Talk:Lel and Polel
 | A fact from Lel and Polel appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 27 July 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Did you know nomination edit
- The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 22:54, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
- ... that Lel and Polel are considered divine twins in Slavic mythology? Source: Aleksander Gieysztor (2006). ... so giving these few messages, I prefer not to inquire further about what deity Lel and Polel could have been, it is only on the basis of what I said it can be said that Lel could not be just a chant as the own names or etymology prove
Converted from a redirect by Sławobóg (talk). Self-nominated at 11:28, 26 June 2020 (UTC).
Date, size, refs, copyvio all good. The quoted ref doesn't mention the word twins but other sources cited in the article do, so it seems fine. QPQ check tool is broken, but nom's talk page suggests it is their second nomination so QPQ is not required (but I'll nonetheless ping User:Sławobóg to see if they'd like to start doing them soon!). One suggestion I have for Sławobóg the closing admin is to add a link to divine twins in the hook; another - this could be a picture-based nom with File:Fischerinselgoetze.jpg. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:18, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Can we get a source that says the twins on this picture are Lel and Polel? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:19, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Polish-centred and possibly biased article? edit
The article is clearly a translation of the one from the Polish Wikipedia. This results in a very uneven coverage by different languages. English and Polish WPs are, despite mentioning criticism of the gods' authenticity, erring on the side of positive view. With no real elaboration, Aleksander Brückner's work is called hypercritical (whatever that might mean?) and pseudoscientific. It is also problematic that all sources are Polish. On the other hand, the Russian and the German versions of the articles are clearly more skeptical. For example, among the Russian WP sources, the article from Encyclopedia of Mythology on Slavic mythology written by eminent scholars Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov states:
"Следующие за Длугошем авторы повторяют его список, а иногда и увеличивают его за счет новых божеств, надежность имен которых, однако, невелика (напр., Лель, Полель и Погвизд у Маковского, Похвист у Кромера)."
This article by Toporov is even more skeptical.
In principle, the whole topic needs very careful analysis and multilingual approach because it is fertile grounds for nationalistic mythologisation, and also a panslavic rather than only Polish topic. The current article is not only at odds with Russian and German WP, but also with the English article on Lada (mythology), which is more critical and gives a much more careful description of the figure's treatment over time (unlike this article which finds that two statues were found and some scholars for unclear reasons argue that they are representations of Lel and Polel, and that this initiated a change in the entire attitude towards the cult - apparently Toporov and Ivanov missed that part?). Phazd (talk) 22:51, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
- Hey, I am the author of this article. This was one of my first articles, and I 100% agree that it needs improvement. I focused on Polish sources as it is a "Polish deity". You can't say that the article is very non-neutral, but it can be improved. The problem is that these deities are extremely difficult to describe because opinions are quite divergent, and generally the arguments look like "I support" or "I don't support". I recently bought a book that analyzes this in terms of linguistics (used in Lada, Dzidzilela or Jesza - my other articles). Nyja also needs to be updated, I will look into it soon. Sławobóg (talk) 09:28, 22 February 2022 (UTC)