"'...understand[s] that God wears a different face in most of the known cosmos.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Night Face" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 541-660 AT II, p. 554.
Miguel Tolteca from Ispanyo-speaking Nuevamerica wonders:
"Had he quite understood that business with 'God'?" (ibid.)
Beware of "God"! I do not mean beware of the ultimate reality. I mean that English word. Poul Anderson uses "God" to represent words in Planha, Eriau and Gwydiona. Planha-speaking Ythrians and Eriau-speaking Merseians do mean by "God" a transcendent person although their concepts differ both from each other and from any Terrestrial concept. The Gwydiona "God" is either impersonal or transpersonal. It might better have been represented by the phrase, "the transcendent." English "God" is over-used.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Except, of course, readers had to go to the end of THE NIGHT FACE to find out what caused the Gwydiona used "God" in such confusing ways. All that fine-spun mythologizing in the story was only a mask.
Ad astra! Sean
"God" should be trans -, not sub -, rational.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree.
Ad astra! Sean
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