Things have been pretty quiet here at From My Bookshelf as I try to bounce back from last weekend’s triple whammy: final papers and exams arriving from a pair of online classes that ended Saturday; a drive out east and back to help my son move in for his last year of law school; and preparing new syllabi and other course materials for the new semester that began on Monday. Looks as though I have one more big Saturday of grading ahead of me!
As a result, the only real reading I’ve been doing this week has been for classes, mainly a healthy dose of ancient epic. I began by reading the epic of Gilgamesh, in order to prepare some short lectures for an introductory humanities class. To be honest, I’ve had a bit of trouble warming to Gilgamesh. Somewhat surprisingly, I never had to read it in the course of my own education. A couple of years ago I decided I would add it to this humanities course, following an example set by a few colleagues, and that was the first time I’d ever tackled it.
Selecting an edition in a combination of haste and ignorance, I landed on an Oxford World Classics volume of Myths from Mespotamia that included Gilgamesh. I’m not entirely sure now how or why I plumped for that edition, but it was an inauspicious choice. An impressive work of scholarship, I’m sure, but not terribly readable for a group of incoming freshmen. The fragmentary nature of Gilgamesh is rather challenging under any circumstances; I needed something aimed a little more self-consciously at a broader audience.
And then I encountered a podcast featuring a conversation with a young scholar named Sophus Helle. I wish I could remember the podcast in order to give it credit, but I no longer have any idea what it might have been. Helle was extremely engaging, with an infectious enthusiasm for ancient literature. He had translated Gilgamesh into Danish together with his father, a poet named Morten Søndergaard. And now he was publishing a translation of it into English.
Listening to Helle’s excitement about reading and translating ancient Akkadian cuneiform texts, it was hard not to think I might have found the classroom edition I was looking for. So I got his verse translation of Gilgamesh and am using it now for the second time, with satisfaction. It flows well, handles the missing segments nicely, and is clear and understandable while striving to capture some of the poetic quality of the original. It also includes several nice interpretive essays following the text.
Later in the week I found myself teaching excerpts from another ancient epic, one I know much better, Homer’s Iliad. Reading the two books in close succession, I was struck by the somber realism with which they both confront human mortality. The need to come to terms with his own mortality is of course one of the central themes of Gilgamesh. Only after his close friend Enkidu dies does the hero fully realize that his days are similarly numbered. “My friend Enkidu, whom I loved, has turned to clay,” he laments. “Am I not like him? I too will lie down / and never get up, for all of eternity.” Later, Uta-napishti, to whom Gilgamesh has gone to learn the secret of eternal life, teaches him much the same lesson:
No one sees death.
No one sees the face of death,
no one hears the voice of death.
But it is savage death that snaps mankind.
(These are Helle’s translations.) Gilgamesh struggles to come to terms with this, but ultimately his response is to rejoin the human community (or perhaps simply to join it, since initially, though a king, he is also an outsider, larger than life). The poem ends with his return to Uruk, his city, with its laws and orchards and clay pits and temple.
The warriors in Homer’s Iliad must also confront their own mortality. As with Gilgamesh, it leads them not to mere cynicism, or nihilism, or hedonism, but rather to an affirmation of life and of the ties that bind them to others. One of the best illustrations of this comes in Book XII, where the Greek hero Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, offers a famous statement of the heroic code. He asks his friend Glaukos why their comrades honor them above all others. And he answers his own question: because “it is our duty in the forefront of the Lykians / to take our stand, and bear our part of the blazing of battle.”
Most striking, however, is the reflection he offers at the close of this little speech:
Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle,
would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal,
so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost
nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory.
I’ve often thought these are rather startling lines, not really what one expects from a Greek warrior. “If I had my druthers, I’d really just as soon not be here fighting,” he says. “I’d rather be home relaxing with my feet up.” That’s what I’d do if I were going to live forever.
But he isn’t going to live forever:
But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us
in their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape them,
let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.
No man can turn aside and escape the spirits of death, he says; just as in Gilgamesh, no one sees death coming, but it is savage death that snaps mankind. And Sarpedon’s response? That’s a shame—but back to work. (We used the Fagles translation in class, but these lines here are from Richmond Lattimore’s, which I happen to have with me at home.)
There is an undeniable nobility in this determination to face death squarely and nevertheless shoulder life’s responsibilities bravely. In the end, I cannot fully share the mindset; among the epic poets, it is ultimately Dante who understands that the last word is to be had by joy rather than sorrow. (Though of them all, my own favorite is Vergil.) But if that were not the case—if death really had the final say—one could do far worse, I think, than to take Sarpedon as a model.
Briefly noted in the “ones that got away” department:
I have been thinking wistfully here at summer’s end of the books I had hoped to read but didn’t get to. And I believe I’ll share a few examples in coming weeks under the rubric of “ones that got away.” The list is potentially very long, so at some point I’ll have to draw a line. But if you’ve read any of these, let me know what you thought!
Last spring I was briefly in Chicago with one of my daughters, and while in a bookstore there I discovered a book called Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis. I had never heard of Portis, though he seems to be significant enough that I probably should have. The book has one of the wildest and most irresistible back-cover blurbs I have ever read in my life:
Charles Portis’s quintessential comic masterpiece centers on Lamar Jimmerson, leader of the Gnomon Society, the international fraternal order dedicated to preserving the arcane wisdom of the lost city of Atlantis. Stationed in France in 1917, Jimmerson comes across a little book crammed with Atlantean puzzles, Egyptian riddles, and extended alchemical metaphors. It’s the Codex Pappus—the sacred Gnomon text. Soon he is basking in its lore, convinced that his mission on Earth is to extend the ranks of this noble brotherhood.
Taking us through the publication of Jimmerson’s own Gnomic texts, to the schism that rocks the Gnomic community, to Jimmerson’s disastrous bid to become the governor of Indiana, and finally to the fateful gathering of the Gnomons in a mobile-home park in East Texas, Masters of Atlantis is a cockeyed journey into an America of misfits, con men, and innocents.
That blurb is a masterpiece in its own right. (The crowning touch, I think, is that bid to become governor of Indiana.) Masters of Atlantis got away from me this summer. But its day will come.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time for another installment From My Bookshelf.
Peter, as always, your words inspire. I’m listening to There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak, which begins with Gilgamesh! You have convinced me to give it a try. Your students are lucky!