How does any man come to terms with his own misdeeds, "sins" in Biblical terminology, "wrong actions" in Buddhist terminology? Does he even recognize them as such? If there were a judge of the dead, then he would surely have to consider many individual factors? The nearest that a character in one gangster film could come to saying, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," was "I'm in a bad f----ing way!" He did not explicitly acknowledge that his dire circumstances were the consequences of his own actions but neither did he deny this or blame anyone else.
How does Poul Anderson's Ermanaric in "The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth" measure up? He acknowledges that:
he did not heed the gods;
he relied on his own strength;
the gods are trickier and crueler than he had realized;
he killed men who would otherwise have helped him to resist the Huns.
He seems to have learned something although nowhere near enough - no guilt for the murder of Swanhild. Ermanaric goes into the dark - and to whatever awaits him beyond it (Time Patrol, pp. 464-465).
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
The fact that Ermanaric, in his despair, reflected that it was his own folly which had totally alienated Hathawulf and the Teurings from him seems to indicate he was coming close to understanding how that happened. That is, it was the murder of Randwar and Swanhild which provoked the Teurings to open rebellion. Absent that, a WISER Ermanaric might have come to terms with Hathawulf and prevented the Ostrogoths from being fatally weakened by the internal strife which enabled the Huns to drive them out.
Sean
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