Aycharaych The Artist

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XII.

Flandry to Kossara:

"'Not that I really know what drives Aycharaych. Maybe he's an artist of overriding genius. That's a kind of monster, isn't it?'" (p. 504)

But Flandry has already had insight into Aycharaych's motivation. Earlier he said to Desai:

"'I've sometimes thought he's an artist.'" (III, p. 391)

- to which Desai replied:

"'An artist of espionage and sabotage, whose materials are living beings? Well, conceivably.'" (ibid.)

Aycharaych himself told Flandry:

"'In action I find an art; and every art is a philosophical tool, whereby we may seek to win an atom deeper into mystery.'" (IX, p. 463)

It is then that they discuss the poem:

"'Yet half a beast is the great god, Pan..." (p. 464)

-see here.

The Flavian Philosophy II

The Golden Slave, XIII.

See The Flavian Philosophy.

Flavius is at it again:

"'There are no free and unfree; we are all whirled on our way like dead leaves, from an unlikely beginning to a ludicrous end. I do not speak to you now; the sounds that come from my mouth are made by chance, flickering within the bounds of causation and natural law. Truly, we are all slaves. The sole difference lies between the noble and the ignoble.'" (p. 175)

We are whirled on our way. We are leaves with wings that can vary their course slightly but chance has decreed that some of us are motivated to change the direction of our flight whereas others are not. Of course he speaks to her. His words are intelligible and therefore are not random noises like the rustling of leaves in the wind.

CS Lewis argued that, if cerebral processes are caused, then mental processes cannot be reasoned. I discuss Lewis' arguments in section (7) here.

Poul Anderson's rich text combines philosophy, mythology and natural scenery.

Phryne swears "'Before Hades...'" (XI, p. 148)

When the freed slaves, now pirates, liberate wine casks from the captured Bona Dea, she thinks:

"This was going to be a night when Circe reigned." (p. 176)

Meanwhile:

"sundown blazed among restless clouds; the mast swayed back and forth in heaven." (ibid.)

Later, the revels are:

"...as though Pan the terrible had put to sea." (p. 178)

"...half a beast is the great god, Pan..." (See here)

Know Yourself - And Your Enemy

Is a single novel literally inexhaustible? Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows seems to be. Certainly, when I have exhausted all that I can find to say about it this time, I will not have exhausted all that there is to be said about it. Of course, the novel expresses not only its author's conscious artifice while he is writing it but, beyond that, his total knowledge and creativity.

Aycharaych knows the Chereionite heritage that he preserves. See here. But does he also display an impossibly detailed knowledge of Earth? He mentions:

Bach and the St. Matthew Passion;
Rembrandt and his few daubs of paint;
Tu Fu's poetry of dead leaves, snow, departing cranes and an old, shabby, caged parrot;
"negotium perambulans in tenebris";
"Yet half a beast is the great god Pan..." (Chapter IX, pp. 460-464)

Also, earlier in Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra:

Johann Strauss' waltzes;
Richard Strauss' Death and Transfiguration;
Xingu (?). ("Hunters of the Sky Cave," II, p. 160) 

However, Aycharaych has studied his enemy, has secretly visited Earth to walk in forests, inspect paintings and visit graves (p. 161) and is a universal telepath.

"The Empire had never had a more dangerous single enemy." (p. 463)

Heroes II

SM Stirling, The Sword Of The Lady (New York, 2009).

See Heroes.

Rudi Mackenzie, on a heroic Quest, is able to send occasional letters home.

Rudi's mother, Juniper, the Chief and High Priestess of the Mackenzie Clan, is also a musician.

Juniper's songs based on Rudi's letters circulate among the Mackenzies and their allies.

The songs change and Juniper responds by changing them further.

Thus, the story of a vision of the Virgin to one of Rudi's companions is in circulation although we have reason to believe that this did happen.

Juniper mythologizes the Quest while it is happening. Rudi's half-sisters read his letters like an adventure serial and one of them is a bard, quoted at the beginnings of chapters. Juniper's husband quotes:

"'...yet half a beast is the great God Pan...'" (Chapter Six, p. 158) (see here)

If Rudi were to die on the Quest, then there would definitely be a Denial - a myth of his Resurrection and eventual Return.

Heroes And Villains Converse

Heroes and villains not only fight but also sometimes converse so what does Aycharaych say to Flandry or Blofeld to Bond?

Aycharaych
Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 458-465.

Flandry wears a mind screen. Aycharaych would like to be in true communion with him but that cannot be unless one joins the other's cause. He warns Flandry not to wall off his brain too long from the energies that inspirit the universe and comments that the brevity of human life keeps Flandry ever in haste but may also be the root of mankind's greatness.

Aycharaych appreciates Flandry's total personality and a bond has formed between them. He claims that most Chereionites laid aside ephemeral affairs when the human race were apes. He continues to partake in such affairs because there is art in action and every art is a philosophical tool for seeking deeper into mystery. He quotes "'...half a beast is the great god Pan...'" (p. 464) and comments that Flandry also plays a satanic role and might have lived more whole of heart if he had served Merseia. Flandry angrily rejects this last remark.

Aycharaych wants to discourse of Terra's former splendors and modern pleasures.

Blofeld
Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice (London, 1966), pp. 172-173.

Blofeld claims that his blackmailing of the Western World with hijacked atomic weapons might have led to disarmament negotiations, that his bacteriological warfare attack on England might have forced Britain out of its lethargy into the kind of community effort that had occurred during the war and that his Castle of Death is a humane project, offering free death to those seeking release.

Blofeld is far less cultured and much more self-serving than Aycharaych.

Aycharaych In Conversation II

In conversation with Dominic Flandry on the neutral planet, Talwin, Aycharaych refers to Bach's St Matthew's Passion, to Rembrandt and to Tu Fu. When Flandry mentions a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that begins:

"What was he doing, the great god Pan,
"Down in the reeds by the river?"

- Aycharaych is able to recite the concluding stanza:

"'Yet half a beast is the great god, Pan,
'To laugh as he sits by the river,
'Making a poet out of a man:
'The true gods sigh for the cost and pain -
'For the reed that grows nevermore again
'As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 464.

Here explicitly, as Flandry surmised, Aycharaych justifies the suffering of others in the cause of his supposed art:

"'In action I find an art; and every art is a philosophical tool, whereby we may seek to win an atom deeper into the mystery.'" (p. 463)

Not when the actions are as despicable as Aycharaych's in The Day Of Their Return, although, even there, he claimed that he had not really harmed the man whom he made schizophrenic in order to use him as a prophetic dupe.

Mural

I have been reading Poul Anderson since the 1960's. In those days, I also read American comic books. I got back into comics twenty years later. Usually, the only graphic element in a novel or short story collection is the cover illustration -  although some hard back editions do not have one. Novels republished several times over the decades can have a few different covers whereas later novels, even when reprinted, tend to stay with a single cover.

In Poul Anderson's The Byworlder (London, 1974), the character Skip takes two pages to describe a mural of the Revelation of St John the Divine that he himself had painted on the walls and floor of a Bible-belt diner during a week when it was closed. Any screen adaptation of the novel would have to show this mural even though it is described only in a flash-back. The graphic content is vivid and cannot be reproduced here except by quoting the entire passage which I am not about to do.

However, the main highlights are:

the Father's face "'...was half human, half lion'" (p. 87) (this connects with CS Lewis and Hinduism);
"'...his long white hair and beard tossed in the storm of destruction...'" (ibid.);
Gabriel was a jazz trumpeter;
the floor underfoot was Earth with tombstones falling and graves opening everywhere since, by the time of Judgment Day, bodies have been buried everywhere;
different stages of the reconstitution of resurrecting bodies;
"'...a distant view of burning cities, floods, earthquakes...a lightning bolt...'" (p. 88);
the saved "'...whirling upward like dry leaves in a cyclonic wind...,'" all naked (ibid.);
the damned falling and starting to burn;
Satan making a defiant, offensive hand gesture towards God;
"'...the number of the beast in binary'" (p. 89) (?);
the Great Whore of Babylon glad-eyeing the Antichrist...'" (ibid.)

Skip, not a believer, had enjoyed literally interpreting Revelation and had been so engrossed in creativity that it had not occurred to him that the locals would not appreciate it. But they need to ask themselves whether this is what they believe.

A comic script writer would verbally instruct his penciller, inker, colorist and letterer whereas Anderson, a prose novelist, verbally addresses his readers. I am sadly lacking in visual imagination but I expect that most readers can visualize Skip's apocalyptic mural to some extent.