List Descriptions And Three Senses

Conan The Rebel, XII. 

See previous list descriptions (scroll down).

Traffic into the Stygian capital, Luxur:

foot

cart

litter

chariot

horse

ox

donkey

camel

loinclothed labourers

ragged-tunic-clad drovers

robed desert nomads

colourfully garbed merchants

gossamer-clad courtesans

soldiers

hawkers

strolling performers

housewives

children

foreigners

They:

crowd

jostle

chatter

quarrel

scream curses

yelp laughter

importune

haggle

intrigue

shout

wail

croon

Dirty, littered, cobbled streets smell of:

smoke

grease

dung

roast meat

oils

perfumes

drugs

humanity 

beasts

This is all in Poul Anderson's continuous prose. I have merely extracted lists of nouns and verbs.

A List Description

Having frequently quoted and commended Poul Anderson's colorful and comprehensive list descriptions (scroll down) of busy street scenes, I have now found such a description in Rudyard Kipling's Kim (London, 2010) as could have been written by Anderson.

Kim and the lama enter the Kashmir Serai, a "...huge open square...surrounded with arched cloisters where the camel and horse-caravans put up on their return from Central Asia." (p. 17)

In the Serai, "...all manner of Northern folk..." (ibid.):

tend ponies and camels;
load and unload bales and bundles;
draw water;
pile grass for stallions;
cuff caravan dogs;
pay camel drivers;
engage grooms;
swear, shout, argue and chaffer.

In addition to the sounds of human voices, the well-windlasses creak and the stallions shriek. The four descriptions of conversations, "...swear..." etc, are particularly Andersonian, especially the chaffering. However, Anderson would also have listed:

the kinds of Northern folk;
more noises from animals and other sources;
the various, intermingling smells!

A List Of Absences

(Istanbul.)

Poul Anderson's list descriptions often present dynamic urban life. However, one negative list evokes the opposite. Constantinople on 13 April, 1204, has no:

slap of buskins;
clop of hoofs;
rumble or squeal of cartwheels;
ringing bells;
voices;
children's games.

Instead, there is:

stillness;
the distant roar of shrieks and a fire;
a dog's desperate bark.

Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), X, p. 105.

Anderson always emphasizes the suffering caused by war. However, this is not a war but a massacre of Eastern Christians by Western Crusaders:

"So perished much classical art, and nearly all classical writing, which Constantinople had kept safe until these days. It was not true that the Turks of 1453 were responsible. The Crusaders were there before them.
"Afterward came the great silence, broken by furtive crying, and the stench, and the sickness, and the hunger.
"In this wise, at the beginning of that thirteenth century which Catholic apologists call the apogee of civilization, did Western Christendom destroy its Eastern flank. A century and a half later, having devoured Asia Minor, the Turks entered Europe." (IX, pp. 100-101.)

Anderson comments on conflicts in the twentieth century - and in the thirteenth.

To this day, I understand, Muslim jihadists describe their Western antagonists as "Crusaders." We live with history but can transcend it.

Good Food

A good writer always captures his readers' attention with sufficiently detailed descriptions of good food. For Tom and Roy's first meal in the Commonwealth of New Virginia, we are treated to what, elsewhere on this blog, I have called list-descriptions. First, smells:

garlic;
fried onions;
roasting meat;
brewing coffee;
baking bread.

Then they are served a bouillabaisse rich with:

prawns;
clams;
crab;
rock-cod;
eel;
whiting.

The waiter adds rouille of:

garlic;
fish stock;
crumbs;
red pepper -

- laid on steaming bread with olive oil, accompanied by chilled white wine and followed by:

grilled potatoes with herbs;
green salad;
a beef-and-olive daube -

- accompanied by red wine.

Superb cooking and better materials.

Remember our earlier introduction to Indian food. Also here.

Cappen Varra

The second of Poul Anderson's Cappen Varra short stories, "The Gate of the Flying Knives," which I am reading in Anderson's collection, Fantasy (New York, 1981), was originally published in the anthology, Thieves' World (see first image), and is set in a city called Sanctuary. Since googling reveals the existence of a Thieves' World novel called Sanctuary (see second image), I deduce that the two Cappen Varra stories and their sequel, "Fairy Gold," are set in this shared universe of the "Thieves' World." Cappen remarks that "'...Shalpa, patron of thieves...has the most devotees of any.'" (p. 114) (If Shalpa is indeed the patron of thieves, then he is a Thieves' World counterpart of Hermes and St Dismas.)

Having read "Fairy Gold" first, not originally knowing the order of the stories, I was pleased, when I started to read the opening story, "The Valor of Cappen Varra," to recognize place names like "Norren" (p. 124). As in several much longer series, Anderson quickly establishes the sense of a familiar, consistent background for the activities of diverse characters like, in this case, Arvel Tarabine and Cappen Varra.

Cappen is a humorous villainous hero:

"Cappen said nothing. If she wanted to think that he had come especially to rescue her, he would not be so ungallant as to tell her otherwise." (p. 95)

"...of course, if she wanted to think he was being magnanimous, it could be useful later -" (p. 98)

I have commented more than once both on Anderson's rich vocabulary and on his "list descriptions" of busy, bustling street scenes. Here, vocabulary-wise, we have:

"'...a theomachy...'" (p. 124);
"'...her coadjutrix...'" (p. 125);
"'...your inamorata...'" (p. 125).

These are all easily googled.

I think that "'...a sikkintair...'" (p. 126) is a denizen of Thieves' World as hobbits and Balrogs are of Middle Earth and as Marshwiggles are of Narnia.

Here are some descriptive lists:

(i) "Merchants, artisans, porters, servants, slaves, wives, nomads, courtesans, entertainers, beggars, thieves, gamblers, magicians, acolytes, soldiers, and who knew what else..." (pp. 102-103);

(ii) - and, continuing the same sentence, "...mingled, chattered, chaffered, quarreled, plotted, sang, played games, drank, ate, and who knew what else." (p. 103);

(iii) - next sentence, "Horsemen, cameldrivers, wagoners pushed through..." (p. 103).

The description continues, though with less lists. Music, vendors, neighbors and devotees each get a sentence or a clause to themselves. But then the street scene closes with a list of smells:

(iv) "...of flesh, sweat, roast meat and nuts, aromatic drinks, leather, wool, dung, smoke, oils, cheap perfume." (p. 103)

We are told that, "Ordinarily, Cappen Varra enjoyed this shabby-colorful spectacle..." (p. 103), although today he is preoccupied.

As ever, Poul Anderson celebrates human activity and life.

List Descriptions

Operation Chaos, XXXIII.

Let me quote Poul Anderson's text but rearrange it as a list:

"Outside, noise swelled -
"stamp,
"hop,
"clang,
"howl,
"whistle,
"grunt,
"gibber,
"bubble,
"hiss,
"yelp,
"whine,
"squawk,
"moan,
"bellow.
"The door reverberated under
"fist,
"feet,
"hoofs." (p. 267)

Despite the literally Hellish conditions, the Matucheks are doing OK, partly because of the demons' general disorganization. See Evil Never Intelligent? Does Anderson make this raid on Hell seem a bit too easy? 

Light On Waves

I think that Poul Anderson wrote somewhere that it is a good idea to appeal to at least three senses in any descriptive passage? In any case, he always does it:

"Light flew like laughter over small waves, aglint and aglimmer in a hundred shifting hues, blue, green, tawny, foam-white. They murmured and chuckled as they played tag with the shadows of hurrying snowy clouds. Birds wheeled, soared, swooped, swam, swung again aloft, in their thousands, gull, guillemot, cormorant, puffin, razor-bill, curlew, kittiwake, skua, fulmar. Their cries brought alive a breeze in which something of summer's warmth lingered on into the fall."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Three, Chapter VI, p. 206.

The paragraph begins with light and ends with warmth. We must wait for the third sense but it comes. "Light...like laughter...," "...aglint and aglimmer...," "...soared, swooped, swam, swung...," "...again aloft...," "...something of summer..." and some of the birds' names are alliteration. There are three list-descriptions: colors; birds' movements; birds. The birds' cries provide sound but we have already had murmuring, chuckling waves.

We remember other descriptive passages featuring moving cloud shadows and there may be a further resonance. In Anderson's Time Patrol series, changeable wave patterns at sea are a metaphor for the quantum randomness that can change the course of temporal events. Here, we are in a single historical period but we might also remember the Patrol that guards history.

Crusades

Even when describing the inception of an entirely fictional divergent timeline, Poul Anderson continues to educate his readers about the Middle Ages:

"By 1099 the First Crusade had gained its objectives..." (The Shield Of Time, p. 388)

Which were - ?

"...with a massacre of civilians that would have done Genghis Khan proud, and the conquerors settled in." (ibid.)

So they went to conquer and colonize, not to liberate, then leave?

"They founded a string of realms from Palestine up into what [Wanda] knew as southern Turkey - the Kingdom of Jerusalem, County of Tripoli, Principality of Antioch, County of Edessa." (pp. 388-389)

Shortly after this, Anderson presents an informative half page:

"...these Crusades, First, Second, et cetera through the Seventh, as well as those against heretics and pagans in Europe itself, were an artifact of later historians anyway. Sometimes a Pope, or somebody, called for a special effort, and sometimes, not always, this evoked a serious response. Mainly, though, it was a matter of whether you - idealist, warlord, freebooter, or oftenest blend of all three - could get yourself dubbed a crusader. It conferred special rights and privileges in this life, remission of sins in the next." (p. 390)

It sounds like a jihad? Idealism was at best only a third part of the motivation, alongside conquest and theft? I will continue to quote Anderson's prose until the end of this paragraph because it includes one of his list descriptions and it ends with two further consequences, economic and environmental:

"That was the legalism. The reality was men who marched, rode, sailed, hungered, thirsted, roistered, fought, raped, burned, looted, slaughtered, tortured, fell sick, took wounds, died nasty deaths or got rich or became captive slaves or eked out a living in a foreign land or perhaps returned, to and fro for centuries." (ibid.)

Might someone have committed rape while believing that all his sins, including this one, were remitted? Torture of enemies might not have been regarded as sinful.

"Meanwhile the wily Sicilians, Venetians, Genoese, Pisans raked large profits off the traffic..." (ibid.)

So the Regno and the cities would have had an economic motive to press an ecclesiastic to proclaim a Crusade...

"...and Asian rats stowed away in ships bound for Europe, they and their fleas carrying the Black Plague..." (pp. 390-391)

The judgment of God? (I do not believe that but it seems to fit when political and military actions are justified theologically.)

Wanda reflects that Iliria's parents might have agreed to her marrying Lorenzo in the hope that he would win booty in Palestine - idealistic freebooting.

Living in what has become multicultural Britain, I attended a public meeting in a mosque hall. The main speaker was a Member of Parliament. A supporting speaker, the local imam, presenting a historical perspective, described the liberation of Jerusalem from Crusaders by Saracens. To applause from his audience, he said that the liberators restored religious toleration in the city.

As the hobbits realized near the end of The Lord Of The Rings - we are part of that same story.

With Trevelyan Micah

The first three novels written (not published) by Poul Anderson were:

The Broken Sword (fantasy);
Vault Of The Ages (juvenile sf);
Star Ways/The Peregrine (a volume of his first future history).

A future history is event-driven, not character-driven. In this, the Psychotechnic, future history, three characters appear twice and that is it as far as character continuity goes:

"Un-Man," about clones of the dead but well remembered Stefan Rostomily, cameos Fourre;

"Marius," written later but set earlier is about Fourre and cameos Stefan;

in Star Ways, Trevelyan Micah of the Stellar Union Coordination Service bids farewell to Braganza Diane before departing on a mission;

in "The Pirate," written many years later but set a few years earlier, Micah again bids farewell to Diane before departing on a mission.

Thus, Fourre, Micah and Diane each appear twice.

Trevelyan refers to the Second Dark Ages which happened between "Brake" and "Gypsy." When he visits Port Nevada, we read one of Anderson's list-descriptions:

"...humans and nonhumans hustled, jostled, chiseled, brawled, clashed, stole, evangelized, grew rich, grew poor, came, went, and were forgotten..."
-Poul Anderson, Starship (New York, 1982), pp. 213-214.

Trevelyan's nonhuman colleague says of the man whom they are investigating:

"'Our information concerning his world line is fragmentary, and zero about its future segment.'" (p. 220)

Of course information about the future is zero! But does Smokesmith imply that his species does sometimes have information about future segments of world lines? The very fact he (?) discusses a man in terms of his world line is suggestive.

"...the mother-of-pearl iridescence on [Smokesmith's] rugose torso was lovely to watch." (p. 221)

(I took "rugose" to mean "red.")

Nerthus, like Tyrfing, is a name that links Anderson's hard sf to his mythological fiction.

Street Scene In Palmyra

Although Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991) was not serialized, its Chapter III had been previously published in Analog, June 1988 (see image). Its Chapter IV presents yet another of Anderson's exhaustive list-descriptions. This one is of the agora in Tadmor/Palmyra in 641 AD, marked out by the Colonnade with arches at either end and statues of citizens who have been famous over several centuries.

Buildings
shops
trading offices
chapels
joyhouses

Smells
smoke
sweat
dung
perfume
spices
oils
fruits

Sounds
footfalls
hoofbeats
wheel-creak
hammer-clang
chant
shout
speech
flute
drum
song

Languages
local Aramaic
Greek
Persian
Arabic
others from further away

Colors
cloak
robe
veil
headdress
lance pennon
ornament
charm

Tradesmen
rug seller
wine vendor
copper-smith

Traffic
oxcart with dates
camel with silks
Persian horsemen and trumpeter
litters bearing a merchant and a courtesan
Christian priest
magus
drovers

More On Livewell Street

Let's look longer at Livewell Street, Centauri, Avalon, where several important things happen. First, there are good Andersonian list descriptions. Part of the street runs beside a canal which is:

oily;
littered;
burdened with barges;
walled by high, dingy, close-packed buildings.

Glaring, blinking, leaping, crawling, colored signs advertise grog, dance, food, sensies, fun, drugs, gambling, girls and loans. The road is filled with groundbugs and the pavement with a sailor, a pilot, a raftman, a fisher, a hunter, a farmer, a whore, drunks, a monitor and a wild preacher. Humanity seethes, shrills and chatters. Engines rumble, feet shuffle, a loudspeaker blares. The air stinks of dirt, smoke, oil, sewage, flesh and surrounding swamps.

Arinnian, who must be Christopher Holm in this human town, thinks that Livewell Street is the old way from which the pioneers wanted to escape whereas Tabitha sees it as fun and thinks that the Founder, her ancestor, wanted nothing but elbow room. She has "'...read Falkayn's writings.'" (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 501)

A complete History of Technic Civilization would have to include:

The Sky Book Of Stormgate;
the complete Memoirs of Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves, Imperial Solar Navy;
Falkayn's writings.

Colors And Aromas

SM Stirling, Against The Tide Of Years (New York, 1999), Chapter Two, p. 25.

We have frequently appreciated list-descriptions on this blog. Here are some more. On Steamship Dock in Nantucket, there are:

dickering factors and dealers;
yelling storekeepers;
chanting sailors;
blanket-wearing Indians;
kilted Proto-Celtic warriors;
priestesses in ponchos;
an Olmec noble cloaked in turquoise, scarlet and purple hummingbird feathers;
a herd of smaller moas.

Odors:

moa guano;
drying fish;
boiling whale blubber;
raw leather;
horses and their dung;
sweat;
woodsmoke;
tarred rope;
wooden hulls;
the fresh sea breeze.

Cargoes:

salt from the Bahamas;
coffee;
raw asphalt;
sulfur;
quetzal feathers;
jaguar pelts;
chocolate beans;
raw cotton;
mahogany;
dyewoods. 

It sounds romantic although we are told that the reality is hot, sweaty and dangerous.

List-Descriptions And Scene-Setting In Medieval Paris

Poul Anderson, "Death and the Knight," IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 737-765 AT PARIS, TUESDAY, 10 OCTOBER 1307.

At last, a Time Patrol story that begins by stating place, day of the week, day of the month, month and year, but it is the last published Time Patrol story.

City Din
wind booming through streets, whining in galleries
footfalls
hoof-beats
creaking wheels
thudding hammers
chattering voices
songs
prayers
ringing church bells

Stenches
offal
horse droppings
privies
graves
smoke

Other Senses
low, racing, iron-hued clouds
whirling dust
chill

People
housewife
artisan
priest
mountebank
blind beggar
merchant
apprentices
man-at-arms (drunk)
student
foreigner
carter
a Knight Templar
a boy at his heels
no time traveler yet (that we know of)

Some Details In Tyre

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Warm, windless weather;

creaking, splashing sweeps;

coxswain's drumbeat;

blue wavelets, glittering, chuckling and swirling;

dazzling water blurring sight;

"...trade through the known world..." (p. 230);

multi-storey houses of stone or cedar;

bustling piers;

list descriptions of men and their activities;

Tyrian dyes;

rolling sounds;

overwhelming vitality;

crippled beggars;

ancient Eastern smells.

There is more.

Gods And Devils On Diomedes

The Man Who Counts, XVII.

Wace thinks of miserly gods (p. 258) and the flying, fighting Diomedeans resemble "Bat-winged demons..." (p. 255)  Thus, the Diomedean sea battle suggests a battle in Hell and such a battle, i.e., in Hell, does occur in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos:

List Descriptions

A Demon Lord And Horst's Orderly 

Matuchek's Moment Of Realization

Two Air Fights With Demons

Rescue From Hell

 

Parallel sf and fantasy narratives, Anderson addressing every option. 

Phoenicians

What did a typical Phoenician of 950 BC look like? Poul Anderson tells us in "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks." Captain Mago was:

slender;
swarthy;
hook-nosed;
with large, slanted eyes;
high cheekboned;
neatly bearded;
wearing colored kaftan, conical hat and sandals.

Perfect instructions for a graphic illustrator or film-maker. In fact, Anderson refers to films:

"Not that this was any prettified scene in an Arabian Nights movie." (Time Patrol, p. 232)

That suggests an interesting way to film this scene as Mago's ship, carrying Everard, approaches Tyre. Let us see it looking like "Arabian Nights" from a distance, then home in on the beggars, slaves and badly treated beasts of burden as Everard notices them. Mago had claimed that Tyre was "'...queen of the sea...'" (p. 230) and Everard acknowledges to himself that this city newly built on former skerries is "...in its way...as impressive as New York..." (ibid.) so we could also see his juxtaposed memories of New York?

Anderson presents the overwhelming vitality of the city with some of his list descriptions:

9 activities of the men bustling on the piers;
10 kinds of sounds;
9 kinds of smells.

I could reproduce the lists here but they are there to be found on p. 232.

Street Life In Valkarion

Maybe I should read Rudyard Kipling's Kim for the first time?

It is recommended.
Poul Anderson pays homage to it in The Game Of Empire.
I quote a Kipling verse here.
Kipling describes Indian culture whereas sf writers like Anderson describe human and non-human cultures on others planets in the future.
It would be appropriate to compare Kipling and Anderson on this blog.

Meanwhile, I have found yet another of Anderson's list descriptions of busy street life. In the old Imperial city of Valkarion, there are:

merchants in cloaks and robes;
workers and artisans in tunics;
peasants in homemade clothes and fur caps;
soldiers in tunics and metal;
painted harlots;
beggars;
slaves;
tonsured priests of the Moons;
foreign traders on "dromads" (we are on another planet);
black-skinned men;
feather-cloaked mercenaries;
barbarians from different regions.

"...all the world seemed to meet at Valkarion, in a babble of tongues and a swirl of colors...A trading center like Valkarion necessarily tolerated all creeds..." (Poul Anderson's Planet Stories ebook.)

As ever, the emphasis is on human life and activity - and the civilizing influence of trade.

Keldorgard

 

War Of The Gods, XXXI.

Andersonian list-descriptions.

Tasks

milking

stabling

cleaning

cooking

brewing

chopping

shearing

slaughtering

spinning

dyeing

weaving

nailing

forging

Sounds

clatter

thud

creak

crash

human and animal voices

Smells

smoke

sweat

meat

hides

hay

dung

Pleasures

tales

riddles

verses

songs

ring dances

races

wrestling

ball games

draughts

drunkenness

carving

fishing

lads and lasses

heaped trenchers

flowing ale

days of merriment

Everyone happy but ambitious Ulfhild.

List-Descriptions In Tyre

Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331.

On p. 228, Everard concludes a case that had involved Neldorians. On p. 229, he begins a case that will also involve time criminals but this time they will turn out to be the much more sophisticated Exaltationists who in turn will become the continuing villains of the series.

Visiting Ships
Phoenician
Philistine
Assyrian
Achaean
stranger yet

Harbor Activities
bustle
loading
unloading
fetching
bearing off
repairing
outfitting
dickering
arguing
chaffering

Sounds
talk
laughter
shouts
braying
neighing
footfalls
hoofbeats
hammerbeats
groaning wheels and cranes
twanging music

Smells
smoke
dung
offal
sweat
tar
spices
savory roasting
dye
murex-shell middens

We are told and believe that:

"The vitality was well-nigh overwhelming." (p. 232)

Going Bird

Poul Anderson excels at descriptive passages both of natural scenery and of crowded, bustling civic and commercial centers. On p. 499 of Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011) is his description of "...Avalon's second city...Centauri...," which I quoted in a much earlier post. On the following page, he presents one of his "list" descriptions that I have commented on before. Eleven kinds of pedestrians, five kinds of human noise and five kinds of street smells are listed, giving an impression, I suggest, of a dynamic urban environment.

Christopher Holm, who has joined an Ythrian choth, "gone bird," as Arinninian, draws a different conclusion:

"'...I'm proud to belong to a choth and not proud that members of my race elect to live in a sty.'" (p. 501)

Ythrians mate only when in heat. Gestation has to be short because adult Ythrians fly. The young cling to either parent until their wings have developed. Adult sexes are equal or nearly so. Occasional females able to ovulate at will used to be killed and are now generally shunned. Chris is shocked to find his chothmate Eyath's betrothed Vodan with a permanently-in-heat female before he goes to war. He expects purity of his chothmates whereas Tabitha/Hrill comments:

"'...don't you suppose, if [Eyath] heard, she'd be glad he's gotten a bit of unimportant fun and forgetting?'" (p. 508)

"Birds," human choth members, tend to be promiscuous but not with each other. Chris has some problem but, three times when speaking to Tabitha, he does not finish his sentence:

"'You wouldn't -' he stammered. 'I mean, somebody like you?'" (p. 501)

And later:

"'We birds -' He couldn't finish..." (p. 509)

When she challenges his use of the word "we," he replies:

"'Why, we...our generation, at least -'" (p. 509)

- and again does not finish. Tabitha understands what is going on well enough to tell him that his "...case..." is neither as typical nor as serious as he thinks. (p. 510) But I am still having trouble with what his "case" is. She refuses his proposition, which he says was only intended to make a point, to show why he is upset about Vodan, but he has no difficulty in finding another sexual partner for what is left of the night.

Later: He expects the same "purity" of human chothmates that he finds among Ythrians and thus denies that the former are human?