Wednesday 21 May 2014

Plays Within The Play

I have found two potential "plays within the play" in Poul Anderson's A Circus Of Hells.

(i) The Domrath:

"...not only slept at night, but spent two-thirds of [their] life among the ghostly half-dreams of hibernation -"
- Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 291.

So they are awake for less than one third of their lives! And "...half-dreams..." suggests half realities? So one interesting story would by an epic journey or conflict experienced during the controlled dreams of a Dom shaman.

(ii) "She closed her eyes and saw a man who bore Nicky Flandry's face (descendant, maybe) striding in the van of an army which followed the Merseian Christ. He carried no exterior burden of venal superiors and bloodless colleagues, no interior load of guilts and doubts and mockeries; in his hand was the gigantic simplicity of a war knife, and he laughed as he strode. Beside him, she herself walked. Wind tossed her hair and roared in green boughs. They would never leave each other." (p. 331)

No fears or restraints! A Siegfried indeed! How simple and simplistic. So a story within the story could be set in that future when Flandry's descendant resembling him follows the Merseian Christ and the Old Way revives Djana's memories in that later Flandry's companion.

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