Previous Posts On Amsterdam

Rereading Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea," we check what we have already posted about Amsterdam:

Everard In Amsterdam links to six other posts.

We also find:

Everard In Amsterdam (different)

Everard In Amsterdam III

Contemporary And Cosmic In Amsterdam

The Contemporary In The Cosmic II

Everard In Amsterdam II

The Time Patrol As An Organization

More than we had realized.

Amsterdam II

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

I have eaten two fried eggs and three crumpets and am drinking coffee so now feel able to delve deeper into Poul Anderson's Amsterdam.

Janne Floris' apartment building is "...one of a row on a quiet street, handsome relics from around 1910." (p. 481)

1910: we immediately think of decades of history and also, in this context, of time travel. A directory states Janne's name, floor and profession. Standard practice in Amsterdam? (Cover profession, of course.)

(While speaking to Janne, Everard thinks, "With half a million years or more to guard, the Patrol's forever undermanned..." (p. 485) Only half a million? Has the timeline changed without anyone noticing?)

On returning from horrors at the Roman old Camp, Everard:

"...walked the Amsterdam streets for hours on end, bathing in the decency of the twentieth-century Netherlands." (p. 521)

This next venue reads to me very much like a place where Poul and Karen Anderson had been while holidaying in the Netherlands: the Ambrosia, a Surinam-Caribbean restaurant is on Stadthouderskade and also on a canal in a quiet neighborhood near the Museumplein. The black cook discusses Manse's and Janne's meal with them in fluent English.

They leave the restaurant into mild air smelling of spring after cleansing rain and see a canal boat with a glistening wake.

"They turned from the water and passed between old facades." (p 522)

Walking home, Janne describes her parents. Her father was in the Dutch navy and her mother in the resistance as a schoolgirl during the War. After that, they settled in Amsterdam where she taught Dutch history! Janne also describes her fifteen years among the Frisii, from 22 to 37 AD, and how much she appreciated hot baths, electric lights etc on her return.

Another cyclist passes. Those are the main details about Amsterdam.

Everard In Amsterdam

The Time Patrol In Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam II
Amsterdam (different)
A Moral Question
Time And Change II 

There may be more but these posts summarize a lot of what is good about Poul Anderson's descriptions of Amsterdam in "Star of the Sea."

The Time Patrol In Amsterdam

In the closing decades of the twentieth century:

the Amsterdam Time Patrol office is fronted by a minor export-import business with its warehouse and office in the Indische Buurt;

timecycles arrive in a secret room whose door looks like a wall to ordinary employees;

the manager, Willem Ten Brink, is Patrol chief for this part of Europe, where operations are routine;

the sector has seemed unimportant "...till now."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 478.

What does "till now" mean? Sociologists studying Rome in the early second century AD found a mysteriously altered text of Tacitus' Histories. Janne Floris, ostensibly an administrator in Ten Brink's company, is a Patrol field agent, Specialist second class. Since her field is the Low Countries in the first century AD, the place and period covered by Tacitus, a special agent of the Patrol consults her at length in 1986. The Middle Command asks Unattached Agent Manson Everard to work with Floris because he and she are near contemporaries. Therefore, having called first Ten Brink, then Floris, Everard arrives immediately afterwards by timecycle at the Amsterdam office, speaks to Ten Brink and visits Floris in her apartment, three days after the special agent had consulted her.

But obviously "till now" does not mean "till 1986." I was puzzled by the phrase "Middle Command" until I realized that it must mean that the members of this level of command are human. They are high ranking Patrol officers who must be based in different times and places, communicating either by message shuttles or by time traveling to meet each other. Milieu headquarters is in London, 1890-1910, but obviously the Middle Command have not all crowded into that twenty year period, especially since Patrol medical treatment prevents aging.

The sociologists working in the second century sent a copy of "Tacitus Two" directly or indirectly to someone in the Middle Command. Members of that Command asked a special agent to consult Floris and also asked Everard to work with Floris. This had to happen some time during Floris' and Everard's careers and did happen in 1986 but it could have happened decades earlier or later. The problem that they have to deal with is in the first century so they could have set off to deal with it from any time in the twentieth or twenty first centuries. The phrase "till now" has lost its usual meaning.

Time And Change II

Manson Everard, Time Patrol, Unattached, needs to meet Janne Floris, Time Patrol, Specialist, in Amsterdam. On p. 477 of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol (New York, 2006), Everard arrives by timecycle in the Amsterdam office of the Time Patrol. On p. 481, he presses the doorbell of her circa 1910 apartment. Why has it taken him four pages to get there?

He talks to the office manager, looks around Amsterdam, reminisces about his previous visit thirty four years ago and his subsequent life in the Patrol, takes a canal tour, has eel for lunch and visits the Museum. Walking from the Museumplein along the Singelgracht, he passes through Vondelpark:

"Water gleamed, leaves and grass glowed with sunlight." (p. 480)

He sees a young couple in a canoe, an old couple beneath older trees and a group of shouting, laughing cyclists, remembers Rembrandt and Van Gogh, reflects on the life of the city:

"And he knew their whole reality for a spectral flickering, diffraction rings across abstract, unstable space-time, a manifold brightness that at any instant could not only cease to be but cease ever having been." (ibid.)

He quotes A Midsummer Night's Dream. That was worth a four page delay. My inclination as a Philosophy graduate is to analyze "...could not only cease to be..." but I have done that before. This time, let's just appreciate the prose and its imagery.

A Moral Question

When Manson Everard and Janne Floris had completed their joint mission to the first century AD, Janne spent just over a year of her lifespan tying up loose ends by time traveling about between 70 and 95 AD, then returned to Amsterdam, 1986, in the week that she had left it, because her parents and public persona are there, whereas Manse returned directly to that same week in New York, 1986, where, after a few days, he wrote to Janne, then, on receiving her phone call, traveled by timecycle from the Patrol office in New York to the one in Amsterdam, drew Dutch money and took a taxi to Janne's apartment. Thus, since completing their mission, he has experienced only a few days whereas she has endured over a year, although Patrol medical treatment prevents physical aging.

Although this chapter is set entirely inside Janne's apartment, it retains a hint of Amsterdam: open window; mildness of spring; traffic sounds like distant surf. Janne agrees that it is eerie when the future creates its past. Already knowing of engraved thank offerings to Nehalennia on the island of Walcheren, Janne persuaded the prophetess Veleda to proclaim Niaerdh peaceful and to move her south where she became Neha the Gentle, Nehalennia.

Janne as Niaerdh visited Veleda on her deathbed and promised her a life after death with the goddess. Now she yells. "'It was a lie!'" (Time Patrol, p. 636) Here is the moral question. Was Janne right to comfort Veleda in this way?

Everard In Amsterdam

"Star of the Sea."

After the mythological section I and the historical section 1, section 2 presents an evocative description of contemporary Amsterdam although with enough references to time travel to inform or remind readers that the overriding genre in this work is sf. Everard reflects that the past and future of the city:

"...at any instant could not only cease to be but cease ever having been." (p. 480)

As usual, I disagree with this way of expressing the causality violation paradox. The premature destruction of the Roman Empire by Germanic barbarians would initiate a timeline in which modern Amsterdam never came into existence but would not cause it to cease to exist at any moment in 1986.

Everard In Amsterdam III

"Star of the Sea," 2.

See Everard In Amsterdam II.

When we google the Indische Buurt, we understand why we are told that the Time Patrol has its Amsterdam office there because:

"...exotic-looking people drew scant attention." (p. 477)

There are sidewalk cafes and small bars in alleys off the Damrak which is a partially filled in canal. The red-light district is a dignified old part of town. (I have seen it.) The Oude Kerk is an Old Church which I should have realized. In the Vondelpark, water gleams, green growth glows, a young couple passes in a canoe while an old couple walks beneath older trees and bicyclists shout and laugh. To a Time Patrolman, all this pulsing life is:

"...a spectral flickering, diffraction rings across abstract, unstable space-time, a manifold brightness..." (p. 480)

We know that appearance and reality differ and also that understandings of reality differ. An apparently single static object is really many moving particles - or maybe a spatiotemporal diffraction ring. 

Contemporary And Cosmic In Amsterdam

Manse Everard contrasts the evanescence, the momentary warmth, light and savor, of the Ambrosia restaurant in Amsterdam with the surrounding "unbounded darkness."

This recalls a much earlier work on time travel:

"Man's works were so horribly impermanent; he thought with a sadness of the cites and civilizations he had seen rise and spend their little hour and sink back into the night and chaos of time." (Chapter 3, p. 238)
-copied from here.

However, this vaster cosmic perspective does not prevent Anderson from describing Amsterdam in substantial terms as if it were the setting of a contemporary novel none of whose characters ever considered the unbounded darkness or the night and chaos of time.

We Andersonians contemplate both perspectives.

Amsterdam

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

The most fully realized setting in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is Amsterdam in "Star Of The Sea."

Everard remembers a visit thirty four years previously - longer for a time traveler - and is not disappointed on his return:

scruffy youth but no trouble from the Dam to the Central Station;
side-walk cafes off the Damrak;
small bars with large beer selections;
extraordinary bookstores;
sleaze shops far apart;
a canal tour;
dignified centuried houses concealing the red light district in the old part of town;
a friendly little place serving eel for lunch;
two Museums;
Vondelpark - water, leaves, grass, sunlight, a young couple in a canoe and an old couple under the trees, a band of bicyclists -

- and I need some breakfast. Maybe more on Amsterdam later.

Amsterdam

I have commented before on the Amsterdam passages in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Star of the Sea." Some time travel stories are set entirely in the past, e.g., Anderson's excellent "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks." Some time travelers regularly revisit their base period but merely to report back indoors, e.g., in Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth." In "Star of the Sea," late twentieth century Amsterdam provides a colorful, even exotic, but also safe environment for the intervals between time journeys.

On p. 479 of Time Patrol (New York, 2006), Everard walks from the Dam to the Central Station, takes a canal tour, eats eel and visits the museums. On p. 480, he walks from the Museumplein through the Vondelpark where he sees water agleam and green life glowing with sunlight. On p. 522, Everard and Floris eat Surinam-Caribbean food in the Ambrosia, then emerge into air cleansed by rain beside a canal.

Everard enjoys this evanescence, warmth, light and savor surrounded by an unbounded darkness and so should we.

Through The Past

Recently, when I wrote One Internal Structure, I accurately copied a list of Roman and Arabic numerals from the section headings in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol instalment, "Star of the Sea." However, I had noticed a year date after only one of the Arabic numerals. In fact, there are five and I have now added the other four. The relevant Arabic numerals and their associated dates are reproduced below:

10 A.D. 60.

11 A.D. 49.

12 A.D. 43.

13 (no date)

14 A.D. 43.

15 A.D. 70.

In section 1, Germanic rebels besiege Castra Vetera.

In 2, Time Patrol agents, Manse Everard and Janne Floris, meet in twentieth-century Amsterdam.

In 3, while the siege continues, the prophetess, Veleda, addresses tribal chiefs, then she and her messenger, Heidhin, confer.

In 4, Everard and Floris witness the surrender of Castra Vetera to the rebels which occurred in 70 AD. 

5 recounts an event in the aftermath of the surrender.

In 6, the Patrol agents return briefly to twentieth-century Amsterdam.

7 and 8 recount further events in the aftermath of the surrender. At the end of 8, Everard and Floris agree that they:

"'...must follow [Veleda's] spoor through the past, to wherever she began.'" (p. 542)

9 summarizes events during the course of the rebellion.

10 must therefore be the start of the Patrol agents' journey into the further past and we will return to it tomorrow.

The Past In The Time Patrol Series: Historical , Mythical, Personal

The penultimate section of Poul Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," headed 43, is science fiction because it is about time travellers in Hawaii before the Polynesians came. The concluding section, headed 374, is historical fiction because it is only about the death of the Goth, Ermanaric.

The opening section of the following instalment, "Star of the Sea," is set not only in a mythical past, before the beginnings, but also in an imagined earlier phase of Northern European mythology.

A goddess says:

"'Each autumn I will leave you and go back to my sea. But in spring I will come again. This shall be the year and every year henceforward.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT I, p. 469. (Roman numeral.)

This shall be and is the year. Myths explain experience: the Biblical Genesis and others.

The god replies in part:

"'I will await you when the sun turns north.'

"'I will come to you on the rainbow,' Niaerdh plighted.

"So it was. So it is."

-ibid.

Niaerdh is a reconstructed earlier form of the goddess' name. She explains the rainbow which is not yet either the bridge to Asgard or a promise by God.

The second section, headed 1 (Arabic numeral), is historical fiction. Germans besiege a Roman camp. The third section, headed 2, is science fiction, about the Time Patrol:

"In the closing decades of the twentieth century..." (p. 477)

I suppose that "...the closing decades..." are the last two? In any case, the following page soon informs us that Manse Everard had last been in Amsterdam in 1952, before joining the Patrol, and that that was thirty-four years ago. This gives scope for personal reminiscence:

"Had that summer really been so golden, or had he simply been young, unburdened with too much knowledge?" (p. 479)

"Star of the Sea" first appeared in this collection, originally entitled The Time Patrol and published in 1991. Thus, "Star of the Sea" was five years in the past of its publication date. In fact, Anderson wanted this story to be set before "The Year of the Ransom," published in 1988, in which Everard first meets Wanda Tamberly on 30 October 1986. Everard's affair with Janne Floris must begin and end in "Star of the Sea" so that it will be over before Everard meets Wanda.

Everard's reminiscence about his summer in Amsterdam reminds me at least of Ian Fleming's The Spy Who Loved Me. The second and third chapters of that novel are entitled "Dear Dead Days" and "Spring's Awakening." In Chapter III:

"In my memory of those days the sun is always shining..."

-Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved Me (London, 1980), p. 34.

The narrator describes a river scene. She adds that there must have been rain, noise and clouds on some days but that she cannot remember them:

"The weeks slipped by like the river, sparkling, luminous, full of enchantment."

-ibid.

This is the past of happy memories, not to be visited by time machine:

"The Midwest of [Everard's] boyhood, before he went off to war in 1942, was like a dream, a world forever lost, already one with Troy and Carthage and the innocence of the Inuit. He had learned better than to return."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield of Time (New York, 1991), PART FOUR, 1990 A. D., p. 178.

Many passages of the Time Patrol series are eminently quotable and we have had this one several times before.

The Contemporary In The Cosmic II

See The Contemporary In The Cosmic.

Later, "contemporary" means 1986 when, after an objective gap of thirty four years, Time Patrol agent Manse Everard revisits Amsterdam where he sees:

scruffy youth from the Dam to the Central Station;
cafes and bars on alleys off the Damrak;
discrete sleaze shops;
extraordinary bookstores;
centuries-old houses along the canal;
a place that serves eel for lunch;
the Stedelijke Museum;
the Rijks;
the Museumplein;
the Singelgracht;
Vondelpark;
gleaming water;
sunlight on leaves and grass;
a canoeist, an elderly couple and a band of cyclists.

That is the contemporary description but there are two intrusions of a deeper perspective:

first, the gap has been longer for Everard because, since 1952, he has joined the Patrol and traveled through the ages, for example to the periods of Elizabeth I and Cyrus the Great;

secondly, he knows that all the past, present and future life of Amsterdam is like diffraction rings on unstable space-time.

Everard In Amsterdam II

"Star of the Sea," 2, pp. 477-480.

the Indische Buurt

gulden

strippenkart

the Dam

the Central Station

the Damrak

the Stedelijke Museum

the Rijks

the Museumplein

the Singelgracht

Vondelpark

the Oude Kerk

Rembrandt

Van Gogh

the red-light district

We tour Amsterdam with Everard.

The Time Patrol As An Organization

"Star of the Sea."

We have not yet exhausted all the differences between an individual temporal explorer and a time travelling organization. 

See:

Civilized Time Travel

Janne Floris, based in late twentieth century Amsterdam, does field research in the Netherlands and in neighbouring parts of Belgium and Germany during the Roman Iron Age. Other Specialists do similar work in the centuries before and after Floris' special period and as far apart as Russia and Ireland. Still others remain in the twentieth century to correlate and analyze the data gathered by field agents. When it becomes necessary to investigate inconsistencies found in a chronicle by Tacitus, Floris, born in 1950, must work with Unattached agent, Manse Everard, born in 1924. Not too big a gap between their birth years makes them almost contemporaries.

After an initial visit to the first century, Everard relaxes in twentieth century Amsterdam where he also spends time at the Time Patrol office retrieving data on history, anthropology, political and physical geography etc and imprints any essential information. Even the Patrol knows little about Germanic prehistory which had seemed to be unimportant. Floris lived with the Frisii from 22 to 37 AD because the Patrol had needed to know about Roman influence among the tribes. Only Floris and Everard have researched Claudius Civilis who led the Northern revolt.

"A World Forever Lost"

Jack Finney's time travelers satisfy their nostalgia simply by relocating to a more innocent age but Poul Anderson's Time Patrolmen cannot do this:

"The Midwest of his boyhood, before he went off to war in 1942, was like a dream, a world forever lost...He had learned better than to return."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 178.

Everard's knowledge of what happens after 1942, and indeed throughout history, prevents him from settling down happily in the 1930's Midwest. In any case, Time Patrollers, with their indefinitely extended lifespans, do not look forward to any retirement but instead remain active within the Patrol. Even if Everard, having lived in New York from the 1950's to the 1990's, were, like the Farnesses, to move to the 1930's, that entire decade would remain a very small part of his expected lifespan. He is bound to have a different perspective on any short period, however idyllic.

Revisiting Amsterdam after thirty four objective years - many more subjective - he wonders:

"Had that summer really been so golden...?"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 479. 

Although he is reassured that "Amsterdam had not become the sewer that some people nowadays called it..." (ibid.), he cannot return to being that young Everard, "unburdened with too much knowledge..." (ibid.)

However, Deirdre Mac Morn's home period is "...a world forever lost..." in a more literal sense. Her timeline has been prevented from coming into existence so that she cannot possibly return to it.

Patrol Installations AD

(i) An office in London, 1000 AD.

(ii) A one-man base in Palermo in 1137.

(iii) Milieu HQ moves from Mainz to Rome in 1198.

(iv) In Harfleur, 1307, wool dealer Reinault Bodel keeps a dockside shed locked and empty...

(v) In 1986, the Amsterdam office is fronted by a minor export-import business with warehouse and office in the Indische Buurt.

(vi) Carl Farness and Manse Everard, living in New York in different decades, must walk to the local office to access timecycles in the secret room beneath.

(vii) In San Francisco, a second-hand bookshop has a secret cellar where timecycles arrive and depart.

Manse Everard arrives by timecycle in the Harfleur shed and in the secret part of the Amsterdam office but must walk through Sicily to the Palermo base, which has "...no subterranean addition." (The Shield Of Time, p. 311)

The Richness of "Star Of The Sea"

Poul Anderson's short novel, "Star Of The Sea," is extremely rich in diverse kinds of writing. Its opening three sections, numbered I, 1 and 2, are respectively:

mythological writing about a goddess and a god at the beginning of time;

historical fiction about first century Romans and barbarians;

science fiction about time travelers in contemporary Amsterdam -

- while its concluding section, numbered IV, is a devout prayer to the Virgin Mary. Thus this single text contains:

myth;
historical fiction;
science fiction;
in some passages, a contemporary setting equally suitable for mainstream fiction and for genres like romance or detective;
a prayer.

The strands interweave as the time travelers meet an anti-Roman barbarian prophetess who changes the mythology and influences the iconography of the Virgin Mary, hence the title.

In "Star Of The Sea," we find:

powerful mythological writing;
colorful descriptions of contemporary Amsterdam;
vivid descriptions of first century forests and seasons;
ingenious discussion of time travel paradoxes;
concise summaries of historical events;
brilliant characterization, in particular of the prophetess, Veleda, whose personal crisis could change history.

It has recently occurred to me that there is also a moral question, to be addressed in a further post.

Festina Lente

The Devil's Game.

Byron Shaddock, being a well-read man, quotes some Latin: "Festina lente," (p. 127) meaning "Make haste slowly," which is also the name of an "Eetcafe" (?) in Amsterdam. Latin and Amsterdam are two big blog themes.

Byron has eliminated Gayle Thayer from the Follow the Leader competition but I have reread no further today and right now am getting back to The Boys. (See Verbals And Visuals and The Boys.)

See you tomorrow, I hope.

(By the time this post was published, tomorrow had become today.)