Light And Dark

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

Our primary sense is sight. We neither smell objects nor hear echoes from them but see them. Therefore, we associate (Biblical) "revelation" - and, still more explicitly, (Buddhist) "enlightenment" - with light.

"In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John, 1: 4-5)

"The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." (John 1: 9)

(In one tradition, the light becomes a man. In the other, a man becomes enlightened.)

Although we are not intelligent sea-dwellers, like the Keiki Moana, they too might associate either revelation or enlightenment with sunlight becoming visible above them as they return from the depths. So what "revelation" might they find in the opposite direction in the cold, dark and pressure at the limit of survivability? Poul Anderson describes this "religious revelation" with two words and one phrase:

"...awe and mystery and the implacability of the universe." (p. 130)

- or, to summarize more briefly, awe, mystery and implacability. Yes, these words are appropriate. Personally, when I swam down so far that I suddenly experienced cold, darkness and pain in both ears, that was not a religious experience but I am not an intelligent seal!

We remember Anderson's The Merman's Children and "Homo Aquaticus," the latter an instalment of his Kith future history series - and also the Starkadian sea-dwellers in his Technic History.

Time Passed

The Merman's Children, Book Four, X.

"Time passed." (p. 246)

See Seasons And The Mermen.

"So time went as it ever had..." (p. 247)

"Nearing midsummer, the sun was yet above the Kattegat..." (ibid.)

We have watched the full cast of characters as they interacted with each other and with their changing circumstances. Now time passes as they age, their younger experiences becoming older memories. The novel approaches an end and a resolution for Tauno who has not gone the way of his surviving kin.

In the end, what more can be said about life than that time passed? Those two words encompass all experience. Remember those who were old when we were young and reflect that life will continue when we are dead. Time passes.

Gospodar And Rex

"Gospodar" means "lord" or "master."

In Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, the head of state of the planet, Dennitza, is the Gospodar.

In Anderson's The Merman's Children, when the merman, Tauno, masquerading as the human Herr Carolus Brede, visits Dalmatia, he is there addressed as "Gospodar Carolus." (Book Four, VI, p. 223) We are surprised to recognize a title used in A Knight... repeated here. At least I am. (Two very different novels.)

"Carolus" is "Charles." Thus, King Charles III of England was referred to, during his coronation, as "Rex Carolus."

Thus, the phrase, "Gospodar Carolus," evokes considerably more than it is probably meant to but that is the nature of words and names.

In Sorrow

The Merman's Children, Book Four, V.

Before closing for the night, we notice yet another Biblical quotation that we seem not to have noted before. Ingeborg, former prostitute, now kept woman, tells a merwoman:

"'...we on the land bear the curse of Eve. How often I've heard told me the word of God - "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" -'" (p. 218)

Genesis 3: 16.

No. Not every scripture is true for all time.

Contrasts

The Merman's Children, Book Four, V.

We are still focusing more on the descriptions of nature than on what the characters are doing.

When Tauno and Niels ride on a common outside Copenhagen on "a sweet spring day" (p. 215):

new grass is "vivid" (ibid.);

leaves are "a green mist" (pp. 215-216);

the sky is "overarching blue" (p. 216);

storks return;

the breeze addresses three senses simultaneously because it is described as fresh, as loud and as "...full of damp odors." (ibid.);

hoofs thud.

The storks are not only part of the scenery but also symbols:

"...harbingers of summer, bearers of luck." (ibid.)

That is in the eyes of the beholders.

Contrast:

rain sluicing and brawling;

streets become rivers;

lightning flaring;

thunder sounding like "...huge wheels..." (p. 217);

wind whooping;

a tile stove heating a room;

candles lighting wainscot, hangings and carved furniture;

privacy behind closed doors;

the storm battering shutters during a conversational silence.

Then again:

"Spring ran wild with blossoms and birdsong, a season of love, a season of forgetfulness and farewells." (p. 219)

That is partly the season and partly what is happening to the characters.

Wind Off The Sea

The Merman's Children, Book Four.

"[Eyjan] and her brother walked behind as the four left the strand, that their bodies might shield the humans from the wind that streaked in off the sea." (IV, p. 211)

That has to mean something. Wind from the sea signifies a threat to come. Also, the merfolk will be better equipped to counteract such a threat both to themselves and to their human allies. If Poul Anderson had not intended such an implication, then he would not have ended this chapter as he did. A peaceful wind would have meant that any threats were past. A chapter ending without a wind would have been harder to interpret! This makes us check ahead to the ending of the final chapter before the Epilogue. There we find that Tauno's mate (somehow) calls up "...a strong breeze." Then:

"Their craft surged forward, north-northwest over the Kattegat, to round the Skaw and find the ocean. Above her mast, catching on their wings the light of a sun still hidden, went a flight of wild swans." (XI, p. 256)

The wild swans symbolize the freedom of the merman's surviving children.

Synchronous Reading

"'You will be seeking strange lands,' Panigpak said. 'Their dwellers may speak tongues unknown to you. Whoever wears this amulet will understand whatever is heard, and can reply in the same tongue.'"

-The Merman's Children, Book Four, I, p. 196.

"The remarkable intentional translators everyone on Oric wore around their necks like amulets decoded the intent of any speaker into the language of the listener..."

-Elliot S. Maggin, Superman: Last Son Of Krypton (London, 1978), 9, p. 66.

See also:

Diaglossa

Where Is My Universal Translator?

The one thing that I do not do here is make all this stuff up. Now I really will try to get back to and stay with that other reading.

On Bornholm

The Merman's Children, Book Four, IV.

A ship crosses the Baltic Sea from Copenhagen to Bornholm and docks at Sandvig near Hammer House.

Whitecaps are gray. The sky is pale and whistling. Pebbles rattle. Gulls fly and mew. Brown tangled kelp, strewn on the sand, bladders popping, smells of the deeps. Also: dunes, grass, moor, heather and a standing stone. (Three senses.)

The merman's children wade ashore, naked, Tauno's hair greenish-gold, Eyjan's bronze-red with a seaweed undertint.

Conversation commences but I have formed the habit of pausing on the descriptions. And what descriptions these are with the merfolk effectively personifying the elements and the deeps. In fact, in the prevailing mythology, merpeople are entirely of nature because they lack the human souls that would link them to the supernatural. But they have been in those deeps that the kelp evokes.

(Here, it is time for a pause for other reading.)

Nada

The Merman's Children, Book Four, III.

What is it like to haunt the lake where you drowned? Poul Anderson imagines even this. Winter is lonely. Fish, never good company, grow sluggish and lose:

"...their gleaming summer grace." (p. 206)

Sleeping frogs no longer croak. Migrators have left. The remaining waterfowl neither swim nor dive and call but thinly over the bare trees and snow.

For months, Nada floats and drifts, neither blinking nor breathing. She is scarcely there, as Homer imagines the shades in Hades.

Then the Christianized merman, Vanimen, threatens this inoffensive being with endless burning. Nice one, Vanimen! (I don't think.)

Five Senses On The Caithness Coast

The Merman's Children, Book Four, II.

Shadowed wavelets are dimly silver. Reflected sunlight warms the cliffs. Roasting seal and auk smell good. Guts growl. When eaten, the food is savoury. When night falls, crackling flames flicker red, yellow and blue with a coal-glow core and the smoke is pungent. (Five senses.) 

When Tauno follows his sister's spoor, an upward footpath reveals heather sloping down towards gray moorland whitened by snow patches and rime. The trail enters a dale sheltering a croft with oats, barley and sheep. Hayricks and buildings huddle before a Viking grave-mound and a Pictish keep. Dogs bay but flee from the scent of a merman. (Three senses.)

OK. I have passed over interactions first between Tauno and Eyjan, then between Eyjan and four men, because I have been focusing on the colours, bodily sensations, odours, tastes and sounds in which Poul Anderson's text is rich. However, Eyjan's feline yowling and a man's shout convey a different kind of sensation.

Some Geography

The Merman's Children, Book Four, II, pp. 200-201.

Pentland Firth

Merry Men of Mey (scroll down in "Pentland Firth")

Swalchie (= "Swelkie"? See above)

Wells (?) of Swona

Bores of Duncansbay

Caithness

Bornholm

On a strip of sand and turf between red cliffs in a narrow inlet of the Caithness coast with wind whistling above, Tauno and Eyjan, seated on fresh seal skins, burn twigs and driftwood with flint, steel and blubber, then roast the seal flesh and an auk and also eat raw fish. We vicariously enjoy this breathing spell after they have kayaked from Greenland.

Whale Song

The Merman's Children, Book Four, II.

Extract:

"Old Bulls: The seasons come and the seasons go,

"From the depths above to the depths below,

"And time will crumble our pride and grief

"As the waves wear even the hardest reef." (p. 200)

In other words, The Triumph Of Time, a James Blish title.

In the Tao Te Ching, water is like the highest good in three ways: it brings life to all, it seeks the lowest place for itself and it overcomes obstacles by patient pressure, not with a hammer.

Extract:

"Though we are they whom the waters bless,

"Our bones will sink into sunlessness.

"The race is old, but the world more so,

"And a day must come when the whales must go.

"The world forever cannot abide,

"But a day must come of the final tide."

"Earth abides..." - but not forever.

But how do the whales know this?

Short Days, White Land, Sheet Ice, Grey Sea, Stinging Wind And Low Clouds

The Merman's Children, Book Four, I.

Darkness drives day away when it is scarcely in sight. Land is white except for cliffs or crags. Sheet ice stretches to the grey, choppy, noisy sea. Stinging wind blows low clouds. When the ice breaks into a floe beneath Tauno and Eyjan, they lower their kayaks. (Three senses.)

I paraphrase Poul Anderson's description which is as vivid as ever but unfortunately brief here, making my paraphrase even briefer.

When the shaman hesitates to impart information to the merfolk:

"Silence lengthened.

"Eyjan lost patience..." (p. 193)

We expect the wind to underline the conversational silence but, for this once, it does not!

Tauno and Eyjan depart from the Greenland Inuit and return to Europe. The plot advances and the merman's children will reunite. The shaman has given them a magical amulet which will have repercussions and which reminds us that what we are reading in this volume is historical fantasy. Anderson also gives us heroic fantasy, historical fiction, historical fiction with a fantasy element, historical science fiction, science fiction, science fiction future history, just about everything, in fact.

Fimbul Winter

The Merman's Children.

A mini-Ice Age approaches. Glaciers grow. Every year, the sea freezes earlier and thaws later. A settlement in northern Greenland is abandoned. A character refers to the Fimbul Winter. (p. 182)

Weather is clear and cold. The sun far to the south merely glances across sea and land before sinking back. Steely blue icebergs move through gray water. Sheet ice forms. Skimming fulmars cry faintly. Snow covers shingle. Sedna must be compelled to release seals. (p. 193)

Again, the characters converse but for now my attention is on the scenery which indeed merits our attention and would usually be quickly forgotten if not recorded.

Shamanism Or Tomfoolery

The Merman's Children, Book Four, I.

The Inuit shaman makes an epic journey and returns with important information. Despite this:

"'It was nothing,' he muttered. 'Just lies and tomfoolery. I am an old swindler, and no wisdom is in me.'" (p. 192)

We have recently discussed Tom Fool.

See:

the combox for During The Storm

blog search result for Tom Fool (scroll down)

Idiom Origins

"Tom Foolery" dates from the early nineteenth century. "Tom Fool" dates from the fourteenth century. The Tom Fool of Muncaster Castle died around 1600 which would mean that he was not, after all, the original Tom Fool as is claimed.

Souls

The Merman's Children, Book Three, XI.

"'...soulless things out of heathendom are not for Christian people to consort with, are they?'" (p. 188)

This is the end of Book Three and of posting for today. (Not before time, says you.)

The introductory Author's Note makes clear that the conceptual framework of the novel is not Thomist theology but medieval popular mythology. Nevertheless, the contradiction is so great that I have to comment. Merfolk exist. That is mythology. They are described as "soulless things." No organism is a "thing," let alone a self-conscious one. If "soul" entails self-consciousness, then the merfolk have, or are, souls.

In any case, they can reason and make decisions. Therefore, they have intellect and will which were meant to be the two faculties of the, supposedly immaterial and immortal, soul. Therefore, by that definition, they already have souls and do not need to be given them.

I now believe that unconsciousness, consciousness and self-consciousness are three qualitatively different properties or states of organisms and that self-consciousness includes intellect and will. Organisms are temporary local negative entropy composed, according to scientific evidence, of mass-energy and of nothing else.

Needless to say, I disagree both with Thomism and with medieval mythology.

Men And Seasons

The Merman's Children, Book Three, II.

"There was a man in Hadsund called Aksed Hedebo, a well-to-do dealer in the horses that were a Danish export." (p. 125)

We recognize this kind of opening sentence. See: 

There Was A Man Called... II

(And see also There Was A Man Called...)

Also instantly recognizable is:

"Summer had passed, fall come back."

-quoted in the preceding post.

For earlier examples of passages beginning with a seasonal change, see:

Seasons

Living With The Seasons

Seasons

Such story-telling techniques transcend particular narratives. A creative author is able to apply different kinds of opening passages to an indefinite number of short stories or novels in any genre. I ought to return to the plot details of The Merman's Children but instead am focusing on other textual peculiarities that are drawing our attention further away from them.

Northlights And Autumn

The Merman's Children, Book Three.

A feud ends, a feast is prepared and:

"That night the northlights came out in such splendor that they covered half of heaven." (X, p. 184)

The chapter ends with "...heaven." If a feud had begun, then a storm would have come!

Chapter XI opens with a change of seasons:

"Summer had passed, fall come back." (p. 185)

Purple ling blooms, rowan flares, golden aspen trembles, wandering geese sing, breath smokes, puddles crunch, cloud shadows chase sunlight, wind is chilly and oaks sough beside a red-bricked building and a heath beyond. Across a lake, the sisters of Asmild Cloister see the cathedral and castle of the market town of Viborg. Riders approach and we return to the plot of the novel but might we prefer to linger with the autumnal scenery?

The Great Nature

The Merman's Children, Book Three, X.

Apparently:

"'...the Great Nature...' was as close as Inuit could come to 'God.'" (p. 181)

That is a good approximation, in my opinion. "Nature" means everything. "Great" emphasizes its immensity and transcendence. Thirdly, and finally, it is not anthropomorphic. "Nature" is impersonal, "it" or "that," not "he" or "she," except maybe metaphorically or mythologically. I once heard a Christian missionary explain on television that he tried to find some figure in a local, e.g., Chinese, mythology that could be identified with the Old Testament deity or God the Father. That will be harder to do if native ideas are impersonalist. If I were to spend some time among the Inuit, then I would be happy to accept their "Great Nature" while maybe also offering some scientific information about how water freezes, fire burns etc.

Wind As Benediction

The Merman's Children, Book Three, IX.

Haakon and his men in two boats aided by Tauno underwater fight the tupilak. Haakon and some others and one of the boats are lost but, despite this, Tauno manages to dismantle and deactivate the horrific manufactured monster. Then:

"When Tauno, air-breathing, reached the second boat, he felt the wind on his brow like an austere benediction." (p. 179)

Extraordinary. That wind which has whined, moaned, threatened and brought winter suddenly becomes a blessing when the story requires one! The immediate struggle at least has ended. We turn the page to learn what will happen next in Chapter X. Tauno and Eyjan still have a mission to fulfill.