Nostalgia For Ys

Nostalgia can be vicarious. We can feel it when reading the early chapters of an autobiography or even about a fictitious place like Susan Howatch's Starbridge with its Eternity Street, quiet Cathedral close, chapel in the wood and Bishop's lawn sloping down to the river.

Incredibly, in The Dog And The Wolf (London, 1989), Poul and Karen Anderson convey not only nostalgia but also even vicarious nostalgia for the destroyed city of Ys. Verania had never visited Ys but its King, Gratillonius, had become a familiar guest at her father's house. Verania's contact with Gratillonius enabled her to compose and sing a song beginning:

" 'I remember Ys, though I have never seen her...' " (p. 162)

("I remember (fill in the blank)" is a powerful opening. The evocative "I Remember Babylon," both title and concluding phrase of a short story by Arthur C Clarke, sounds as if it refers to reincarnation but then means something else.)

Verania:

imagines that she had walked through Ysan streets as a ghost;

has dreamed of living there;

mourns for Ys although she was not there;

addresses " '...you...,' " Gratillonius, who does remember Ys;

had heard " '...many ancient tales of splendid Ys...' " (p. 162);

refers to the city's Tyrian and Punic heritage;

 
describes Ys as " '...hundred-towered...legend-haunting...Ys the golden...the wondrous place where all once yearned to be' " (p. 163);

says that she will continue to remember Ys and wonders if " '...our ghosts...' " will return there " '...and never leave?' " (p. 163)

Thus, she speaks for the readers who remember Ys from three previous volumes.

Change, Resistance And Legend

Two processes continue to occur: first, change; secondly, individuals and groups continue to act as they did before. Thus, Rufinus and now also Maeloch spy and secretly negotiate on behalf of Gratillonius who tries to restore Armorican defences after the destruction of Ys. But Niall orders his men to dismantle and raze even the ruins of Ys while one of Gratillonius' daughters commits infanticide, thus terminating one line of descent from the last King of Ys.

A third process that is always with us is the transformation or metamorphosis of past events into enduring legends. Gratillonius' future wife, Verania, sings:

"'I remember Ys, though I have never seen her...'"

-The Dog And The Wolf, VIII, 3, p. 162.

And we remember Ys from Volumes I-III of this Tetralogy. Verania's song is a haunting echo of the legend and of its summation in this series. She, like the two co-authors, is a link between the fabulous city and present readers. 

Legendary Stories

A work of fiction based on legendary stories can harmonize and explain elements of the stories but can also alter aspects of the legend for new narrative purposes. Thus, Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys explains why its new fictitious character Gratillonius came to be called both "Grallon" and "Gradlon" after he had become King of Ys but it also changes and enhances the legend of Ys in significant respects.

This Ys was not a Christian settlement founded by Grallon but a pagan Punic colony with a rich history, already a fable even before it was destroyed, and inspiring nostalgia even in someone who had never seen it:

"'I remember Ys, though I have never seen her...'"
-Poul and Karen Anderson, The Dog And The Wolf, Chapter VIII, section 3, p. 162.

The singer never will see Ys because she composed the song after the city's destruction. Again, this Ys does not sink intact beneath the waves but is leveled during a storm sent by the Sea God.

When mutually incompatible versions of a story are equally good, how can both versions be incorporated into a coherent narrative? Maybe one version can become a "play within the play." Thomas Malory incorporated different versions of what happened to Arthur by telling us what men say happened. Men say different things. Although I like both the "...had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place..." and the "HIC IACET ARTHURUS...," Arthur cannot simultaneously be both alive elsewhere and lying (iacet) in a tomb. CS Lewis emphasizes the physicality of the "other place" by stating that Arthur went there "...in the body..." I would be confident of Poul Anderson's ability to compose a coherent story out of these fragmentary hints about Arthur.

A History Of Ys

In Poul and Karen Anderson's The Dog And The Wolf (London, 1989), Runa proposes to write:

" 'A history of Ys, from the founding to the end.' " (p. 187)

- because:

" 'They should be remembered, those splendours and great deeds.' " (p. 187)

They should and I wish that the Andersons had been able to write them. We know that Runa's history will not be written because Ys remains forever behind a "Veil". That is one decree of its Gods that still abides, implemented by Niall who is under a gess or obligation from Dahut - which is one reason to believe that Dahut was transfigured by one of the Three, presumably Lir, not by Anyone else. The histories of Ys, including the account of the discovery of America, were lost when the library, with every other Ysan building, was overwhelmed. Runa has to interview survivors and also to write down memories from her education whenever they occur to her.

She urges Gratillonius that, although the subject is painful to him, his city, Queens, children and friends deserve their memorial so he should give her his oral history. Ironically, Bishop Corentinus might underwrite the project because:

" 'the fall of the proud city is a powerful moral lesson.' " (p. 187)

Thus, this could have been a Christian history of Pagan Ys. Runa receives Christian instruction.

When Gratillonius first hears of this project, he instantly recalls Verania's song beginning:

"I remember Ys, though I have never seen her -' " (p. 187)

- appropriately, since, despite Runa's efforts, Ys will in fact be remembered only in poetry, legend and fiction, not in historiography.

Meanwhile, other histories begin. The Roman bureaucrats plotting to undermine Gratillonius' remaining authority recall a Solar Commonwealth bureaucrat persecuting Nicholas van Rijn in Poul Anderson's future history. All too plausibly, political disagreement becomes personal animosity.

Gratillonius, who would have led the colonisation of America if Ys had endured, founds a colony of Ysan survivors and leads the rebuilding of civilisation. He dispatches his son-in-law to chart the interior of Armorica, quietly rebuilds defensive networks and works manually alongside others to construct a furnace. Instead of sinking into serfhood or slavery, he hopes that his people will become:

"Coppersmiths, goldsmiths, jewellers - masons, sculptors, glassworkers - weavers, dyers - merchants, shippers, seamen, fresh growth in ...trade...civilization, and the strength to ward it!" (p. 226)

Meanwhile, his daughter Nemeta, the self-proclaimed last worshiper of the Three, living alone in the wood, sets up in business as a witch paid to cure sick animals by chanting in an unknown tongue - Ysan? Does she invoke the Three or only the local " '...forest Gods...' " to Whom she refers? (p. 252) At least initially, we are not told which. Are we to understand that she founds medieval European witchcraft?

Past And Future

This blog is entirely about the works of Poul Anderson and, for over two months, I have narrowed the focus to discuss just one series, the Technic Civilization History, despite having posted on this series several times previously. I think that the History warrants this amount of attention and I have by no means exhausted all that there is to be said about it. Nevertheless, I am bound to reach the limit of what one reader can usefully say for the time being - if I have not passed such a limit already. I am not sure at present. But I have definitely demonstrated that many more of the descriptive and narrative details can be properly appreciated by studying the texts, reading slowly and extracting information, rather than just by skimming through them, which is the way that this sort of popular fiction is usually read.

Quite a while back, I focused on all of Anderson's "past" fiction, novels and short stories set in historical or prehistorical periods, and, while I was doing this, I did not want to return to his futuristic sf because the past was a vast space, an entire universe, in its own right. In fact, I suggest that what we might call Anderson's "pre-futuristic" fiction divides into no less than ten entire series and/or groups of works:

BC;
Ys;
Vikings;
Last Viking;
14th century;
Many Times;
Many Timelines;
Time Patrol;
fantasies;
detectives.

By "Many Times," I mean:

The Boat Of A Million Years;
The Corridors Of Time;
Past Times (which I would revise slightly);
a collection, that could be called Many Times, to comprise:

"The Long Remembering";
"The Forest";
"The Peat Bog";
"The Tale of Hauk";
"Son of the Sword."

I have discussed most of these stories in previous posts. However, I remembered that there was a story set in ancient Egypt that I had not yet read and had meant to get back to. I could remember neither its title nor which collection it was in so I had to check through several volumes, including Alight In The Void, whose title to me suggests futuristic sf about interstellar travel, which is a theme of several Anderson collection titles.

In this collection, I found the story that I sought, which turns out to be called "Son of the Sword," and will shortly read it in order to comment on it.

I Remember Hermes

Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 24.

"Both moons of Hermes were aloft, Caduceus rising small but nearly full, the broad sickle of Sandalion sinking westward. High in the dusk, a pair of wings caught light from the newly set sun and shone gold. A tilirra sang amidst the foliage of a millionleaf, which rustled to a low breeze. At the bottom of the canyon it had cut for itself, the Palomino River rang with its haste; but that sound reached the heights as a murmur." (p. 5)

I like the wings gold in the light of the already set sun. A tilirra, a millionleaf and the Palomino River are referred to as if we knew them. Several colonized planets in Poul Anderson's Technic History become concretely realized places. It is as if we had been there. I remember Ys - and also Hermes, Avalon, Dennitza, Merseia etc. 

Quanta And Gods

I will have to read the entire 677-page The Anthropic Cosmological Principle because I want to try to get to the bottom of this issue and because it is relevant to Poul Anderson's "Requiem for a Universe," Harvest of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis. Unfortunately, quantum mechanical technicalities will intrude so I will not understand everything. Like Socrates, I am a conceptual philosopher, not a natural philosopher.

I might also reread The King of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson although we have been all the way through that Tetralogy on this blog at least twice before. It is long and good and we are bound to find things to say about it that we do not remember having said before. The Tetralogy represents an earlier conceptual stage when people responded to ultimate realities by personifying them as the Three of Ys, the Olympians, Mithras and the new God born in the age of Augustus. The Nine Witch-Queens of Ys recognized that the heavens were changing.

Anderson's Time Patrol agents travel between eras:

"...a youth killed a bull, and the Bull was the Sun and the Man...

"...peasants readied sacrifice to an Earth Mother who was old in this land when the Aryans came, and that was in a dark predawn past. 

"...the mountains, haunted by wolf, lion, boar, and demon. It was too alien a place.

"...he wanted suddenly to run and hide, up to his own century and his own people and a forgetting."

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 7, p. 92.

"'They don't have our kind of Weltanschauung, remember. To them, the world isn't entirely governed by laws of nature; it's capricious, changeable, magical.'

"And they're fundamentally right, aren't they? The chill struck deeper into Everard."

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Time Patrol, pp. 229-331 AT p. 254.

More to come but I am being cut off.

Old Nova Roma

In Nova Roma, Aeneas, Virgilian System, Sector Alpha Crucis, Terran Empire:

the ashlars are grey but with a veneer of marble, agate, chalcedony, jasper, nephrite and more exotic materials;

window shutters are ornamented with brass or iron arabesques;

there are carved friezes, armorial bearings and grotesques;

erosion has mellowed and subtly harmonized everything;

wealthier buildings surround vitryl-roofed cloister courts with statues, plants, fishponds and fountains;

there are twisting streets and alleys and small plazas;

people walk, drive cars or ride horses or stathas.

We feel that we have been there. I remember "I remember Ys..." See here.

"...If The Saints is Left Us"

Van Rijn:

"'I would advise we pray to the saints, except I wonder if the saints is left us.'"
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim (New York, 2011), p. 286.

Does he mean "...if the saints have left us" or "...if the saints are left to us"?

In both historical and futuristic fictions by Poul Anderson, many characters invoke a supernatural realm inhabited by gods or, in this case, saints. Such a realm is not always regarded as permanent. The Norse universe ends with the Ragnarok. The Olympians, the Three of Ys and Mithras withdraw before a new God.

Catholics believe that their Heaven is permanent although I remember an old woman interviewed on Irish television saying, "I suppose I'll go to Heaven..." but then adding resentfully, "...if there's any of Heaven left when I get there!" Great changes in the visible world make people imagine corresponding changes in the invisible realm. Van Rijn's civilization is changing and he wonders "...if the saints is left us." Most readers do not expect van Rijn's religion still to exist in an indefinite future.

Although I take issue with many of van Rijn's views, I accept his predictions about the direction of the corporate state in the Solar Commonwealth so I think that he is right to take the measures that he does before, hopefully, leading an expedition into unknown space.

"I'm alive..."

I quoted John Carter, "We still live!" Gratillonius says, "'I'm alive.'" (Dahut, Chapter XIV, section 1, p. 296) He wonders what possessed his young challengers when he should ask who but indignantly rejects any suspicions of Dahut. But who possesses her? Is it Lir, in what Corentinus would call a demonic possession? She has become a fanatic.

I seem to remember that, on Barsoom, a green warrior who killed his Jeddak became the Jeddak so maybe the comparison of Gratillonius with Carter is more apposite than I thought? Certainly a green Martian inherits property, females and even names from those he kills. Thus, John Carter of Virginia, former Captain in the Army of the Confederate States, becomes Dotar Sojat, chieftain of Thark, then Prince of Helium, then Jeddak of Jeddaks, Warlord of Barsoom, just as Gaius Valerius Gratillonius of the Belgic tribe in Britannia, centurion in the Second Legion Augusta, becomes Roman prefect in Ys, also King of Ys, chief priest and incarnation of Taranis, a Father in Mithras and, later, a man in Christ.

(I don't make this up; I just summarize it!)

Fantastic Reflections

Are you impressed or inspired by the contents of this blog? I am and I'm writing it. However, remember that I am not creating these contents, merely quoting them from the works of Poul Anderson and comparable authors.

Friedrick Engels wrote:

"All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces."
-copied from here.

I would say "Much religion...," not "All religion..."

Another fantastic reflection is imaginative fiction. I have discussed certain works of fiction and have sometimes also referred to current affairs. Now let us see how the former reflect the latter:

in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys, The Gods Themselves are troubled because the heavens have moved (see here) and the rulers of the city of Ys must prepare for the withdrawal of their Gods, which will mean the flooding of their city;

in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, ravens hover, gods stoop, the world trembles and "'The gods themselves are troubled...'" (p. 84);

in James Blish's Black Easter/The Day After Judgment, magicians and demons must cope with the death of God;

in Mike Carey's Lucifer, angels and demons must cope with the departure of God.

The common themes here are change, uncertainty and power vacuums on a supernatural level. And that is precisely what many of us are currently experiencing on the terrestrial level:

the UK has voted to leave the EU but the vote was close and there is uncertainty about the consequences;

other countries may follow;

the British Prime Minister has resigned and must be replaced both as PM and as Party Leader;

the Leader of the Opposition has been "no confidenced" by his colleagues and will be challenged for the Leadership;

most members of his Shadow Cabinet have resigned and had to be replaced (one of the replacements is the young, recently elected, Member of Parliament for Lancaster whom I met inspecting flood damage in the City last year);

Scottish constituencies voted to remain in the EU and now want a second referendum on their independence from the UK.

As I said, change, uncertainty and power vacuums - even including the flooding of a city.

An Ancient Triad

Still rereading Hrolf Kraki's Saga and looking a short way forward (or rather backwards) -

If I remember it correctly, the final battle is like a mini-Ragnarok. The Danes know that they can lose, especially when supernatural evil is deployed against them, but this is where they should be. Their highest loyalty is to King Hrolf and they should be with him when it counts, whatever the outcome. "For how can man die better..." etc.

After that, the question is what to reread next. Imaginatively, I am still in Poul Anderson's pasts, not back in his futures. Before Hrolf Kraki's Dark Ages was the Fall of the Roman Empire, a period that included the flooding of the city of Ys. Set earlier than Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys tetralogy are three novels by Poul Anderson:

Conan The Rebel, a heroic fantasy set in a prehistoric civilisation;
The Dancer From Atlantis, a science fiction (sf) novel about time travelers in Atlantis;
The Golden Slave, a historical novel set during the Roman Republic.

These works are unconnected, in no way a trilogy, but they do happen to be three novels set in ancient times and they also represent Anderson's three genres of fantasy, sf and historical fiction.

Whenever a new Doctor Who season starts, I tell people to read the real stuff: The Time Machine; The Time Patrol; The Time Traveler's Wife. The Dancer From Atlantis is also pertinent:

a man from the future, Sahir, in a malfunctioning space-time vehicle, the anakro;

a language teaching device;

time traveling companions accidentally collected from earlier periods, wanting to return home;

Doctor Who also had a story set in Atlantis.

(Also, see here.)

I expect to reread some of these works before returning to any of Anderson's futures.

More On POVs

See POV and Narrative Points Of View.

Is there a moment in The King Of Ys when a viewpoint character leaves a room but we continue to be told what is happening in the room, thus raising a question about the status of the point of view (pov)? I remember posting about something like this but can't remember volume, chapter, details etc.

Poul Anderson's povs are usually tightly controlled. If a passage is narrated from the point of view of a character, then the omniscient narrator does not in that passage impart any information that is unknown to that character - unless anyone can find an example to the contrary?

I can illustrate what I mean by quoting from another author. At the end of Chapter 2 of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008), Lisbeth Salander guesses that it was Blomkvist's infidelity with Berger that had ended his marriage to Abrahamsson. In Chapter 3, in a passage narrated from Blomkvist's pov, we read:

"...he was helplessly drawn to Berger. Just as Salander had guessed, it was his continual infidelity that drove his wife to leave." (p. 56)

The author and the reader know of Salander's guess but Blomkvist does not. In fact, we read:

"Blomkvist had never heard of Lisbeth Salander and was happily innocent of her report delivered earlier that day, but had he listened to it he would have nodded in agreement..." (p. 57)

Thus, the pov is now that of someone writing later with access to what Salander said and to what Blomkvist thought on that day.

In a later volume of Larsson's Trilogy, we are told that two characters each independently known to us are in the same cafe but unaware of each other. Thus, this information at least is not imparted from either of their povs. This might be regarded as corner cutting. Another approach, requiring more words, is two point of view passages such that we read of character x in the cafe at a certain time, then of character y in the cafe at that time and thus realize that both were there at the same time.

Does Poul Anderson ever cut across povs to impart information in the way that I have shown Larsson doing?

Judging The Gods II

In Gallicenae (London, 1988) by Poul and Karen Anderson, the King of Ys and the Christian minister to Ys debate. The King:

"...didn't think an eternity of torment was the proper punishment for an incorrect opinion, and saw no righteousness in a God who did." (p. 340)

The minister replies that:

"...mere mortals had no business passing judgement on the Almighty; what did they understand?" (p. 340)

We understand quite a lot and are learning more. Our morality prohibits torture of those who disagree with us. It was some of us "...mere mortals..." who formulated this belief about the Almighty. Some people still have this belief because they inherit it as part of a tradition whereas others question every received tradition.

I made the King's point to an Evangelical who replied, "That's convenient for you!" He thus accused me of intellectual dishonesty, of believing what it suited me to believe whereas in fact I can see no reason to accept his belief and several crucial arguments against it.

In what sense can a being existing in a very remote future be identical with me? This present body will have long since ceased to exist although it could of course theoretically be duplicated. To maintain a sense of identity with me, that future being would have to remember having been me but how often would he be able to recall events of my seven or more decades through his literally infinite duration? Less and less often. Unless, of course, he progressively forgot everything that he had experienced after my life time. But then it would not seem to him that his experience was endless. Also, what a strange and implausible way to organise a universe. If any superior being can give us an extra chance at life, then I trust that he will help us to progress, not subject us to painful consequences and endless recrimination about this single life.

Pagans thought that superior beings existed merely to direct the affairs of Rome or of Ys. Christians thought that a superior being focused his attention on what mortals do during their short life spans. I expect that superior beings would indeed have superior interests and activities of their own, just as a human being does not exist in order to throw stones for his dog. 

In The Lairs

The Winter Of The World, IV. 

Characters interact. Now Josserek is brought before Casiru. After Josserek has told his story:

"Casiru blew smoke and nodded anew. I'll bet he's already had my story pretty well checked out, Josserek thought." (p. 43)

Exactly. Casiru listens and blows smoke but Josserek thinks because he is the current viewpoint character. Frank Herbert would at this stage have switched from Josserek as viewpoint character and told us what Casiru was thinking.

They are in the Lairs of Arvanneth where the criminal Brotherhoods are too entrenched for even the Imperial conquerors to weed them out:

"'Didn't even close down Thieves' Market, only made it movable.'" (III, p. 40)

In a mean house in a filthy neighbourhood, Casiru interviews Josserek in a room with plush carpet, purple and red hangings, elaborately carved wooden furniture, ivory and nacre inlays and sandalwood burning in a censer. This and many similar details make us feel that we have been in Arvanneth.

"I remember Ys..."

Good King Grallon

Like everyone else, Poul and Karen Anderson inherited the French legend of a King Grallon or Gradlon in the city of Ys. In their King Of Ys tetralogy, they created a fictitious character called Gaius Valerius Gratillonius. How is the latter transformed into the former?

The Ysans have trouble pronouncing the Latin name "Gratillonius." One of his nine wives says:

" 'This Gra - Gra-lo - Gratillonius has met the leaders of Ys...' " (Roma Mater, London, 1989, p. 158).

His favorite wife, Dahilis, says:

" 'You are much like Hoel as I remember him, Gra- Gratillonius.' Her Latin weak, she occasionally had trouble keeping the syllables of his name in place." (p. 166)

Later, Dahilis says:

 " '...I am, am with you always, Grallon - Gratillonius...' " (p. 317)

Thus, she gives him his Ysan name for the first time. He will be known as "King Grallon" and even as "good King Grallon" despite all the problems eventually caused by his Kingship. The way in which a heroic character acquires the name by which he will later be known is always an important part of his story but here the transition from "Gratillonius" to "Grallon" is so gradual and understated that it will be missed on a casual reading - and, for me, it was unearthed only by careful rereading.

The King Of Ys, Volume Two

Volume One of Poul and Karen Anderson's King Of Ys tetralogy culminates with the death of Dahilis. Volume Three culminates with the drowning of Ys. Is there a comparable culmination to Volume Two? I will find out by rereading.

Two important events follow the death of Dahilis, the Caesarian birth of her daughter, Dahut, and the divine choice of a new Queen.

Volume Two, Gallicenae (London, 1988) begins with the child Dahut's point of view:

"The child knew only that she was upon the sea." (p. 21)

- but some of the narration refers to knowledge that she does not have:

"The child did not recognize a piece of driftwood as being off a wreck." (p. 23)

Dahilis is present as a seal that accompanies the yacht, watching Dahut, then, when she falls into the sea, holding her until she is rescued by her father.

The second section of Chapter I reverts to the father's point of view and reveals how much time has elapsed since Volume One:

"The summons came to Gaius Valerius Gratillonius in the third year during which he had been Roman prefect and King of Ys." (p. 25)

This also tells us that Dahut is between one and two years old.

As when reading any series of books, we recognise names and contexts. After reading the summons, Gratillonius "...sent for Bodilis and Lanarvalis...", names which remain meaningful if we have read Volume One sufficiently recently (p. 25).

For those who have not read or do not remember Volume One, the text of Volume Two is preceded by a ten page italicised "Synopsis" (pp. 11-20).

The question before the reader is whether Gratillonius will be able to maintain his difficult balancing act of prefect for Rome and King of Ys. Ysans expect him to remain King until killed by a challenger whereas he expects to leave when he has completed his duty as prefect.

A Satire

I have completely forgotten some earlier posts about Poul Anderson's A Stone In Heaven. Finding the concept of "a satire" in Chapter VIII, I remember that this same concept also appeared in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys, then, searching the blog, I find:

Voices Within And Beyond
Ramnu And Eriu

The first of these posts makes comparisons with Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series;

its combox makes a comparison with another part of the Technic History;

the second post makes the comparison with The King Of Ys.

Thus, there is very little left for me to say here and now!

Gratillonius' Beloved Aeneid

Poul and Karen Anderson's character, Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, loved Virgil's Aeneid - and I also think that he disliked studying the Homeric epics because they were not Latin but incomprehensible Greek? Regular blog readers might remember that I attend a Latin class which sometimes tackles Virgil. We have just started to read excerpts from the Aeneid Chapter VI, in which Aeneas visits Orcus, the Underworld.

In Poul Anderson's The Day Of Their Return, Orcus is a region on the colonized planet, Aeneas, in the Virgilian system. The next planet towards Virgil is Dido which, of course, is another important name in the Aeneid. Dido was the first queen of Carthage, the city that was:

Rome's rival in the Punic Wars, consequently pivotal in Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Delenda Est;"
the power of which Ys was a colony;
an example cited both by Robert Heinlein and by Anderson's immortal character, Hanno, of an issue that had been resolved by force.

It is idle to wish that Anderson had written about Aeneas - the man, not the planet. We might as well include the Homeric epics and the Arthurian cycle as well. Everyone cannot write about everything (although why did Shakespeare not write a Robin Hood play?). I would like to be able to share some information about the Virgilian hereafter but like Aeneas himself, I am obscurus, in the darkness, and will have to decipher the opaque text before I am much wiser.

The End Of Ys

Ysans read Marcus Aurelius' (see image) Meditations in Latin translation. Why Latin translation? Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor. Yes, but he wrote in Greek.

When Niall, enemy of Ys, walks along the seawall to unlock the gate and let in the sea:

"A billow afar growled like the drums of an oncoming army."
-Poul and Karen Anderson, Dahut, Chapter XIX, section 5, p. 441.

And the sea will enter the city like an invading army.

"As it drew closer, gathered speed, lifted and lifted its smoking crest, the breaker's voice..." (ibid.)

A literal voice? Will Lir speak?

"...became such thunder as rolls across the vault of heaven." (ibid.)

Not a literal voice. However, Gods are associated both with heaven and with thunder.

"When it struck and shattered, the sound was as of doomsday." (ibid.)

Ysans are about to experience their doomsday.

When Gratillonius is roused from a slumber spell, he is compared to a fish pulled towards the light. We remember that the Apostles were called fishers of men and we might remember from previous readings of The King Of Ys that Gratillonius will convert to Christianity.

"On his second rising, he saw the grey-bearded craggy face." (p. 444)

A bearded fisher of men? God the Father? Christ? St Peter? Maybe but here and now they are manifested in the form of their minister, Corentinus:

"'Rouse, rouse, man!' the pastor barked." (ibid.)

Pulled up like a fish, Gratillonius is saved from drowning like most other Ysans. On pp. 444-445, Corentinus describes his warning vision in appropriately Biblical language. It is rather long but I will quote it in full if anyone wants me to who has not got access to the text. Thunders resound while the angel cries, 'Woe...' etc.

Wall and gate have protected Ys for four centuries - twenty generations? A long time. Everything ends but a time traveler who wanted to enjoy a full lifespan in Ys could travel back to an earlier century.