The Sunless River

Gods on their bridge above
Whispering lies and love
Shall mock your passage down the sunless river
Which, rolling all it streams,
shall take you, king of dreams,
Unthroned and unapproachable for ever
To where the kings who dreamed of old
Whiten in habitations monumental cold.
-copied from here.

We have connected the works of Poul Anderson, SM Stirling, James Elroy Flecker and Neil Gaiman several times, e.g., here. (See also here.) Maybe Flecker's "sunless river" can serve as the last of our reflections on significant rivers for the time being?

"Rivers" would have been a lengthy post if published as a unit but I have been gadding about with social interactions as The Boat Of A Million Years approaches the milestone or way station of yet another year end.

The River Of Time

    riverrun, past Eve and Adam's
-copied from here.

Thus begins and ends James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. There is a Church of Adam and Eve by the River Liffey in Dublin.

Time is compared to a river in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol and also as a river whose course can somehow be diverted.

Back here later.

On The River: The Big One II

The Day Of Their Return.

As the Jade Gate swerves around an obstacle in the rapids between the Cimmerian Mountains, Jao explains:

"'Nothing here is ever twice the same.'" (14, p. 177)

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

― Heraclitus 

-copied from here.

The Riverfolk risk wreck to reach their rendezvous ritual place because:

"'The danger is part of the ritual, Rolf. We are never so one with the world as when - Ai-ah!'" (p. 178)

Jao is interrupted by the approach of another kind of danger, Terran marines.

There is plenty more to post about the River. I had thought that Heraclitus' river was on the James Blish Appreciation blog but can't find it there right now.

Addendum: The quote from Blish about Heraclitus is on this blog here.

Retellings

Neil Gaiman suggests that myths live when they are retold. So read his retellings of Norse myths, then tell them to others.

Mike is another name that should appear more often on this blog. This evening, I told Mike of my ideas for filming the opening section of Poul Anderson's "The Game of Glory." See here. Returning home, I checked Anderson's text and found that I had got a couple of details wrong. Flandry walked under a red dwarf sun, not under a blood red sun - but the reference to blood is appropriate. Snowflakes are compared to blood drops. The murdered man was not a member of Flandry's escort but of another marine patrol. However, I got the gist of the story right. Flandry lives. Good night. 

On The River: The Big One

(The image shows the Mississippi.)

I am starting a post shortly before going to eat with Aileen and Yossi during Sheila's women's musical evening. I will probably not complete my line of thought this time so might serialize it. The line of thought is inspired by the symbolism of the river in Poul Anderson's The Day Of Their Return.

The chaplain of the riverboat, the Jade Gate, explains Riverfolk symbolism -

The River (capitalized): "ongoingness, fate" (13, p. 174);
The Sun: life;
Moons and Stars: the transhuman.

He says that the Riverfolk seek unity and harmony through rites and symbols:

"'We know they are only rites and symbols. But they say to the opened mind what words cannot.'" (pp. 173-174)

That is said of ceremonies in our meditation group. In Poul and Karen Anderson's legendary city of Ys:

" '...we who are educated, do not take ancestral myths for literal truth, as if we were Christians. They are symbols.
-copied from here.

I envisage a universal religion whose adherents not only value every expression of the perennial death and resurrection myth but also recognize Christianity as an important expression of that myth despite the Christians' mistakenly literal interpretation of it.

I am running out of time so will publish this post now.

On The River II

The Day Of Their Return.

(I can't find an image of a riverboat answering the description of the Jade Gate but here is a picture of one in Vietnam.)

I am not going to look for it at this time of night but I had a book about Isaac Asimov's works. The author suggested that some prose is like clear glass - we look through it at the objects described - whereas another kind of prose is like stained glass - we look at it. Asimov's prose is like clear glass. Anderson's is like both.

On the Jade Gate:

"Two sizable deckhouses bracketed the amidships section, their roofs fancifully curved at the eaves and carved at the ends." (11, p. 158)

We visualize the ship. At least, most of you do. I can't visualize. We also appreciate the language: curved and carved, at eaves and ends. Perfect. I cannot speak for anyone else, let alone for a prolific professional author, but, when I begin to write a sentence like that, I try to complete it with as much alliteration and assonance as possible. We start to enjoy the words quite independently of whatever it is that they describe. Are we depraved by nature or deprived by nurture? As an Aldous Huxley character observed, "Black ladders lack bladders."

Christmas preparations are like a black hole sucking in all the energy that would usually go into blogging. Some people here celebrate on the Solstice, 21 December. One couple here parties on Christmas Eve afternoon, then repairs to the Water Witch or the Toll House. Sheila is having another of her musical evenings here tomorrow. Posts will be sparse.

On The River

The Day Of Their Return.

With Erannath's help, Ivar Frederiksen has left the tinerans and become a guest of the Riverfolk. At the prow of the Jade Gate, a gigantic, scowling Fortune Guardian holds a sword and a lotus. (The attached image shows a Chinese fortune deity.)

Jao, a daughter of the captain, serves Ivar. He guesses that she is eight or nine. This time, Poul Anderson leaves it to the reader to calculate Jao's age in Terran years. We have been told that Ivar is eleven and and a half which is twenty Terran.

Ivar vows to bring aid to the tinerans when he becomes able to do so but does not seem to consider that he also was affected by their affliction when he was with them. Would he have attacked a man as readily as he did in other circumstances? He asks whether Fraina had to provoke him into leaving them so soon but did she provoke him or just act naturally?

Wrong Action

The Day Of Their Return, 10, pp. 155-157.

I have just reread and reassessed the above passage. No doubt Mikkal and his sister, Fraina, had intended somehow to remove Ivar from their tineran Train. Fraina had warned Ivar that he would not be able to stay and had already taken all his money.

However, the circumstances of Ivar's expulsion were entirely his responsibility. He had been with Fraina. He saw Fraina willingly accompanying another man. He attacked the man - incidentally nearly sparking a riot. Wrong action. End of. Of course they had to expel him. Mikkal, throwing a knife, could have killed Ivar but did not.

If Ivar had understood and accepted tineran mores, then he would have been able to stay longer and to leave in different circumstances.

Return To The Camp

(Trouble with uploading an image, hopefully to be resolved tomorrow.)

(Shortly afterward: resolved now.)

In The Day Of Their Return, 10, when Ivar and Erannath return from the waterfront tavern in Boseville to the Waybreak Train tineran camp:

they see by starlight, then by lamps on poles above wagons;
the air is moist;
they smell growth;
gravel scrunches and voices break off at sight of the alien, then music is heard.

Thus, a four-senses account of a short night walk and, talking about night, it is time I wasn't here. Maybe more Christmas preparations tomorrow. Christmas advice to Poul Anderson fans: reread "The Season of Forgiveness."

Mutable Human Nature

Human beings, already diverse, will diverge further in changed conditions and new environments. That is the message of the concluding three installments of Poul Anderson's Technic History.

In that History, human beings meet many non-human beings and also many altered human populations. On Avalon, Tabitha Falkayn must remind Christopher Holm that, despite their membership of two different choths, High Sky and Stormgate, they remain physically human, not Ythrian.

On Aeneas, Fraina of Jubilee warns Ivar Frederiksen that "sitters," like him, can never stay in the tineran Trains. She says that her own people are dishonest and irrationally violent. It is true and there is an environmental explanation. Fraina begins the process of easing Ivar out of Waybreak precisely by dishonestly relieving him of his credits and libras.

When Ivar, still identifying with the tinerans, refers to "our carnival" (The Day Of Their Return, 10, p. 152), an older fellow nord warns him of the grief caused by:

"'...tryin' to be what you're not born to be.'" (ibid.) -

- exactly like Tabitha warning Christopher. When Ivar replies that he will guide his own private life, the villager shrugs and apologizes. Privacy is an important principle to nords - but does not exist for tinerans.