Anvil Or Hammer

In this world, a man must be either anvil or hammer.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, "The Story of Brother Bernardus", Hyperion

-copied from here.

This line by Longfellow is quoted at the beginning of Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, Chapter Five.

It is unnecessary to ask the relevance of the quotation. The few surviving Earthmen, surrounded by indifferent or hostile aliens, will continue to survive, and will then prosper, only if they make themselves hammers, not anvils.

Usually, we notice a quotation at the head of a chapter, then instantly forget it, but it must be there for a reason. The sequence of such quotations might summarize or encapsulate the plot of the novel.

Return Of The Wind

"O western wind, when wilt thou blow,
"That the small rain down can rain?
"Christ, if my love were in my arms
"And I in my bed again!
"- Anon. (16the century)"

- is quoted at the beginning of Poul Anderson's After Doomsday, Chapter Four. Its meaning is discussed here. ("16the" is in text of my 1975 Panther Books edition.)

In the second line, "rain" seems to be both noun and verb, subject and predicate. Thus, rain rains. How is this verse relevant to the chapter? I will have to reread the chapter.

A more celebrated poem addresses the west wind. See here. And we have had occasion to refer to that more celebrated poet. See here.

The Dangerous Future

Sometimes the Internet combines an image with a quotation.

Whitehead said it. Some people, including Poul Anderson at the beginning of After Doomsday, Chapter Two, quote the first part of this sentence but place a full stop instead of a semicolon after "dangerous."

We understand that the future is dangerous. In fact, it "invades" the present. See here. We might expect science to equip us for the dangers of the future but instead Whitehead says that it equips the future to be dangerous. Why?

Both Anderson's "Delenda Est" and his After Doomsday quote Whitehead. Study of all the sources cited by Anderson would make for a very well informed sf fandom.

Endure

“Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis” (Then endure for a while, and live for a happier day!).

 -copied from here.

Poul Anderson quotes this line in translation at the beginning of After Doomsday, Chapter Seven.

I gather that it is from Virgil's Aeneid although I cannot find the reference

Addendum, January 1, 2019: Literally, the Latin means just: "Last and save yourselves for second things."

Two Chesterton Quotations In Anderson

Now I learn not only that Poul Anderson quotes GK Chesterton at least twice but also that both of these known quotations are from the same poem, The Ballad of the White Horse. See here.

"I tell you naught for your comfort,
"Yea, naught for your desire,
"Save that the sky grows darker yet
"And the sea rises higher."
"-Chesterton"
-Poul Anderson, After Doomsday (Panther Books, Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975), Chapter Fifteen, p. 149.

The phrase, "Before the gods that made the gods...," which Anderson uses in The Shield Of Time (see here), is taken from the same source although, in this case, Anderson does not tell us that it is a quotation. I can't remember how I found out.

Chesterton's poem also contains at least one other relevant line:

After a judgment day."
-copied from (see the first link above).

The Quotations In After Doomsday

When, in Judgement And Doomsday, I commented on the similarity between the titles of Poul Anderson's After Doomsday and James Blish's The Day After Judgment, I had not realized that the original title of After Doomsday was The Day After Doomsday. See image.

In A Note on Anderson's Use of the Bible, Sean M. Brooks referred to the epigraph of After Doomsday, Chapter One: Ecclesiastes, ix, 12. Sean could also have mentioned that the epigraph of Chapter Six is Isaiah, xiv, 9.

In Quotations, I mentioned that all but one of the chapters in After Doomsday begin with a quotation. They are:

Chapter One, as above;
Two, Whitehead;
Three, Sanders;
Four, Anon.;
Five, Longfellow;
Six, as above;
Seven, Virgil;
Eight, Leland;
Nine, Jacobsen;
Ten, Napoleon;
Eleven, Elder Edda;
Twelve, The Book of Common Prayer;
Fourteen, Bunyan;
Fifteen, Chesterton.

Observations
My next task is to track down more information about some of these quotations.
That well known poet, Anon., sure gets around.
The Elder Edda, the Book of Common Prayer and Bunyan join the Bible as (different kinds of) religious texts.
We quoted Chesterton in The Nine Worthies, "Before The Gods That Made The Gods" and  "Anomalous Variations In Reality" III.

Next

My current agenda includes:

reading for the first time the concluding volume of a series by SM Stirling (see Happy New Year);

rereading for the severalth time a one-off novel by Poul Anderson (see image and Crusade And Comparisons).

Stirling's Change series begins with a sense of adventure in a new world and shows the richness of life in both experiential and monetary terms (see The Mermaid, Newport). There are interesting but also disturbing supernatural developments. How will the series end? This concluding volume begins with a catapult broadside from a frigate at Pearl Harbor in Change Year 46/2044 AD.

My other current reading is less directly relevant to this blog but might be discussed elsewhere, e.g., here.

The High Crusade: Epilogue

"By embracing the Faith, [extra-solar aliens] proved they had souls." (p. 157)

I was taught, which I no longer believe, that the mere ability to reason proved possession of a soul. However, if an animal brain contained an algorithm capable of simulating reason, then it would also be able to simulate conversion to Catholicism.

We think that a clockwork soldier is not conscious because we can fully account for all of its physical features and movements without ascribing any consciousness to it whereas I cannot account for a fellow human being's behavior, including his linguistic behavior, except by assuming that he is conscious like me.

In Cartesian philosophy, animals are unconscious automata whereas, in Catholic theology, they are conscious but without souls so it is intellect and will that are supposed to differentiate the immaterial and immortal soul. Of course merely mechanical interactions do not generate either consciousness or reason. However, neuronic interactions within organisms responding to their environments demonstrably can do so.

The High Crusade: Endgame

Poul Anderson, The High Crusade.

Anderson makes us think that Sir Roger will fail. Brother Parvus writes:

"But just when he was thus laying the cornerstone of victory, it crumbled for him. God rest his soul! No more gallant knight ever lived." (CHAPTER XVII, p. 123)

So he is going to die? Well, yes, like everyone else but not before the end of the last chapter. The EPILOGUE and the untitled opening page are a framing narrative set over a thousand years later. Younger Parvus will outlive Sir Roger. That is all. The latter suffers treachery and a serious setback but kicks back big time to become King Roger I, crowned by the Archbishop of New Canterbury and reigning for a long time.

The record of the route to Earth is lost in the fighting although the traitors had briefly found their way back and glimpsed the pennons of Dover Castle above the white cliffs. Was someone looking up? Could there be a UFO scare in the 14th century? After all, the population of an entire castle and village has disappeared.

The High Crusade: Approaching Endgame

Brother Parvus writes:

"...I shall not set it down in cold words, but fall back on the earlier (and, I think, truer) practice of inventing whole scenes, that folk now dust may live again and be known, not as abstract villainies, but as fallible souls: on whom perhaps God, at the very last, had mercy." (CHAPTER XVII, p. 124)

See "Conjecturally..."

"Sir Roger had established himself on the planet we named New Avalon." (CHAPTER XX, p. 139)

See Avalon In The Galactic Milieu.

Sir Roger, taken prisoner, is divested of his glaive and misericord but nevertheless is able to kick backward with his spur into an enemy's belly and then rip downward...(CHAPTER XXI, p. 150)

See Escape!