Eutopia And Sorrows

In the timeline of Poul Andeson's science fiction short story, "Eutopia":

Alexander the Great recovered from his fever in Babylon;

chastened by it, he spent the rest of a long life strengthening his empire;

they had a scientific revolution back then but retained religious tolerance;

thus, the world was spared the Roman Empire, Christianity and the Dark Ages.

It sounds like a good timeline although the shock ending of the story is that, in the modern period, they practice child abuse. (There is always something wrong.)

In the timeline of Anderson's "The House of Sorrows":

the Jews did not return from Babylonian Captivity;

there was no post-Exilic Judaism or Christianity;

lacking a unifying monotheist ideology, Europe centuries later remains divided between warring polytheist factions.

I don't buy that one. Yes, the Roman Empire needed a monotheism but no, they did not need to receive it from Saul of Tarsus. They could have got it from Greek philosophy. The philosophers and the priests had become monotheists surrounded by popular polytheism. Jupiter-Zeus-Thor would have become the One God. The other Olympians and other pantheons would have been demoted to lesser/angelic roles. The word "deus/god," uncapitalized, could have been retained with a changed meaning.

With inputs from Homer, the dramatists, the Mystery religions, the philosophers, Virgil and local pantheons, there might have been a European equivalent of Hinduism: academic debate between proponents of monotheistic, monistic and materialist philosophical systems co-existing with continued polytheist practice at the popular level. Socrates and Caesar are two strong candidates for a sacrificial victim role. In fact, they are complementary: Greek spiritual/philosophical as against Roman military/political. Christianity, of necessity, changed its Messianism from military to spiritual ("not of this world") but Caesarism remained militaristic.

In our history:

the Jewish scriptural canon is the Law, the Prophets and the Writings and that third section includes the Wisdom literature;

the Christian Old Testament is the Jewish canon rearranged and reinterpreted;

the New Testament is new documents, the Gospels etc;

"Homer and the poets," essentially a Pagan canon, i.e., divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality, instead became the beginning of secular literature;

Homer and the poets, i.e., the dramatists, were followed by the philosophers, "lovers of wisdom," Plato even continuing the dramatic form, and by Virgil, essentially presenting a "New Testament" about Rome as the new Troy.

In my proposed alternative history:

the "Old Testament" would be Homer, the Poets and other Writings, including "love of wisdom";

the "New Testament" would be Virgil etc.

Far out.

Strangely, Babylon plays a crucial role in both of these alternative histories imagined by Anderson. The Jews returned from Babylon in our history but not in Anderson's. Alexander returned from Babylon in Anderson's history but not in ours. 

Sunset

"...she stayed near the door, which she left open to let the breeze wander in.
"It kissed her. A sweet smell of haymaking flowed through it. The sun had gone low in the west. A few clouds began to glow, beyond reaches of heath already dusking. So did the mists that eddied ghostly above the mire. Closer to hand, the crowns of trees shone shadowful. Rooks, flocking black across heaven, cawed louder in her ears than the manifold noises of King Harald's steading."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings, Book Five, Chapter I, p. 410.

Gunnhild feels the breeze, smells hay, sees setting sun, glowing clouds, ghostly mists and shadowy trees and hears rooks and the steading. Taste is addressed less often although we had quite a long food thread a while back - although mostly thanks to another author.

While Gunnhild advises her sons, she knows that they are:

"...hearkening like the gods to that spaewife who foretold how the world shall end." (p. 408)

Her thoughts remain heathen and her conversion to Christianity is cynical:

"'...besides salvation, the Church opens a way to more power for kings than ever erenow in the Northlands. Look at England; look at the Empire.'" (p. 410)

Look indeed! Power is more important than salvation.

King Haakon died without a male heir and bequeathed Norway to his enemies, Gunnhild's sons. Thus, they lost every battle but won the war. Neat trick. Haakon says that, if he had lived longer, he would have sought forgiveness in Christendom. This dying intention suffices. At the same time, a skald places him in Valhalla. The Greeks regarded poets as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality, which is why I think that "Homer and the poets" parallel "Moses and the prophets." (See here.) The Vedas, the Eddas, Homer and the poets and the Shinto Records and Chronicles comprise four polytheist canons. If indeed skalds are authorities, then Haakon is with Odin.

He should enter Valhalla because of his valorous deeds and death in battle but should also enter Heaven because he seeks forgiveness. Like Hamlet, Haakon is a man of the transition from paganism to Christianity.

Language

Diverted from rereading The Anubis Gates, we are concurrently reading two recently acquired volumes, one about interpretations of the Bible, the other describing a divergent timeline in which paper and printing with punctuation, upper- and lower-case letters and spaces between words are introduced in the Roman Empire in 167 CE. This convergence of texts focuses our attention on communication and we will now post about that subject, referring of course to our favourite authors, including Poul Anderson, but placing them in a wider context. 

That cooperative manipulation of the environment which generated speech differentiated homo sapiens from all other animal species. Consider the following progression:

spoken language

written language

literature

scriptures

We have evolved a long way from non-, then pre-, linguistic organisms and indeed before them from inanimate matter. The latter is not just inert and dead. Its capacity to change (energy) overcomes its resistance to change (inertia). Without these two contradictory forces, no events would occur and no objects or organisms would remain in existence from one moment to the next. There is spiral development to more dynamic levels of energy-inertia interaction, from inanimate matter through unconscious organisms and animal consciousness to ascending levels of human (and other?) intelligence and self-consciousness. At this stage, we can imagine more highly developed consciousnesses helping and guiding less developed consciousnesses as in the Cosmenosist philosophy in Anderson's The Day Of Their Return. However, this is unnecessary. Ascent to more dynamic and creative levels of consciousness continues - at present - even if only in a single species. At the same time, social inertia pulls us back towards self-destruction. Interaction continues but with unpredictable outcomes: continued ascent or abrupt descent?

Spoken Language

Until they spoke, our ancestors were at most pre- or proto-human. They developed oral traditions which - those that survived - have long since been written down. We read Homeric epics and Buddhist scriptures in Penguin paperbacks.

Written Language

The earliest written language was still largely oral, i.e., with no spaces between written words, people read aloud to make sense of the text and also for the benefit of those who were still illiterate. It was a big discovery that it was possible to read without being heard! Scriptures are still ritually read aloud in places of worship.

Literature

Written language could be just signs, hand-written notes or instructions, shopping lists, private correspondence etc. However, literature, writing handed down the generations, transmits knowledge and culture, improving on the work of the earlier oral traditions. All our friends are here, including Poul Anderson following:

the Bible

the Verse and Prose Eddas

the Sagas

Shakespeare

Mary Shelley

HG Wells

L. Sprague de Camp

Robert Heinlein

etc

Scripture

We have already mentioned Buddhist scriptures, the Bible and the Book of Thoth.

Scripture is literature regarded as authoritative and foundational. Every religious tradition has scriptures. Also, I regard certain texts as proto-canonical, i.e.:

the Greek "Homer and the poets" formally parallel the Hebrew "Moses and the prophets" and were also regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality;

the Eddas are not called "scriptures" only because that was not done in pagan traditions but they are our sources for Norse myths, knowledge of the gods.

When a text is canonized, it is universally known that it is officially regarded as authoritative even by those who can neither read nor understand it and it becomes effectively a blank screen onto which later generations project whatever they want. Christian Nazis: Jesus was Aryan, not Jewish. An extreme example but nevertheless an example. He is also a shaman, a yogi, a Bodhisattva, an astronaut and everything else imaginable.

SM Stirling's American time travellers arrive after the closure of the Christian and Jewish canons but nevertheless they radically change history and also introduce printing very early. How will that affect later uses of the Bible in public worship, private reading, social ideology etc?

One of Poul Anderson's time travellers must avoid changing the content of the Germanic literature that he studies.

In one of Anderson's divergent timeline, a medieval theocracy survives into the twentieth century. Clergy rule in the name of the Bible but, obviously, most people will not need to read even a word of it. It will not even have been translated into the vernacular. The church controls printing.

Now I want to get back to some reading! (And a little eating and drinking. Satisfy the inner man.)

A Literary Pagan

In Poul Anderson's The Golden Horn (New York, 1980), Harald's friend, Nicephorus Skleros, is what I call a literary Pagan. He quotes the Classics the way another Christian would quote the Bible:

" '...a country dweller who seldom left his Homer and Plutarch for the city.' " (p. 122);

he says that Harald smote the infidel " '...as if Achilles had come back from Elysium...' " and quotes Homeric lines (pp. 122-123);

serves in a military campaign to see " '...where the Athenian expedition ended and where Archimedes wrought...' " and to understand war so that he might better understand the poets and historians (p. 123);

says that the Varangians are like the Achaeans returned and Harald a new Odysseus;

regrets that " '...the life of Hellas has run out in memories, old books and dusty dreams...' " (p. 124);

promises to read Aristotle to Harald, " '...clear cool reasoning...' " (p. 124);

values Hellenic thought, not mysticism;

admires an image of " 'Aphrodite risen new-born from the sea...' " (p. 132);

describes the Norse Harald as " '...heir to the throne of Hyperborea.' " (p. 133);

swears " 'By Zeus...' " and " '...by Apollo...' " (pp. 134, 139);

shows Harald the Bellerophon statue of Perseus and his winged horse;

listens to Aeschylus' Agamemnon read by his daughter.

The Hebrew scriptures were "Moses and the prophets." The Greeks likewise recognized "Homer and the poets" as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality. Nicephorus lives imaginatively in Greek literature, not in Christian scripture.

(A Neil Gaiman character, asked what he thinks about a hereafter, quotes Kipling: "They will come back..." If poets are authorities in such matters, then I am with Shakespeare: "Our little lives are rounded with a sleep.")

The Roman Tradition

The Aeneid, with which I currently struggle, is the epic of the Roman myth. As such, it explains the wars between Rome and Carthage as originating in the personal conflict between Aeneas and Dido. (Not trade rivalry but mythical founders explain everything.)

Thus, the Aeneid is variously relevant to Poul Anderson's works:

the originals of Odin and Thor escaped from Roman slavery;

the Time Patrol ensured Roman victory against Carthage, kept Germania in the Empire despite the pagan prophetess preaching the destruction of Rome and prevented a post-Roman-British-European world civilization;

the last King of Ys was a Roman centurion;

Manuel Argos based his Terran Empire on the Roman Empire.

Thus, Anderson's antecedents are considerably older than Wells, Stapledon or Heinlein.

Have I said that I detect parallels between Classical and Biblical traditions?

Homer and the poets, like Moses and the prophets, were regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality;

Greek "philo-sophia" is love of wisdom and the Hebrew Writings include Wisdom literature;

Virgil's poetry of the Augustan Age is like a pagan New Testament;

the Fourth Gospel identifies Jesus with the Word that was in the Beginning, an idea adapted from Greek philosophy, while Virgil's Aeneid has Caesar's soul in Hades waiting to be born long before the founding of Rome;

the promise to Abraham and the promise of everlasting Roman greatness are fulfilled in a single church - if you see it that way, of course! (And Anderson appropriately speculates on the future of that church.)

Myths Ancient And Modern

Homer and the poets, i.e., an epicist and some dramatists - the Greek equivalents of Moses and the prophets -, re-expressed ancient myths whereas Olaf Stapledon, a successor of HG Wells, intended his future history to be a modern myth. Stapledon's Last Men, Wells' Time Machine and Poul Anderson's Tau Zero are indeed modern myths.

Homer described gods in ancient times whereas Stapledon and Anderson describe god-like beings in remote futures. Stapledon compared his time-traveling Neptunian observers of the Great War to the Homeric gods observing, and intervening in, the Trojan War. Anderson's Time Patrolmen intervene on ancient and medieval battlefields and in London during World War II. The World Wars, history to us, were speculative fictions in works by Wells.

Thus, we can contemplate:

the Homeric Olympus and Trojan War;
the Biblical narrative from Genesis to Apocalypse;
wars throughout history and the twentieth century;
Wells' fictional twentieth century and our real one;
Wellsian, Stapledonian and Andersonian time travelers;
the Time Traveler's Further Vision;
Stapledon's Last Men on Neptune;
Anderson's time dilation and cosmic cycle;
Anderson's Genesis - a new beginning in a geological future.

That is quite a lot to contemplate. Please give me a moment here.

Myths And Souls

Orion Shall Rise, CHAPTER FIFTEEN, 5.

Plik thinks that Iern is disturbed because, by conversing with Vanna, he finds himself "'...in a foreign myth.'" (p. 268) According to Plik, Vanna has the ultimate Gaean soul just as St. Francis of Assisi and St. John of the Cross have two aspects of the ultimate Christian soul. Which aspects?

Plik thinks that a deep conflict of mystiques is transforming people and civilizations into archetypes reenacting ancient myths because only myth and music can address certain truths. Apollonian Domain and Arthurian Maurai are in conflict with Orphic Gaeanity and Faustian Northwest Union. Demons attack gods of sky, sea and earth and the coming war will end the world.

Iern, horrified, reassures himself that Plik is not a prophet. However, he is a poet. Judaeo-Cristian scripture begins with "Moses and the prophets" whereas Classical literature begins with "Homer and the poets" but both of these beginnings were regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality.

I once read that a poet who is too close to his audience merely tells them what they want to hear and that a poet who is too far ahead of his audience is a voice crying in the wilderness whereas a poet who gets it right tells his audience what they need to hear in terms that they understand. We might have exhausted Plik and his implications for the time being.

Some sf is futuristic travelogues. Orion Shall Rise takes on this aspect. CHAPTER FIFTEEN has introduced Iern to Gaeanity and CHAPTER SIXTEEN, which I cannot handle at this time of night, begins by referring to "His first month in the Northwest Union..." which "...turned into a voyage of discovery." (p. 272)

"No Boundary In Space Or Time"

Poul and Karen Anderson's character, Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, loves the Roman epic, the Aeneid, but dislikes Greek poetry because he does not understand the latter.

I suggest that Homer and the poets are the Classical parallels of Moses and the prophets while the Aeneid parallels the New Testament. The Bible is Hebrew and Greek; the Classics are Greek and Latin.

 In the Aeneid, Jupiter promises:

"'To Romans I set no boundary in space or time. I have granted them dominion, and it has no end.'"
-Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. WF Jackson Knight, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1982), p. 36.

Well, it is a national epic. Mussolini might have thought that he was regaining the endless dominion. Manuel Argos bases his Terran Empire on the Roman Empire. Combining Classics and scriptures, someone else might argue that the Roman Catholic Church fulfills both the promise to Abraham and Jupiter's prophecy of endless Roman dominion?

Poets And Prophets

SM Stirling, Shadows Of Annihilation, Advance Reading Copy.

Horst thinks:

"Things change so fast in our times! What did that Marx fellow say...all that was sacred is profaned, all that was solid melts into air? Perhaps he should have been a poet, not a failed prophet." (ELEVEN, p. 251)

Poets and prophets are related. Whereas the Hebrews had Moses and the prophets, the Greeks had Homer and the poets. Both Biblical and Classical literary sources were regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality.

Any writer addresses his public about life. If he is too close to his public, then he writes what they expect, producing trite, pro-status-quo cliches, whereas, if he gets too far away from or ahead of them, then he becomes a voice crying in the wilderness. I have read the suggestion that the perfect poem expresses an equilateral triangle with poet, public and life equidistant from each other. Thus, the poet neither panders nor preaches but provokes?

I agree that things change fast and that Marx expressed this poetically.

Bring Down Rome

"Star of the Sea," 10.

Veleda's speech or sermon has to be performed on screen. The part that we read concludes:

"'Hoofs in heaven heavily ring. Lightning leaps, blazing lances. All the earth resounds with anger. Seas in surge smite the shores. Now will Nerha naught more suffer. Wrathful she rides to bring down Rome, the war gods with her, the wolves and ravens.'" (p. 556)

Whose gods are stronger? Virgil prophesied eternal empire for Rome - which perhaps she still has in the spiritual realm. The Classical and Biblical traditions converged. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Fourth Gospel identifies the prophesied Christ with the philosophical Logos. Although Moses and the prophets displaced Homer and the poets as inspired authorities on theology and morality, the Greeks remained the genesis, as it were, of secular literature. This comprehensive synthesis leaves us Northerners with our Eddas on the periphery of Eurasian civilization where the Time Patrol labours to keep us.

Poets And Truth

Roma Mater, II.

The poet, Laidchen maqq Barchedo, praises King Niall in verse at a feast. Niall says afterwards:

"'What a poet says is true.'" (p. 42) (!)

What is truth?

Niall adds:

"'He may find fresh words for the clothing of truth...'" (ibid.)

In other words, a story can be told in different ways. The druid, Nemain maqq Aedo, agrees and elaborates:

"'...indeed truth is a lady who has many different garments to wear.'" (ibid.)

Are we still talking about truth?

Poets, like prophets, were regarded as inspired. We have posted about "Homer and the poets" a few times before. See here.

Wellsprings Of Dream

Poul Anderson, "Wellsprings of Dream" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1997), pp. 235-247.

Please read it! But maybe also bear with me while I appreciate the article by summarizing it. In this collection, Anderson tries to display every aspect of science. He therefore includes one story about telepathy and also this article, "Wellsprings...," about ideas.

In "Wellsprings...," He suggests that Homer and the poets:

celebrated great deeds;
upheld ideals;
"...fabled of wonders..." (p. 237) -

- and that sf does the same for science, evoking our potential future equivalents of:

Scylla
Polyphemus
Lotophagoi
Circe
Phaeacia 

I was familiar with only three of those names and had trouble spelling the fifth. Here Anderson effortlessly combines mythological and scientific knowledge. It is all one universe. I will have to post about this article in stages.

Poets

"Once in his drifting to and fro across Earth, Jesse Nicol found a quivira left over from olden times."
-Poul Anderson, Harvest The Fire (New York, 1997), PROLOGUE, p. 9.

A "quivira" is a virtual reality apparatus.

The consistent message of Anderson's "Harvest of Stars" Tetralogy is that, in this future history, mankind is in a long term malaise and decline. Nevertheless, I like the idea of a peaceful Earth where a man can wander to and fro and find high technology from olden times.

Nicol, who wants to be a poet, refers to Homer and quotes Shakespeare, Kipling, Borges and Hopkins. This post is illustrated with lines from a dark sonnet by Hopkins. See here.

Tomorrow: Day trip to London.
Result: Little or no blogging.

Words

Verbal

Homer worked only with spoken words. Authors of prose fiction work only with written words.

Audiovisual

Oral narrative became drama with the addition of extra speakers and actions. Film replaces stage sets with locations.

Visual-Verbal

Representational art becomes sequential art story-telling with the addition of extra pictures, captions and speech balloons.

Nowadays, two main creative groups work only with words: poets whose works are meant to be heard or read and authors of prose fiction which is meant to be read.

The paradox that I find is that Poul Anderson in particular vividly describes natural phenomena so that his readers should be able to imagine the colours of a sunset, the brilliance of the Milky Way etc. One problem with this is that some of us, maybe only a very few, lack any ability to visualize. The more basic question is whether the prose author is trying to do with words alone what can only really be done by pictorial art or on film.