Civilization And Freedom

See:

Psychodynamics

Bernal's "Devil" Is Anderson's "Protean Enemy"

The psychodynamicist says that most people hate civilization and could not live happily in a world with neither war nor crime.

The Un-man reflects that we rebel again both civilization and freedom.

These are not quite the same proposition. The psychodynamicist says that people hate the restrictions of civilization because they want to regain a primordial freedom to run, chase, kill, rejoice, feast and then sleep when full. If some people do rebel against freedom as such, then presumably those people do want to be restricted in some way - because they perceive restriction as safe, secure, predictable or whatever?

But what do we think of either proposition? The psychodynamicist goes into more detail about civilization. Trekking through a wild area, he enjoys fresh air, open spaces, a blue jay against green spruce, a brook belling over mossy stones and a thrush singing and wonders why men stopped hunting. Marie suggests that farming made food more secure and certain but he (psychodynamicist/gangster/her kidnapper/Rheinbogen) replies that this was the case only in bad hunting areas where, of course, farming began. He then concedes that there are some advantages to the civilization that has developed from the agricultural surplus:

"'The power, the gadgets...'"

-"License," p. 160.

But that is somewhat half-hearted. Technology is more than gadgets. We have learned about the universe. We read printed books, watch films and discuss them on the Internet. We have vastly expanded the range of our consciousness and understanding. Would we prefer to chase a mastodon? Right at the end, Rheinbogen thinks that he himself needs to hunt to satisfy his instincts but then reflects that research is a hunt, that Newton, Darwin and Einstein neither killed nor stole because they hunted bigger game and that he can do the same as a psychodynamicist.

Before that, he does rightly identify the deadly aspects that civilization has had:

crowding;

confinement to a single place;

anonymity;

being bossed, herded and cut off from nature;

subordinating everything else to a single job.

But he also acknowledges good results like medical science and:

"'...potentialities, if only we can realize them.'" (ibid.)

And we can now realizes potentialities like automation that can end drudgery.

More Mixed Mythologies In Works By Three Authors

In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Morpheus' raven, Matthew, visits (Norse) Swartalfheim - and indeed is involuntarily yanked away from there when ravens gather in the Dreaming because it is threatened by the (Greek) Furies. Swartalfheim, home of the dark elves or dwarves, and Alfheim, home of the light elves, are two of the Nine Worlds in the Ash Tree, Yggdrasil.

Alfheim (scroll down) is in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword. Yggdrasil is in Anderson's Operation Luna and in Mike Carey's Lucifer, the sequel to Gaiman's The Sandman. Carey also gives a big role to Fenris Wolf. Firespear's elf-hounds had:

"...blood of Gram and Fenris and the Wild Hunt's dogs in them."

-The Broken Sword, XII, p. 89.

In The Sandman: Season Of Mists, messages from the (Biblical) One God are relayed by an angel and the former appears as an elderly gentleman in modern garb in Lucifer. He exists but remains in the background in Anderson's The Broken Sword and Operation Chaos.

On Demeter

The Avatar, IV.

The sun, Phoebe, sets behind the Capitol on the brow of Anvil Hill at the end of Pioneer Avenue. Eopolis is intermingled dwellings, small factories, stores etc surrounded by lawns and flowers. The Europa River flows to Apollo Bay and the Hephaestian Sea with green farms but also some remaining blue mariflora and raincatch on the further shore. Frailies and bucearos fly to their nests while starlarks hunt. Cool air bears wild scents.

Broderson's favourite poet is Kipling. He, Broderson, thinks that Demeter is beautiful but wants the universe.

Broderson and his family live on Mountain Road in the Eglise de St Michel suburb where houses and gardens are separated by native meadows and woodlands. Their Hawaiian-style bungalow has:

"...half a hectare of lodix lawn and Terrestrial flowers." (p. 30)

The description of Demeter is not as detailed as Poul Anderson's accounts of Hermes, Avalon, Aeneas, Dennitza etc in his Technic History but is good enough to remind us that we are reading an Anderson text. Broderson, under house arrest, will soon escape out into that Anderson-imagined universe.

Ad astra. 

Some Say...

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

The Wild Hunters are described as anguished and damned. (p. 151) The Carolingian universe embodies a Christian judgment upon a folklore motif.

"Swiftly, swiftly, over the rime-gray wold, under the last stormclouds and the sinking moon, gallop, gallop, gallop." (p. 151)

The Hunters are in the sky, where their horses' hoofs somehow manage to be audible, whereas those who gallop across the wold are Holger, Carahue and Alianora, fleeing before the Hunt. Holger tells his horse that:

"'...we ride against striding Time, we ride against marching Chaos.'" (ibid.)

Dominic Flandry shows us that the Long Night can be delayed but not prevented.

At the end of this last chapter - which is followed by a two-page "NOTE" -, Poul Anderson steps back from his narrative about a man who remembers a life as a twentieth century engineer. When he lifts the sword Cortana, Holger Danske/Ogier le Danois sheds his magical disguise and is recognized by Carahue as he regains his memory and knows himself. Anderson relays to his readers two alternative accounts of what others say about the Defender:

"...some say he waits in timeless Avalon until France the fair is in danger...
"...some say he sleeps beneath Kronborg Castle and wakens in the hour of Denmark's need..." (p. 154)

This is true and not fiction. It is true that some have said that Ogier is in Avalon whereas others have said that he is beneath Kronborg.

This exactly corresponds to the way in which Thomas Malory concludes his account of King Arthur:

"...some men say in many parts of England that Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again...

"...many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: HIC IACET ARTHURUS, REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS."
-see Grallon And Arthur.

Anderson returns to his narrative for a single sentence:

"He rode out on the wold, and it was as if dawn rode with him." (p. 154)

Thus, we step out of fiction, then back into it. Anderson's "Star of the Sea" alternates between different kinds of writing:

reimagined mythologies;
historical fiction;
science fiction;
a prayer.

Wold, Wild Hunt And Milky Way

Three Hearts And Three Lions.

"Moonlight flowed over the wold, gray, shadow-barred, glinting on rime."
-CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE, p. 149.

Every wold description here is worth quoting.

"Far and faint, at the very edge of hearing, the horns blew. They had the noise of wind and sea and great beating wings, a hawk voice, a raven voice. And Holger knew that the Wild Hunt was out and after him."
-CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR, p. 150.

The Hunt, barely audible, sounds like wind, sea, wings, hawk and raven because it is all those things plus human imagination. See Roots Of Paganism.

"Calling, as he used to call, faint and far away,
"In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day."
-see here.

(I previously quoted from "Sherwood" in Brake. See also Unexpected Connections.)

There is another description of the Milky Way.

The Wind Answers Twice

A Midsummer Tempest, xxiv.

After Rupert's incantation, the fire sinks, a cloud covers the Moon, stars fade and:

"Only the wind had speech; and its chill gnawed inward." (p. 216)

I frequently say that the wind comments. This time, it is even described as speaking. Rupert concludes that there is no help. But the wind does something else. Sir William - the text should no longer call him "Will" - feels:

"'...liake I war a dudelsack tha wind's about to play a jig for ghosts on.'" (p. 217)

The King and the Prince had not realized that their answer should come through a man of the land. Sir William, who took no part in the incantation, nevertheless responds to it. The fire leaps up, the cloud departs, stars brighten, the Tor opens, horns sound, the Wild Hunt and the Avalonian knights ride forth, ghosts of monks sing, "'Dies irae, dies illa...'" (p. 219)

A Mutable Pantheon

Solomon sacrificed to Phoenician gods:

"Yahweh would not really be the sole Lord of the Jews until the Babylonian Captivity forced them to it, as a means of preserving an identity that ten of their tribes had already lost."
-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 249.

"'Judaism, Yawhistic monotheism, is new and frail, still half pagan. My extrapolation is that it won't survive either. Yahweh will sink to being one more character in a crude and mutable pantheon.'"
-ibid., p. 308.

That monotheism is lost in Anderson's "Delenda Est" and "The House of Sorrows." The mutable pantheon seems to exist as a live proposition in his Operation Luna where Steve Matuchek reflects on:

the terrible side of Kokopelli;
the deadly arrows of Apollo;
Odin's Wild Hunt;
Huitzilopochtli, eater of hearts;
Jehovah's vengeances. (16, p. 147)

Acculturation And The Alfavala

See "Time Lag."

Alfavala, the natives of Vaynamo, have:

small bodies;
fine green hairs;
long ears;
flat nostrils;
feathery antennae;
very slight linguistic and mechanical abilities.

Hairs, ears, nostrils and antennae quiver as they sense their native environment. Wild Alfavala keep to the forests whereas "tame" Alfvala freely serve men like dogs. They sound like an ideal combination of elves and talking animals in juvenile fiction. A relationship that we expect to be exploitative or oppressive isn't, in this case.

The text describes the Alfavala as "...green dwarfs..." (p. 122) Vaynamoans are raised under a law which says that, because human beings share their planet, they are obliged to respect and help them. Bors Golyev from Chektoi does not understand this. Why not hunt the abos off the land that men could use? After all, they would make good game.

Different acculturations. A child taught that animals lack souls and exist only for human use unthinkingly steps on an ant whereas a child taught that all life is one and that every living being is to be respected lifts the ant to safety.

Science fiction in general and Poul Anderson in particular show us radically different cultures in the future and on other planets.

Falconry In 1245beta AD And in Change Year 46, Part II

Crown Princess Orlaith and her party hunt wild turkeys with Harris' hawks (see image), then Orlaith is attacked by two tigers and I am about to go out for the evening so I will learn the outcome later.

They ride through a swale with earth dams, silver ponds, green grass, reeds, willows, cottonwoods, black hawthorn, wild rose, wax currant, crimson sumac and purple-flowered thistle - game food and shelter.

If I were there, I would enjoy the scenery but not the hunting. Sorry to be hasty, folks.

Morrigu And Other Myths

"'The wings of the Morrigu will be beating over this, Gwyn ap Nudd will lead the Wild Hunt riding, and many a Woman of the Mounds will keen from the rooftree at night.'"
-SM Stirling, The Golden Princess (New York, 2015), Chapter Eighteen, p. 441.

Posts are few and short when most of a day is spent not reading but visiting churches, temples, museums and cafes. However, this single sentence contains five phrases that I considered worth googling.

Stirling's characters are poised at the start of the Quest for the Shinto sword but it will be a little while before I am able to read as far as the beginning of the Quest proper. Readers can pause or rewind the timeline of a novel. Can superhuman beings do likewise with our timeline? If so, then I think that they must inhabit a temporal dimension transcending ours just as ours transcends the temporal dimensions of our works of fiction. See here.

Imperial Galactography And More Dennitzan Geography

In Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, the planet Esperance is said to be close to the Domain of Ythri. Of course this planet is close to that Domain. The Terran attack on Ythri and its colonies was launched from Esperance in The People Of The Wind. From Diomedes to Dennitza is a month by hyperdrive even in Dominic Flandry's super-fast Hooligan. Again, this has to be the case because the Zorian System is on a march of the Wilderness between the Empire and the Roidhunate so that it has got to be very far away from most other places in the Empire.

Ythri and Esperance contribute passively (not actively) to the plot of A Knight... Their mere location makes them important.

"On the tundra far north of the Kazan, Bodin Miyatovich kept a hunting lodge." (A Knight..., Chapter XII, p. 506)

Bodin and his guests:

hunt gromatz, yegyupka or ice troll on horseback with hounds;
sail on wild waters;
ski on glaziers;
sit comfortably by a great hearth fire during blizzards.

The lodge, built of granite blocks, is surrounded by:

red-purple mahovina;
clumps of firebush;
windblown plume;
blinking pools.

Visible from a slate terrace that juts from the lodge is the two kilometre high shimmering ice cliff worldwall from which a river of melt water brawls nearby while a sheerwing flock cries remotely overhead.

Are there really such terrestroid planets out there? So many extrasolar planets are being discovered that maybe the answer is yes.

Wild Cattle

SM Stirling, The High King Of Montival (New York, 2011), Chapter Thirteen.

"A herd could flee with its most timid, or charge with the most aggressive." (p. 259)

Unfortunately, this is also true of human beings. However, it does mean that individuals or small groups can give a lead, sometimes in a good direction.

When the travellers kill several wild cattle, Cernunnos, St Hubert and Ullr are invoked. (p. 261)

Before the Change, each person knew a small part of the "'...scientific arts, and they traded the results among themselves, and there were so many that that was workable.'" (p. 255) After the Change, the important knowledge is how to:

farm;
fight with a sword;
hunt with bow or spear;
milk or butcher a cow;
make butter;
tan leather;
shoe a horse.

I think that the optimum society would be one whose members enjoyed the benefits of technology but who would also be able to survive and thrive if those benefits were lost.

Meanwhile, Greater Britain thrives under William the Great! (p. 269)

"...the Change made all the old stories real."

SM Stirling, The Sword Of The Lady (New York, 2009), Chapter Sixteen, p. 471.

In Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, all the deities coexist, including Odin and the White Christ, whereas, in SM Stirling's Emberverse, the deities have come into existence? Or something. I think. I don't know yet. Thus:

Rudi Mackenzie meets Odin and Father Bear in dreams;
Father Ignatius meets Mary in a waking vision;
we see someone else enter the Summerland;
a godwoman senses the Wild Hunt overhead.

It is comprehensible that, after the Change, several small groups took the opportunity to reorganize life on the bases of Wicca, Asatru, Tolkien etc but something else is happening as well. The old stories are becoming real.

The Wild Hunt

"...some danced with spears flashing dully in the gray light, enacting the Wild Hunt."
-SM Stirling, The Protector's War (New York, 2006), Epilogue, p. 588.

See:

The Wild Hunt
The Wild Hunt
The Wild Hunt II

- and searching the blog for "The Wild Hunt" brings up some other references. However, I will now join not the Wild Hunt but the Lord Morpheus.

Social Changes In Manse Everard's Lifetime: Attitudes To Hunting

There are more of these than we might think.

Everard was born in 1924 and recruited into the Time Patrol in 1954 and is last seen by us on 8 March 1990. To be more precise, we last see him on 11 October 1307 but, in this post, I am discussing his twentieth century lifespan. From some time before his recruitment until at least 1990, Everard lives in a single apartment in New York.

Hunting
A trainer at the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene period says:

"'...the hunting and fishing are still pretty good even in this neighborhood, and if you fly just a few hundred miles they're fantastic.'" (Time Patrol, p. 8)

Later, Everard and Whitcomb ride outside the Academy and:

"Everard had a rifle, in the hope of bagging a shovel-tusker he had seen." (p. 15)

"The hunting is good in Europe twenty thousand years ago..." (p. 173) -

- so the Patrol has a Lodge in the Pyrenees. When Van Sarawak says that mammoths have been spotted, Everard replies, "'I've bagged one.'" (p. 174) However, when he revisits the Lodge with Wanda Tamberly, they hunt:

"...for mammoth, reindeer, wild horse with camera rather than gun. Born and raised when she was, Wanda disapproved of blood sports. His background had been different." (The Shield Of Time, p. 294)

Everard's class at the Academy was recruited from the 1850-2000 period so they would have included some with Wanda's attitude. Everard recruited her to the Patrol in 1987.

Arthur In Anderson

(i) Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, corresponds with British military leaders immediately after the Roman withdrawal from Britain, thus probably the generation before Arthur.

(ii) Hanno the immortal converts to Christianity at the court of the post-Roman British warlord, Artorius.

(iii) King Arthur and his knights from Avalon emerge from Glastonbury Tor to fight for Charles I against Cromwell in the Shakespearean timeline.

(iv) Arthur's sister, Morgan le Fay, remains active in the Carolingian timeline.

Also from the Tor comes "'...the true Wild Hunter, Gwyn ap Nudd, leading the heathen dead from Annwn...'"
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), Chapter xxiv, p. 218.

The Wiki articles show connections between Arthur and both Gwyn and the Wild Hunt.

He Knew Himself

Poul Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions, like his The Broken Sword, is not a mythological retelling but a sequel.

The ruined and abandoned church mentioned here is called St Grimmin's and is also where Holger's sword has been hidden. As soon as he reaches the church, the story is effectively over. The Wild Hunt backs off:

"Holger heard the mare cry out once, briefly and horribly, as the roaring overwhelmed her.
"And then it was gone. The wind was gone too. Silence shot up like a scream."
-Chapter Twenty-Four, p. 151.

After all that racket, sudden silence is as shocking as a scream. The old, lame Hell Horse lurks in the graveyard but leaves when Holger and his companions enter the church. Although the steeple has fallen, the roof is gone and the windows are empty, the crucifix is intact above the fallen chancel and Holger sees "...Christ's face against the stars." (p.152)

How significant are the stars in the works of Dante Alighieri, Poul Anderson and James Blish?

When Holger holds the sword Cortana, he knows himself:

Holger Danske;
Ogier le Danois;
a prince of Denmark;
given strength, luck and love by Faeries when in his cradle;
Charlemagne's finest knight;
defender of Christendie and mankind;
defeated, befriended and wandered far with Carahue of Mauretania;
when old, was taken to Avalon and rejuvenated by Morgan le Fay;
after a hundred years, returned to defend France and was carried away again;
either waits in timeless Avalon or sleeps beneath Kronborg Castle;
"...wakens in the hour of Denmark's need..." (p. 154).

After the Wild Hunt and the Hell Horse, there is yet one more enemy. The noise of an army, the earthquake hammering of hoofs, the sound of trumpets and the clangor or arms mark the riding forth on mankind of the host of Chaos. However, after Holger's self-recognition, only one more sentence is necessary to complete the narrative:

"He rode out on the wold, and it was as if dawn rode with him." (p.154)

There has been time for only brief farewells to Alianora and Carahue. If there is one disappointment, it has all been very abrupt.

Getting To Grips With The Texts

Recently on the blog I have summarized Poul Anderson's accounts of Avalon, a troll and the Wild Hunt. Why do I do this? My readers can read or reread Anderson's works for themselves. They certainly can and I try to encourage them to do so. But I personally find that I appreciate these works much more if I analyze and summarize chosen passages in this way whereas if instead I just read quickly through a novel to its happy ending or plot resolution, then I seem to skip over many of the intervening details, which come as a complete surprise on the next rereading. There is that much information, description and allusion on every square inch of a page. The texts are dense or condensed and some paragraphs should be scrutinized carefully at least twice even on a single reading of the novel.

I have yet to reread the conclusion of Three Hearts And Three Lions. And I do not remember how Holger eludes the Wild Hunt, claims his sword or defeats Chaos. We know that there is a "happy ending" of sorts, although Holger is not fully satisfied yet, but how does Anderson conclude the novel and does he do it as well as usual?

The Wild Hunt

We have read about the Wild Hunt:

"...the dead riding on the night wind..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 333-465 AT 1980, p. 390.

"Something white flickered yonder - a scrap of cloud, or Swanhild riding behind the Wanderer?" (op. cit., 374, p. 465)

In Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions, Chapter Twenty-Four, Holger is pursued by the Wild Hunt, his last challenge:

faint far horns like wind, sea, wings, a hawk and a raven;
shouting wind;
shrilling, wailing anguish;
the horns of the damned;
hoofs in the sky;
immortal hounds baying;
shrieking sorrow;
the sound of the feet of nightmare dogs;
lunatic yelling;
when Holger looks back, Alianora's hair hides their pursuers;
metal ablaze;
dead men's bones clattering;
"...surely all men are pursued with us..." (p. 151);
- by striding Time and marching Chaos;
the Wild Hunt howling and sweeping downward;
clamoring winds and murk;
cold through the heart;
wind whistling between the ribs;
an overwhelming roar.

How will he get out of this one? A nightmare enacted, especially Alianora's hair hiding the pursuit.

I know a self-professed "Dark Wiccan" who worships Herne the Wild Hunter and acknowledges that Wodan was a previous version.

Terrible And American Gods

Poul Anderson, Operation Luna (New York, 2000), Chapter 16.

Steve Matuchek lists terrible gods:

Kokopelli/Owiwi;
Apollo with his arrows;
Odin with his Wild Hunt;
Huitzilopochtli who eats hearts;
the vengeful Jehovah.

(I could put links to those divine names but page viewers can google them if they want to know more.)

When Matuchek says "...American gods..." (p. 150), he means "Native American gods," whereas when Neil Gaiman writes American Gods, (and see here) he means "immigrant gods." Some prose fiction reads as if its contents should have been presented in a visual medium. American Gods is to be televised and many of Anderson's works should be.