It is necessary to translate "...between Unglish and Angley." (p. 266)
Noyon Orluk Boktan says:
"'I'm not a Gaean...I give the Principles and adepts their due respect. They may be right. But meditation and theory aren't for me, and what honor do they have from lip service? My homage is to the old gods - Oktai, Erlik, Lenin - and the ancestors.'" (p. 267)
Meditation and theory are for me, although not Gaean. Lip service, no. Respect, yes. Old gods can be respected as long as anyone gives them homage. Eventually, they return to the realm of Dream, then Death, then non-existence, according to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Alan Moore gives them a different destination. See The Approach To Ys, concluding paragraph.
We see languages and names of gods change over the course of Poul Anderson's Maurai History.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Wait, LENIN somehow became a "god" in the Maurai timeline? An ionic fate! Of course I realize that was because the people from the eastern USSR which invaded North America after the War of Judgment and became the Mong had forgotten what kind of person Lenin was.
And I don't believe we become non-existent after death.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Some gods begin not in the Dreaming but in history. We could write a list. But the man and his deification soon part company.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I thought of Odin, whom Poul Anderson speculatively imagined in THE GOLDEN SLAVE had originally been simply a man and a king.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
That is one example.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And Malcolm Lockridge, in Anderson's THE CORRIDORS OF TIME, might have been another. That is, a great king or lord worshiped as a god by later generations.
Ad astra! Sean
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