean universe of the same novel;

Holger Carlsen from the Carolingian universe of Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions;

Valeria Matuchek from the magical universe of Anderson's Operation Chaos and Operation Luna.

In "House Rule," the inn is a meeting place for:

Nicholas van Rijn from the hard sf universe of Anderson's Technic History;
Sancho Panza from Don Quixote;
Erik the Red, possibly from our universe.

Other guests from our universe or nearer ones include:

the first person narrator of the two short stories;
Leonardo da Vinci;
Albert Einstein;
Heloise and Abelard;
Francois Villon;
Winston Churchill;
an unnamed but identifiable Irish political leader.

Anderson wrote that he hoped to return to the Old Phoenix again...

The inn could have provided a framing sequence for a collection of new stories to display each of the different genres that Anderson wrote. Neil Gaiman used his Inn of the Worlds' End as a Chaucerian venue.

Today, I have read in Latin Caesar's and Tacitus' accounts of the Druids and their resistance to Roman rule.

Losers' Night

Returning to Poul Anderson's collection All One Universe, I had intended to reread some items that have not been mentioned on this blog as yet but first was drawn back into rereading "Losers' Night," although this has been discussed in relation to other Old Phoenix and parallel universe stories.

Every word of the story is perfect:

how the narrator finds the inn on a country road at night;
the signboard creaking in the wind;
the bronze elephant's head handle;
the interior of the inn, which I described in an earlier post.

We might expect the narrator to meet someone who recounts a single story to him and thus also to us. Instead, this is like a real night at the Old Phoenix. We read snatches of conversation, some that the narrator engages in and others that he overhears. We easily recognize two famous political leaders from different parts of the British Isles although one is not named and the other not till the end.

Francois Villon composes verses about Harald Hardrada and Simon Bolivar, thus echoing two other works by Anderson, and we understand that, on a previous night at the Old Phoenix, Villon had not interacted amicably with Kit Marlowe.

It is getting late so I will finish reading tomorrow.