Monday 17 April 2017

"One of us will not leave this field."

"'As you will,' he said in Latin. 'One of us will not leave this field.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, Ny, 2006), pp. 173-228 AT p. 227.

A Time Patrolman from the mid-twentieth century addresses a Neldorian from the 205th millennium in Latin at Ticinus in 218 BC! I will try to get that dialogue translated into Latin but not tonight. Here in 2017, it is 12:51 AM.

In Change Year 10, they speak English:

"'One of us, I think, will not leave this field alive,' he said..."
-SM Stirling, A Meeting At Corvallis (New York, 2007), Chapter Twenty-Two, p. 588.

Thus, Norman Arminger has reminded us first of Brechdan Ironrede, then of Manse Everard.

Is that phrase, "One of us will not leave this field," common in jousting or in other forms of single combat?

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Commenting first on your last sentence. Jousting can be practiced as a sport or as deadly serious combat. In the former neither party is trying to kill each other despite it still being dangerous. Norman Arminger intended the latter.

And I'm pretty sure S.M. Stirling hoped alert readers like you would think of Brechdan Ironrede and Manse Everard. I'm chagrined at missing these Andersonian allusions!

I know it was just s slip, but the year mentioned in the second paragraph is not AD 2917! Hmmm, if this was the Technic timeline, we might have been reading Stirling's works in the third century of the Terran Empire!(Smiles)

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Ah, you noticed... 8-).

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

We don't miss anything, Mr Stirling! (Alternatively: if we seem to have missed anything, please tell us.)
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

I only WISH I had thought of Brechdan Ironrede and Manse Everard when I first read these parts of A MEETING AT CORVALLIS. Very artistic, this unobtrusive use of Andersonian allusions.

Sean