Re: Enantodromia

At 2:26 PM -0500 12/16/02, John Cowan wrote:
>Tim May scripsit:
>
>> So that's what it means.  Aldiss uses it repeatedly in his
>> _Helliconia_ trilogy (along with the mysterious "eotemporal", which
>> I've mentioned here before) but his definition is less helpful -
>> something like "the process by which things are converted into their
>> opposites".
>
>That sounds about right.
>
>As for "eotemporal", context would help, but it sounds to me like a
>portmanteau word for "in eo tempore", which would mean "in this time"
>as contrasted with "in illo tempore", which means "in that time, in
>mythological time, in the dream time".  So something is eotemporal if
>it is part of ordinary secular time.
As I recall, 'eotemporal' was used in _Helliconia_ to describe the non-temporal
mode of thinking of the phagors. They live, as it were, in an eternal present
and are incapable of distinguishing What Has Happened from What Is Happening.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                               Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the appreciation of
fact." - Stephen Anderson

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