Living with Fantasy & Illusion: Some Thoughts Inspired by Poul Anderson's
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Volume 1 Issue 4 Article 6 January 1974 Living with Fantasy & Illusion: Some Thoughts Inspired by Poul Anderson's The Queen of Air and Darkness Dale Ziegler Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythpro Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Ziegler, Dale (1974) "Living with Fantasy & Illusion: Some Thoughts Inspired by Poul Anderson's The Queen of Air and Darkness," Mythcon Proceedings: Vol. 1 : Iss. 4 , Article 6. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythpro/vol1/iss4/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythcon Proceedings by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mythcon 51: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico • Postponed to: July 30 – August 2, 2021 Abstract Meditation on archetypes and fantasy rather than a scholarly paper, this piece considers messages about the human longing for the fantastic embodied in Anderson’s novel, and the dangers of allowing archetypes to be taken as more than the illusions they actually are. Reproduces several lengthy passages from the novel, in particular the ballad of the ranger Arvid. Keywords Anderson, Poul. The Queen of Air and Darkness; Archetypes—Definition; antasy—DefinitionF This article is available in Mythcon Proceedings: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythpro/vol1/iss4/6 Ziegler: Living with Fantasy & Illusion: Some Thoughts Inspired by Poul An Living with fantasy Er Illuston Some Thoughts Inspired by Poul Anderson's · The Queen .of Air and Darkness A. by Dale . Ziegler A work can be approached in many ways for purposes of The child they have stolen this time, however, has a discussion before a rather specialized group such as this. mother of rare intelligence, detennination and resource. It can be examined as a piece of wordscrafting, it can She enlists the aid of Roland's sole private eye, who has be dovetailed with other of the author's works; it can be long been curious about these reports, and who has a few illuminated by research in references and sources; it can theories about them. He knows that such a small area cannot be compared to a similar body of writing. have spawned such a profusion of highly developed life forms, I could have, for example, just to mention one, traced and that archeological research has uncovered only the most for you the figure of the Queen of Air and Darkness. I shadowy hints of any cultural development on the planet. didn't. Nor did I do any of the other things I mentioned. Certainly nothing has been encountered which could be So at the outset let me tell you what it is that I thought of as a "native". propose to talk about. The detective, who has had experience with several types of life forms on other planets, gathers the equipment This paper, which is titled LIVING WITH FANTASY AND he requires, and together with the stolen boy's mother, he ILLUSION, SOME THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY POUL ANDERSON'S treks off towards the wilderness. THE QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS, is a true child of the night, A stay with the family of an Outland plantation baron, having been conceived during a moment of wakefulness long living on the edge of explored territory, provides a closer before dawn, and most of its ideas having been born in hours look at legend, bringing into the story more of the colorful that should have been spent in sleep. Not being one of the background of myth - myth not from ancient sources and children of light and joy, it might therefore be considered references, but myth alive, right outside the windows. as something of a minority report to the Mythopoeic Society. After this visit the two worlds engage, being neatly Anderson's ballad of the ranger Arvid, which is joined by the two halves of a lengthy ballad which is begun embodied in his story, was first brought to my attention at the homestead, and which Barbro Cullen, the widow whose with the suggestion that a musical setting of it might be child has been taken, completes later for the detective nice to have for music at Mythcon. But music is a daytime Eric Sherrinford. consideration for me, and I casually began by searching for Sherrinford's first move is the cue for some exciting a tune that would fit the shape and the sense of eighteen action as he captures for a hostage the young Outling lad stanzas; one that would sustain interest over that length. Mistherd, whom we had met at the story's opening. At this Before long I realized that the ballad was not a free• time Barbro sees her boy Jimmy, and runs to him. He standing unit, and needed its surroundings to give it both vanishes, and she is seemingly swept up into the arms of her definition and atmosphere. So I read the story, and then went back to a consideration of the musical challenge of the ballad. As so often happens with our days, this one dead husband, mounted astride the very horse her father had eventually came to a close, and I went to bed. At two given her in childhood. With her we enter a world of great o'clock I awoke, haunted, not by music, but by Anderson's beauty and of great comfort, of magic spires and fountains, story itself. It seemed to me then that herein, perhaps, and the familiar scent of roses. might lie a sort of message meant somehow for the Mythopoeic Barbro's feeling for her dead husband is revived again, Society - a message on living life, living as archetypes, and she feels his concern for her; her child, really Jimmy living out illusions, living in the grip of illusion; a this time, is soon restored, and she is comforted by his message on the drab necessity of coming back always to daily well-being. He begs her to remain. The Queen, too, bathes life, of being people. her in acceptance and love: the All Healer, Moonmother. At this point, for those who haven't read the story, I A persuasive mood of wonder and loveliness lulls and should briefly and barely recount the tale of "The Queen of envelops us. Air and Darkness": Into this idyll Sherrinford lobs a bomb of shattering steel, scattering startled sprites right and left, killing II. ~no~sis nk nd has virtually done with Earth and split into some guardian trolls at the gate. At his thundering countless colonies, peopling planets everywhere, bringing to advance the enchantments waver and fall apart, for he each that which is most meaningful to them from their past thrusts out a defensive field against the thought projections cultures. of the aliens, the carefully implanted illusions by which they had planned eventually and painlessly to enfold and On the little world of Roland, with its twin moons and entrap the planet's human population, and lead them at last its star Charlemagne, the colonists have been puzzled and to a blissful extinction. disturbed for several generations by ominous reports from For they were really not, of course, the Old Folk dwellers on the outskirts of civilization. Creatures which risen again, but, most of them, a two-legged crocogator seem to be the Old Folk of Earth, risen again from so far in sort of people, who had retreated upon man's arrival, and space and time, are devoutly believed to inhabit the Outlands, launched a program of hypnotic deception and indoctrination, in all their variety of shape and kind, with their mingling beginning with the children they stole, and supposedly, of malevolence and indifference to mankind. The chief hopefully spreading little by little throughout the colony mischief ascribed to these beings is the stealing of human of invaders, till all were willingly within their grasp. infants and young children for purposes feared to be sinister. Sherrinford had, in time, not only saved little Ji11111y, but The sophisticated in the cities lend scant credence to any had, in the process, u1111asked the conspirators and their aspect of these tales. conspiracy. But in an opening scene reminiscent of "A Midsunmer Mistherd must learn that he is not inmortal, that it is Night's Dream" or "The Tempest", we see two of these human not given to humankind to live forever, that his destiny children, now in their mid-teens, receiving a newly-stolen must link once more, however prosaically, with that of his baby from their friend Ayoch, a winged, tailed, feathered, own people. yet man-like creature. I will let Sherrinford speak his last scene with We also meet their Queen: Stannother, Snowmaker, Lady Barbro in his own words: " .•• I suppose if El fl and had won, SkY; who confers upon her charges an eternal carefree youth, man on Roland would at last - peacefully, even happily - an immortal's playful contempt for their human forebears, have died away. We live with our archetypes, but can we and a benevolent environnent of sunshine artd streams, live in them? flowering bowers, and a hierarchy of subservient, endearing "Stupid of me. I've explained this to so many if rather grotesque, playmates. politicians and scientist and c011111issioners and Lord knows . .33 Published by SWOSU Digital Commons, 1974 1 Mythcon Proceedings, Vol. 1, Iss. 4 [1974], Art. 6 what, these past days, I forgot I'd never explained to you. Poul Anderson has written widely in this last category, It was a rather vague idea of mine, most of the time we his chronological scope alone ranging from the earliest were traveling, and I don't like to discuss ideas prematurely.