Hiroshige And Mozart

A Stone In Heaven, see here.

"Above [the bench] on a bulkhead that shimmered slightly iridescent, was screened a picture she recognized: snowscape, three trudging peasants, a row of primitive houses, winter-bare trees, a mountain, all matching the grace of the music. Hiroshige had wrought it, twelve hundred years ago." (VI, p. 65)

(The music is Mozart. The "bulkhead" is an indication that this scene is set inside Dominic Flandry's private spaceship.)

Hiroshige created "Kanbara" about 1833-34, which gives us a fairly precise date for A Stone In Heaven, when Flandry is sixty-one. (III, p. 29) See Sean M. Brooks' article on the Technic History Chronology here.

I never knew that I would be delving into this stuff when I began to reread A Stone In Heaven.

Mosunic-Lopez

The Star Fox, Part Two, II.

When a futuristic sf writer presents a list of authors that are read in the future, we expect that maybe the last name on the list is of someone that does not exist yet. Sure enough, Gunnar Heim's former friend, Jocelyn Lawrie, displays reproductions of Matisse and Hiroshige and her bookshelf holds volumes by:

Catullus

Yeats

Tagore

Pasternak

Mosunic-Lopez

Maybe I am wrong here but has anyone heard of that last guy? 

I am giving myself indigestion here so that I can drive across town to the Gregson Centre. Back here later or tomoz.

Radiant Road

In the saloon of Dominic Flandry's private spaceship, the Hooligan, a padded bench curves around three sides of the table, on the bulkhead is a picture by Hiroshige and Mozart plays whereas, in Targovi's Moonjumper, the saloon is a dingy cabin where Axor coils on the floor while Diana sits on the table.

However, Targovi and his passengers dim the lights and look at a viewscreen which shows:

"...the receding globe, luminous white and blue-green; three ashy-silver moons; crystalline blackness aswarm with fire-gems that were stars; the radiant road of the Milky Way."
-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER FIVE, p. 255.

Needless to say, this post, written over breakfast in our kitchen, is occasioned by yet another Andersonian description of the Milky Way.

A Student Of Humanity

The Day Of Their Return, 3.

Aycharaych tells Desai that he has studied:

Aeschylus

Li Po

Shakespeare

Goethe

Sturgeon

Mikhailov

Bach

Richard Strauss

Rembrandt

Hiroshige

 

He knows of the Taiping Rebellion and the Indian Mutiny and borrows an Anglic translation of Tagore.

 

Aycharaych would be a good guy to have around if (i) he could be persuaded to transfer his allegiance from the Roidhun to the Emperor and (ii) he could also be persuaded that a worthy end does not justify diabolical means. 

Operation Luna, Chapter 3

Poul Anderson, Operation Luna (New York, 2000).

The Matuchek's have Hiroshige and Charlie Russell reproductions. Steve is a "Lycanthrope..." (p. 18) and Ginny has "...laid a quick fettling spell on herself." (ibid.)

We are interested to read the first dialogue involving the fourteen year old Valeria Matuchek who was three at the end of Operation Chaos and who will be an adult in A Midsummer Tempest. She wins spelling bees. (p. 19), has a younger brother and sister and must remain a virgin while she masters the Art. Her contemporaries have Hopi hairstyles.

Ginny refers to "'...cholla...'" (p. 24) and to pointillism. (p. 27) Her new familiar is a raven called Edgar although Svartalf the black cat is still around. To end a telephone call is to disempath. (p. 25) The youngest child, Chryssa, likes Howleglass farseer shows.

I have picked out the interesting words or details but otherwise I urge page viewers to read the chapter.

Frans Hals And Martians

(The Laughing Cavalier.)

"Kraachnach of the Martian Transport Company was glowing his yellow eyes at a Frans Hals on the wall."
-"Margin of Profit,"  p. 122, p. 148.

See also Hiroshige And Mozart.

"Kraaknach...ran a clawlike hand through his gray feathers and lit a rinn tube." (p. 113)

"Kraaknach...ran a clawed hand across gray feathers, stuck a rinn tube through the intake sphincter on his helmet, and lit it." (p. 150)

I cannot buy Martians with feathers although they appear elsewhere in Anderson's works. See:

Poul Anderson's Martians: The Full List?
Strangers

Every time I reread Anderson's works, I have no idea what will come up to post about. 

Aycharaych In Conversation

We see Aycharaych of Chereion in conversation with Chunderban Desai once and with Dominic Flandry twice. He lies to Desai, claiming to be from a planet called Jean-Baptiste in Sector Aldebaran of the Terran Empire. Despite this dishonesty, we have no reason to doubt his stated interest in humanity:

he knows of the Indian Mutiny, the Taiping Rebellion and Christianity;

he has studied Aeschlyus, Li Po, Shakespeare, Sturgeon, Mikhailov, Bach, Richard Strauss, Rembrandt and Hiroshige;

he borrows and reads a volume of Tagore while waiting in Desai's office.

Fictitious characters are usually fictions to each other. Anyone can refer to Sherlock Holmes and many do (although, in the case of Anderson's Time Patrolmen, Holmes is not a fiction). We have to accept that, in the Technic civilization timeline, there was an American science fiction writer called Theodore Sturgeon but not one called Poul Anderson. (Beowulf Shaeffer in Larry Niven's Known Space future history refers to Heinlein and also to Carter (?). Known Space does have a John Carter on Mars, obviously an ironic reference to ERB's Warlord of Mars.)

Aycharaych tells the philistine Flandry that Johann Strauss is not to be compared to Richard who is more misunderstood than Xingu. He admires an orchid seen against a null-gee sphere of water with the universe beyond:

"'Black against the quicksilver water globe...the universe black and cold against both. A beautiful arrangement, and with that touch of horror necessary to the highest art.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 162.

I do not agree about the horror but thus Aycharaych rationalizes his art "'...of espionage and sabotage, whose materials are living beings...'" (p. 391)

- to quote Desai in conversation with Flandry.

By calling the violet flower black, Aycharaych lets slip that Chereion's sun "'...is cooler and redder than [Flandry's].'" (p. 162)

Machiavelli Etc

(Niccolo Machiavelli.)

For Love And Glory, IV, p. 28.

Hebo speaks of historical figures unknown to Lissa, including:

Machiavelli (scroll down)
Hiroshige
Buxtehude

I usually expect the last figure in such a list, in this case "Buxtehude," to be in our future and thus not to be found by googling but this time I was mistaken. We always learn by reading Poul Anderson.

A while back, I discussed the plot and themes of For Love And Glory. Currently, this late novel by Poul Anderson is proving to be a fertile source for short miscellaneous posts.

Until tomorrow.