There is no word in English to translate
Gengangere - the title of Henrik Ibsen's
notorious last play. French has
Revenants (which is not quite the same),
but English has too many words for things,
and too few for ideas, emotions,
different concepts and feelings intertwined,
and other subtleties of states of mind.
1 comment:
Blogger auban said...
There is, unsurprisingly, a long tradition of revenants in Ireland. It has been suggested that Bram Stoker got the inspiration for Dracula not from a Romanian folk tale but from an Irish legend about an evil chieftain who had to be killed three times after he came back looking for a bowl of blood to sustain him.
Two skeletons found in County Roscommon date to some time in the 700s, long before vampires emerged in European folklore, but at a time when communities believed that revenants came back from the grave to haunt loved ones or harass those who bore them a grudge while living.
One of them was lying with his head looking straight up and a large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth, while the other had his head turned to the side and had an even larger stone wedged violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated.
for more on this see:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44549702/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.TnOfN3O4Iy4
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