Good, Evil, Nature, and the Hero – Backwards: Unsucky English, Lecture 5 (Gilgamesh, cont’d)
Tuesday, 23 September 2008 Clay Burell 
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Gilgamesh - the Earth's oldest religious epic - in Stephen Mitchell's brilliant 2004 translation.
[The Unsucky English Gilgamesh series so far: 1: Dangerous Questions ~ 2: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job ~ 3: Adam and Eve, Backwards ~ 4. The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards. ~ 6. Gilgamesh and the Birth of the New Man ~ 7. A Goddess Prays 8. The Modern Mischief of the Gilgamesh Poets]1
Let me state at the outset that this lecture is about Gilgamesh, though at times it will be so only north by northwest – because this lecture will be speaking of Gilgamesh in the context of a death in the family, and that family’s attempts to make meaning of life in the face of that death.
It’s the same struggle Gilgamesh experiences in the world’s oldest religious story.
~ ~ ~
Death, Consolation, and the Problem of Evil
My wife lost her mother two weeks ago. Her mother was a good woman, and passionately Christian. Yet her life was ended at a young 64 by a stroke followed closely by a terminal cancer. My wife, on the one hand, cannot understand how the god her mother loved so much would end her life so early; and on the other hand, my wife now feels pulled to explore her mother’s religion in order to understand and, she hopes, experience the happiness this religion gave her mother.
The question my wife keeps asking is “Why?” It’s an old and bedeviling question in Christianity, one that theologians have a term for: theodicy, “the problem of evil,” in a universe purportedly controlled by a god said to be both all-powerful and all-good. If he is these things, then how could he stand by and watch this devout woman die such a slow and tragically early death?
Had this death occurred before I began this series on Gilgamesh, I probably would have offered insights about our reaction to death and loss from Buddhism and Taoism.
I’m not a Buddhist because I find reincarnation as improbable – and as devoid of compelling evidence – as I find notions of heaven and hell (though Buddhism’s lack of a permanent hell makes it a more humane metaphysics than Christianity or Islam, in my view). But the Buddha’s teachings on how we create our own suffering by letting our fear and desire master us strike me simply as psychological, not religious, wisdom.
Fearing death is unwise like fearing old age is: it’s part of the natural order – and there’s the Tao – so fearing it is unprofitable. Add to that that death is an unknown, and as far as evidence goes, most probably is nothing more than oblivion on the order of an eternal and peaceful sleep without dreams, and there seems little cause for fear. Sadness, yes, but not fear.
Desiring immortality or, more to the point, to see our deceased loved ones again in an afterlife, is equally painful. In our most honest, quiet, interior moments, I can’t help but suspect that we all harbor extreme doubts that there’s an eternal reunion of friends and family in any heaven. But our desire that this be the case, despite our secret honesty, sets the stage for inner conflict, for anguish, as hope battles skepticism and desire battles realism in our breasts. Resolution favors doubt on this question, and thus, so long as we side with our desired fantasy over the evidence of our senses, we don’t find peace.
It really boils down to a conflict between naturalism – what we guess or reason by observing nature – and supernaturalism: the teachings about unobservable things from ancient tribal books and their interpreters in today’s various priestly classes.
But to repeat: I would have offered the above perspectives had this death occurred before my studies of Gilgamesh. That’s not the case. And I am as surprised as the next person that I find myself now believing that Gilgamesh offers a wisdom about death and how it is best dealt with that is superior to that of Buddhism.
As I mentioned in my last post, the three days’ mourning and funeral for my Korean mother-in-law here in Seoul was dominated by one book: the Bible. There was one other book present during those rites, and it was my copy of Gilgamesh. As the Korean mourners and I sat on the floor with the Christian preacher leading her flock in readings, songs, and prayers – none of which I could understand, of course – I found it entirely appropriate to read this other ancient meditation on mortality and the meaning of life, since it was, after all, from a religion and a book that lived in people’s hearts for four thousand years at least – twice as long as Christianity has lived so far – and which informed and influenced the Bible as well.
When I was told that it looked disrespectful to be reading this book as the Koreans looked to their own ancient book for guidance, I put the book away. When in Rome and all of that.
But I got the chance, later, to explain to my wife why that book was profoundly relevant to the occasion. Call it a rehearsal for this post. Here goes.
A Bit of Homosexuality and a Macho Fight Scene: Ho Hum
The last lecture concluded with Shamhat – the temple prostitute who played a “holy Eve” by sexually elevating the “animal Adam” Enkidu into civilization – leading Enkidu to the city to experience its glories and to meet Gilgamesh, its king. We noted the contradiction of Enkidu’s feelings about meeting the king. On the one hand, he looked forward to Gilgamesh satisfying his new yearning for “a true friend”; but on the other hand, he declared he would challenge Gilgamesh to a fight for two reasons: first, to stop the king’s unjust practice of taking each new bride’s virginity before her husband on her wedding day; and second, simply to show he was physically mightier than the king.
I find the story from this point to the end of the fight scene only marginally interesting. Gilgamesh has a few dreams portending Enkidu’s arrival that disturb him, and we see the unsurprising evidence that this ancient culture, like so many others, saw dreams as possible messages from the divine. Beyond that, we see hints that male friendship in this culture might be homosexual – which won’t surprise anybody familiar with similar hints about Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad, practically all the Athenians of classical Greece’s Golden Age (these normal homosexuals – who gave us democracy, philosophy, tragedy, comedy, and so much more – considered straight men queer), and the Bible‘s King David and Jonathan.2
Then comes the big fight scene: Gilgamesh shows up to taste his latest bride, but Enkidu blocks his way. Their fight is predictably over-the-top, half saloon-brawl in a cliche cowboy movie, half the Incredible Hulk, and finally Gilgamesh pins Enkidu. Enkidu’s a good sport: he acknowledges that Gilgamesh is his superior, that he has the right to rule, and declares his loyalty. They kiss, hold hands, and walk back to the palace.
Another WTF Plot Twist: The Quest to Kill Nature’s “Evil” Guardian
I’m intimidated at this point, because the plot turn that happens here, just a third of the way into the story, connects to everything that happens from this point forward. It’s a huge and intricate tapestry of meaning from this point on, and I honestly don’t know if I’m equal to the task of holding all the threads together. I’ll do my best, though.
The plot turn I speak of is this: After an unspecified period of time during which Gilgamesh and Enkidu cement their friendship in the city, Gilgamesh gets a wild hair up his behind and announces to Enkidu that he has a new mission: He and Enkidu are going to travel to the Cedar Forest, a sacred place which men are forbidden to enter, in order to kill its “evil” guardian, the “monster” Humbaba, and chop down the tallest cedar tree in the forest.
Enkidu, remember, was originally a semi-animal in the wild, running with the gazelles and fighting off the lions that preyed upon them. He knew the Cedar Forest, knew it was sacred to the god of the wind, Enlil, and knew that Humbaba, being appointed by Enlil to protect the forest, was thus not a creature so easy to label as “evil.” So Enkidu begs the hot-blooded young king to drop this idea.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu argue about this, and the interesting thing about the argument is this: Enkidu frames his argument in terms of the sacred. The forest is holy, Humbaba is its divinely-appointed guardian, and so to kill Humbaba would be a sacrilege. Gilgamesh, though, frames the argument not in terms of the sacred, but in terms of the heroic.
Let me assure you that, as an English teacher, I’ve always inwardly groaned at how often other English teachers trot out the unit on “the Hero’s Journey.” It’s not a bad thing, this theory. Anybody who’s read books like Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces knows how fascinating the subject is. What makes me groan is its popularity. It’s the “Hotel California” or “Stairway to Heaven” (or, god help us, the “Free Bird”) of English units, trotted out so many times that even the wormiest of us booky types must get tired of it after the thousandth listening. The other thing that makes me groan is that, in the wrong hands, it becomes as formulaic as the dreaded, crappy five-paragraph essay. There’s something dangerous about prescribing to students that they take every story under the sun and shoehorn it into the Hero’s Journey formula. By reducing stories to that framework, we can ignore what’s unique or surprising that doesn’t fit so nicely into that shoe.
So trust me, I offer the following as one of the few times I want to talk about a story in these terms.
What’s interesting about Gilgamesh to me, more than anything, is really the mind of the poets who polished and revised this story from its early Sumerian version around the 23rd century BCE to its later Babylonian version in the 12th century BCE. Unlike other ancient books that were edited and revised by countless hands over many centuries – the Bible comes to mind more than any other book I know – Gilgamesh seems to have gained in coherence and consistency of vision over time, rather than becoming, like the Bible, more contradictory and less coherent.
And the vision all these Gilgamesh poets so sharply refined is one that, contrary to appearances, is deeply anti-heroic.
You don’t realize it in the current scene. Gilgamesh answers Enkidu’s religious argument with an argument based on heroism. His motives boil down to these two: first, he wants to achieve something no other mortal has achieved, and so – since “none of us can escape death,” he says – gain immortality for his name, in stories of his exploits; and second, he wants to rid the world of “evil.” He doesn’t respond to Enkidu’s arguments at all. Instead, he chides Enkidu for being cowardly, and finally wins Enkidu over by this shaming tactic.
So the “Hero” argument wins the day. We’ll see, by the end, that it was a fool’s argument as well.
Before closing this installment, a couple more observations:
The “Double That Balances” Motif, and Another “Genesis, Backwards” Trope
To step back from the canvas for a second to take a larger view, we should review the original “wtf plot twist” so far: the god Anu’s “solution” to Gilgamesh’s oppressive behavior as king by creating Enkidu as a “double that balances” him, and “so brings peace” to Uruk. In the first stage of this pattern, we saw Gilgamesh as symbol of the city, and Enkidu as symbol of nature; Gilgamesh as civilization, Enkidu as animal; Gilgamesh as two-thirds divine, one-third human, Enkidu as two-thirds animal, one-third human.
Now, though, we’ve seen Enkidu seem to upset that balance by crossing over to Gilgamesh’s side. Sex with Shamhat erased his original animal innocence and replaced it with full humanity; his journey to the city took him out of the realm of nature; and though he resists Gilgamesh’s urge to kill Humbaba and violate the Cedar Forest, his ultimate submission again places him now on the same side as Gilgamesh, rather than opposing him as a “balancing double.”
But look what is about to happen: Gilgamesh is about to lead Enkidu out of the city – out of his own territory – and into Nature, the original domain of Enkidu. So in a sense, we see Enkidu cross into civilization only to – wtf – see Gilgamesh now “balance” this by entering Enkidu’s territory.
Note, further, that something is imbalanced about all of this nonetheless: because while Enkidu, when in his original state of animal innocence, protected the other animals from predators and, more significantly, human trappers, Gilgamesh is entering nature with the opposite intention: to conquer it, to kill its guardian, and to exploit its natural resources - the “tallest cedar” – for the benefit of civilization.
That was wordy, I know. I’m getting tired. But I hope you can see how very, very deep this is.
As I said in the very first lecture, this is the story of possibly the first walled city in human history. That means it’s the story of the first civilization to wall itself off from nature, and radically exploit nature in order to develop its civilization. Since pre-civilized humans worshiped nature for hundreds of thousands of years in the paleolithic and neolithic ages, it seems quite reasonable to suspect that the people of the first city, cutting down forests for buildings and mining the earth for gold, silver, and the lapis lazuli so loved by the Sumerians, must have felt a certain fear as they violated Nature for the good of their city life.
That’s what’s so radical, to me, about the coming episode in the Cedar Forest. It’s holy to the gods. Man should not violate it. Humbaba is only “evil” from the viewpoint of the city people who want lumber for more housing, temples, markets. From the viewpoint of most of human pre-history, Humbaba is closer to an angel of the lords.
And Gilgamesh wants to kill him.
To pre-empt the type of comment that I frequently get accusing me of one-sidedness, let me make this clear: Civilization is glorious in this poem, according to its poets. They sing its praises with unambiguous adoration. And they surely understood that civilization thus required the lumber, the minerals, the precious stones, and all the other natural resources sacred to the gods.
And that’s one of the beauties of this classic: we see the earth’s first advanced civilizations rightly celebrating its achievements while at the same time worrying about its effects on the natural order around it.
In that sense, Gilgamesh feels closer to me – as I read the daily accounts of global warming’s acceleration and the death of the seas through acidification and over-fishing – than any other ancient book. If we’re the Omega of civilization, due to our unrestrained exploitation of nature in the name of civilization, then Gilgamesh is the Alpha. And that’s deep to me – and another reason this classic doesn’t suck.
And it’s just the beginning.
As for the “Genesis, Backwards” thing? We’ve seen how Gilgamesh is the opposite of “Genesis” in terms of woman and sexuality (both good), and in terms of most of the “Seven Deadly Sins” (not deadly, not sins). Now we see another radical difference from the Judeo-Christian in this older religion: In Gilgamesh, the gods created nature and forbade mankind to violate it. In “Genesis,” though?
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Genesis 1:26
While there are various ways to interpret this text – and ReligousTolerance.org gives a nicely balanced overview of those ways – it’s beyond dispute that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god comes nowhere close to the Sumerian and Babylonian position on nature in Gilgamesh. In this book, nature was not created for humanity at all; on the contrary, the gods defend Nature from us.
Wtf indeed. It’s an ancient wisdom never more relevant than now.
And if you haven’t noticed, let me spell it out: in my view, the Tanach (what Christians call “The Old Testament”) seems, more and more, to be the polar opposite of Gilgamesh. Up to now, I’ve been playing with phrases like “Adam and Eve, Backwards,” and “The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards.” But really, since both of those things come later than the culture of Gilgamesh – and the Biblical Judeans were conquered by the Babylonians, deported by them, and had their temple destroyed by them – it seems far more accurate to call the Bible “Gilgamesh, Backwards.”
More on that later too. And oh yes: death.
~ ~ ~
The Gilgamesh Series So Far:
1. Gilgamesh: Dangerous Questions
2. The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job
3. Adam and Eve, Backwards
4. The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards
5. Good and Evil, Nature and the Hero – Backwards
6. Gilgamesh and the Birth of the New Man
- This series based on the beautifully poetic 2004 Stephen Mitchell translation of Gilgamesh. [↩]
- Please note I that I speak here of “hints” of homosexuality. Google or Wikipedia will give you more info. [↩]
- Unsucky English, Lecture 4: The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards (Gilgamesh, Book Two)
- Unsucky English, Lecture 6: Gilgamesh and the Dawn of Man
- Unsucky English, Lecture 3: Adam and Eve, Backwards (Gilgamesh, Book One)
- Unsucky English Lecture 7: Gilgamesh: A Goddess Prays
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Tags: autobiography, books, Gilgamesh Print This Post
No. 1 — September 23rd, 2008 at 8:30 am
Clay,
Another great one. I love your observation of Alpha and Omega cultures; I hadn’t thought of it that way but of course it makes sense.
On an unrelated note, Gilgamesh’s shaming tactic sounds like something I’ve heard from politicians and pundits over the last few years. Good to know that nothing ever changes.
Clay Burell Reply:
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Interesting, Jack. In his introduction, Mitchell makes connects Gilgamesh’s moral certainty that Humbaba was “evil,” and thus deserving of attack, with George Bush’s similar “god-directed” certainty that invading Iraq was the unequivocally right thing to do.
No. 2 — September 23rd, 2008 at 11:37 am
Hi Clay,
I am enjoying this series and the deep exploration of this story, and I’m struck by what you point out as the protection of the natural world (not subjugation) and that balance of use and destroy, sacred and utilitarian. When you wrote that “cutting down forests for buildings and mining the earth for gold, silver, and the lapis lazuli so loved by the Sumerians, must have felt a certain fear as they violated Nature for the good of their city life,” it made me jump back to the beginning of the story.
The storyteller presents Uruk, the walled city made fabulous, and directs our attention to a copper box, latched. Open the latch, lift the lid, and we see the lapis tablets that this story is recorded on. It’s a story that honors friendship, humanity, nature AND is held in a precious space. I don’t know how Mitchell handles this, but I’ve always loved the iamge of the storyteller with the copper box in her hand, sharing a beautiful thing – the story, not the box.
Thanks, again.
Clay Burell Reply:
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Wonderful comment as usual, Kate (and nice to see you and Michael settling into a chat here
).
When I started this series, I didn’t have a copy of the book, so I skipped that opening paean to the city and the wonderful device you mention of the book in the foundation-stone of the city wall. Now that I have the book (a former co-worker filched a copy for me from my old school – I’ll pay for it later), it’s a bit too late to discuss that. Until the very end, anyway. But let’s not give that away, wink wink.
No. 3 — September 23rd, 2008 at 11:37 am
Again, wonderful.
This may seem trite in the face of what you’ve been through the past couple of weeks, but at lunch today the issue of life (or whatever) after death came up. And in a flippant moment, I decided to hinge my bets on Hubble’s constant–either the universe will continue expanding forever, the Big Bang a one time event, and eventually I will be trillions (?quadrillions) of hydrogen protons wandering about in (mostly) empty space, occasionally bumping into other particles
OR the universe collapses, expands, collapses, expands an infinite number of times; each possible moment then occurs an infinite number of times, a mother of all Groundhog Days.
Of course, it’s unlikely the Big Bang comes remotely close to whatever reality reality happens to be, but given that’s our cultural context, those were my two choices at lunch today.
Of the two, I like the former best. Tomorrow I may like the latter.
(I think I got my internet connection fixed–I got some catching up to do.)
Michael Doyles last blog post..Autumnal equinox–does anybody know what time it is?
Kate Tabor Reply:
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:41 pm
I like the latter at this moment because it reminds me of the
Hindu creation myth and how this world began with the opening of the lotus and will end when it closes – then it will open again…
But the former speaks of Walt Whitman and his Song of Myself -
“I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward and outward, and forever outward.
[...] There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;
Kate Tabors last blog post..The things we LIKE are complicit in the things we DON’T…
Michael Doyle Reply:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Today I’m back to hoping for the latter (and since there’s no way to know, let me rephrase that as faith in the latter).
Not sure why I was so fond of entropy yesterday. Lunch in the faculty cafeteria can warp one’s perception.
I need to go revisit the Hindu creation myth. I have a habit of adopting various myths, depending, it seems, on my increasing decreptitude.
(And the Whitman reference is wonderful, almost enough to push me back to yesterday’s position.)
Clay Burell Reply:
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Michael (and Kate), that eternal cycle of Hindu-like Big Bangs reminds me of Nietzsche’s myth of the “eternal return of the same.” As physics, I don’t think he meant it literally, though I’ve seen academics argue he did. I always thought he meant it ethically: live your life like you’re fated to repeat it eternally, as a way not to disgust yourself with how you’re wasting or compromising it.
But then with String Theory and parallel universes and extra dimensions, maybe we’re all living infinite lives right now without knowing. I can’t wait for an interdimensional skype. (And this sounds far dorkier than anything I’ve written since my hazy college days
).
I’ve been up and down the ladder of ecstasy and misery enough times to want to choose life every time, but eternal sleep is okay too. Buddhism would be okay if it’s right, since it gives second chances. And I see no way in hell that the universe has such evil in it that there would be an eternal burning-place for people who thought differently or lived botched lives.
Now I’m going to shut up and drink in the Whitman Kate left us. Damn he’s fine. And young Oscar Wilde, I think I recall, once sat, all 6 foot 4 of him, in old Uncle Walt’s lap, and gave him a kiss. (Let’s forget that they both got petty and attacked each other later.)
Kate Tabor Reply:
September 24th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Clay and Michael – talk about the universe expanding! Just imagining that meeting between Wilde and Whitman – might have learned something about more than poetry!
“Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women” (Song of Myself – sect.7)
It is, indeed, all about sex.
Kate Tabors last blog post..The things we LIKE are complicit in the things we DON’T…
No. 4 — September 24th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Clay,
I haven’t read Gilgamesh – yet – but find your summary and analysis fascinating.
It sounds like Enkidu & Gilgamesh exchange roles, with the “animal” advocating morality and the “hero” desiring destruction.
If this world is an anti-Eden, would the protagonists start with the knowledge of good & evil, then surrender this knowledge and sink to ignorance when they taste the forbidden fruit?
There is much to ponder here.
dianes last blog post..Float Like a Butterfly
Clay Burell Reply:
September 24th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Diane, that’s an interesting riff on the Adam and Eve, Backwards idea I played with earlier.
I can’t help but hope that we’ll learn, after fully digesting the consequences of unrestrained use of knowledge that we see around us in the dying modern world (it does seem like it’s dying, doesn’t it?), that we’ll gain a wisdom that allows us to use science in a way that’s more wise and less greedy.
Have you seen the old Mad Max movies? I think of them often these days.
No. 5 — September 24th, 2008 at 8:25 am
I am totally riveted by these series about Gilgamesh. I read it a couple of months ago, as part of my self-inflicted rediscovering of school-literature. I loved it even then, I can remember, but it was for the things like sex (which at 15 is an excellent topic all by itself) and religion in a very nighttime telly type of way, as E. Izzard would say. Now that I’ve read it again, I noticed things about it that were even more interesting then the sole idea of sex socially acceptable and even celebrated (I had outgrown the hormonal stage of my life) or religion as being only an interesting, new thing. This series comes as a confirmation that I had not imagined all of the symbolism and connections to both other ancient and modern literature. Bravo! I applaud this attempt at making Gilgamesh more approachable.
Clay Burell Reply:
September 24th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Thank you, Alexandra. The funny thing is – and it’s the premise of this entire intended series, about most schooly books we slept through in high school – most of these books are explosively mind-altering challenges to the simple beliefs at the foundations of our culture today.
And we sleep through them because, while we’re no longer burned at the stake for attacking false idols, we’re still often fired for it. So we only teach the safe parts.
I can’t wait to get to Romeo and Juliet, for example.
Anyway, thanks again.
Alexandra Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 12:42 am
You’re welcome.
Ooooh, I look forward to your Romeo and Juliet analysis. My peers found it excruciatingly boring, I enjoyed it immensely. Can’t wait to see what you have to say.
On a different note, I’ve often heard it said that teachers have less freedom to, as you say, attack false idols in America than elsewhere. I don’t believe that. I’m a chip off the old Eastern block, Eastern Europe is where I went to school. And our teachers also slept through various parts of really interesting literature because they were afraid, not of the parents, but the regime altogether. Some classical works were omitted, and some still are.
Clay Burell Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Alexandra, you’ve got to tell us more. Where in the Eastern bloc? When? Have things changed since ’91-’93?
But your point is well-taken. Ideologies, whether religious or political, lead most of us to put on muzzles.
Alexandra Reply:
September 25th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I don’t think I’ve ever been considered to be so interesting as I am here. *chuckles*
To answer your question of where: in South Eastern Europe. I grew up in what was Yugoslavia, and now is the Republic of Croatia. I went to high school in the 80s, and things were slowly going downhill even then. It was difficult being a teenager, especially one that was brought up to be free-minded and modern by an extremely liberal family. It was a time when you got punished in school for simply asking a question, not to mention what would happen if you had the gall to openly disagree with the school’s policy. Then, in ’88 and ’89 the tensions in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) escalated. The Yugoslav wars started in 1991 after the secession of most of the constituent entities. The Croatian war of independence lasted for 4 long years (1991-1995), and we were finally able to build our new independent country, if from scratch.
So yes, things have changed since I went to school, and they changed a lot. But still, given that Croatia is a conservative country, with a lot of pressure coming from the Christian Church (especially in the matters of sexual education – which has been the point of many heated debates for the last two years), schools aren’t permitted to teach what they’d like to, and what, by all accounts, they should teach children. There has been some effort to change the way education here works, but it’s laughable, if you ask me. There are tons of inconsistencies and some things just don’t work like they did before, what with the new age of electronics and Internet.
The new school-reformations barely scratch the surface of the problems our teachers and students face. Things have changed, yes, but there is room for change still. Hopefully, for the better.
I hope I didn’t bore you with this long comment, but it’s difficult to describe the current state of schooling here if you don’t understand the background.
No. 6 — September 26th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Clay,
I would like to thank you for sharing this series. You have shown more interest and passion in just one entry than I remember any teacher ever showing me in the years of my education. I would have loved to have you as a teacher or professor. Though, so often, students in college are more dedicated and appreciate their education more than in high school, so appreciate professors more as well.
All in all, you have made learning about this ancient, classic Gilgamesh most enjoyable. Thank you again.
No. 7 — September 26th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Clay,
Today we learned about Mesopotamia in school and slightly touched on the subject of Gilgamesh. But, from what my teacher said, which wasn’t a lot, I knew that I would like it. So today I set out on the Internet and found this series.
Just let me say one thing; WOW!!!! This is simply awesome. That’s basically all I can say. Right now I want to read the 2004 translation. But, sadly my town has no copies of it, or any alternate form, within its boundaries. Trust me, I’ve been checkin’.
Anyway this is a simply marvelous series. I can’t wait for the next entry.
*applause begins*
No. 8 — October 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 am
I’ve read all the posts in this series, and I have to say it’s refreshing to see somebody with such insight and passion for literature. It made me feel a little embarrassed when I thought that high school students were making such deep analytic comments in their class, whereas I remember just talking about what the symbols and metaphors were in each story. I was marginally relieved to find out that it was all just a dream, but I still love your analysis of the story. I might just have to go out and get a copy of Gilgamesh after reading your posts.
No. 9 — December 1st, 2008 at 7:20 am
Love the series. When’s the next one coming?
Clay Burell Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:09 am
Rory, thanks for the props. Life’s going to be hairy for another couple of weeks, after which I’ll get back to the series.
No. 10 — January 1st, 2009 at 5:41 am
Hi, I finally read Gilgamesh. I picked it up a while back when I first stumbled across this site and commented way back this past summer.
I didn’t find this book to be very pro-nature. I didn’t get the sense that they were too worried about the environment either…
Enkidu comes to town to oppose Gilgamesh; I’m thinking,”Gilgamesh is an ass and is going to get his comeuppance.” Enkidu gets beaten, then they fall in love and it turns out the Nature Man part of the equation is a pushover. When Gilgamesh suddenly decides to get Humbaba, Enkidu only puts up a weak argument and caves pretty quickly, he’s clearly not the Alpha in the relationship.
When Gil goes out from the city, it didn’t seem to balance nature for me, it just shows how Gil is extending his territory. Also if you read the story at face value, it almost sounds like they are going to destroy the Cedar forest because they don’t like trees or something. I don’t recall there being an actual mentioning of using the trees for anything, or of them being valuable. I suppose that would be implied, or that they were so valuable that it would be obvious to a contemporary reader. Perhaps that bit was lost from my frame of reference.
Nature in this story gets shamed pretty quickly and thoroughly.
I was a little unclear about whether Enkidu ended up balancing Gilgamesh or not. After the fight they left hand in hand and presumably the new bride was left alone, but there was no further mention of Gil lightening up?
Clay Burell Reply:
January 1st, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Hi Speroni,
Shame on me for being so distracted from continuing the Gilgamesh posts. After mid-January life should stabilize enough for me to get back to it.
Good comments here. Let me start by quoting the conclusion to lecture 4:
I want to riff off that first sentence to say that the epic, to me, is equally ambiguous about Nature. But that gets ahead of the story.
I think you’re right about Gil not switching roles with Enkidu when they go to the Cedar Forest. But later, Gil dons animal skins to begin his final quest, and that similarity to Enkidu cannot, to me, have been unintended. I think there’s a balancing there. More on that later.
I don’t want to get into my favorite nature motifs until I can do it properly, over an overnight pot of coffee and a close read of the parts that to me clinch the Nature argument, but in a very subtle way.
The Cedar Forest episode, though, is definitely one of suspect motives. As I said earlier, it’s more of an heroic ego-trip for Gil than anything else. (But they do discuss using the cedar to build a gate for the city or a temple, if I recall correctly.)
Hope you’ll weigh in when I get back to it. The role of Enkidu as a balance, to me, carries through to the end. And the end is what to me is sublime, particularly due to one detail that I’m going to keep up my sleeve.
No. 11 — January 2nd, 2009 at 1:36 am
On an aside I picked up some Sedaris books. I heard about him here, and suddenly he was everywhere. He spoke at my college and then I moved to a different state and he spoke at a venue downtown. I caught a piece on NPR by him. Its like when you learn a new word and suddenly the new word is everywhere.
Anyway his writing is funny. Not so much funny ha-ha, but good. I always find myself trying to figure out where the facts end and the exaggeration begins. Thanks for the suggestion of his work as well.
No. 12 — January 22nd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I realize this is now going back numerous months, but I wanted to thank you for writing this. I am presently teaching a world literature survey class for undergraduates in Las Vegas, and I found myself very unclear about what Gilgamesh is about. As I was an ESL instructor in a Korean university for several years and have a Korean wife it was amusing to read some of your observations. Many are very true for me as well.
Your ideas about Gilgamesh and Enkidu forming complementary halves is interesting. My students came up with the same idea. It was my assumption that Enkidu blocked Gilgamesh from having sex with the new bride out of simple jealousy– Enkidu wanted her himself– but it may be out of a sense of innocence which Enkidu still possesses, as you say.
I am a Christian and do not want to irritate you or seem disrespectful. Nevertheless, at times I feel you are a little harsh on Judeo-Christian tradition. Much criticism suggests that Genesis follows Gilgamesh and borrows some of its materials, but many argue the opposite–that Genesis predates Gilgamesh as oral tradition and possibly as text (Moses is suggested as literate himself). To me Gilgamesh, while an excellent tale, lacks the precision and detail of the Genesis account, and Utnapishtim’s story feels like a corrupted and shortened version. At times you seem to apply a contemporary stereotype of Christianity as a comparison. Early Christian scripture is not such a different worldview to that of Gilgamesh. While the Hebrews did not condone temple prostitution, they certainly drank alcohol and had sex, and neither of these acts were described as in themselves sinful. The Hebrews were not body-haters; they had the Song of Solomon.
The religious tolerance website is interesting but perhaps a little unfair at times– it asks why Genesis is not “greener” (in comparison to the gods of Gilgamesh), giving only the worst translation of kibbes (subdue, dominate, shepherd). I am not so sure that Humbaba is a sympathetic character; he calls Gilgamesh and Enkidu “a moron and an idiot” and tries to trick both of them into sparing him so that he can give their flesh “to the vultures.” Christianity comes from a pre-capitalist civilization of more open land use, and in a faith system based on an ethic of love for your neighbor it should go without saying that despoiling the world for your descendants is not an act of love. This is not to say that the modern church could not do more environmentally; but again, it’s not helpful to use 21st century AD fundamentalists as a comparison to 21st century BC Sumerians.
Anyway, I enjoyed what you wrote and hope you will have more to say about the rest of Gilgamesh.
Ken:>
No. 13 — January 22nd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Oops. I wrote Song of Solomon. I meant, of course, Song of Songs: “How beautiful you are, my love! Your eyes, behind your veil, are doves!”
Ken:>
No. 14 — February 3rd, 2009 at 12:48 am
Clay: This is the most fun I’ve ever had reading someone’s blog. I do hope you’ll keep it up. It’s really world class. Deeply insightful. I’m a recent convert to Gilgamesh myself. And I’m fully in tune with your reading of it. And I say that despite all the anti-Judeo/Christian barbs, many of which are justified by the crazy inconsistent interpretations and implementations of the biblical materials by Christians and Jews through the centuries. But simpleminded idiocy is not the exclusive province of any group of people. I spend the first 15 years of my professional life exploring apparent philosophical problems in Christian theology, and with enough work, always found very deep and subtle answers to apparently hopeless conundra. But that’s off topic here. You probably have no idea how eager we all are out here to see you continue this series on Gilgamesh, and then … the world. I’m recently reading Beowulf repeatedly, with growing insights from each time through. Another possibility for your hermeneutical adventuring!
Get back to work on Gil!
Tom Morris
Clay Burell Reply:
February 17th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Tom and others, thanks for the nudge.
No. 15 — February 17th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
[...] [The Unsucky English Gilgamesh series so far: 1: Dangerous Questions ~ 2: The Day I Thought Gilgamesh Would Cost Me My Job ~ 3: Adam and Eve, Backwards ~ 4. The Seven Deadly Sins, Backwards ~ 5. Good, Evil, Nature, and the Hero, Backwards]1 [...]
No. 16 — February 17th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Okay, after five months of my own little epic, the next Unsucky Lecture is up: 6. Gilgamesh and the Birth of Something New.
It’s nice to be back to it. I hope you’ll come back and weigh in.
–Clay
No. 17 — March 16th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
FYI, number 7 is up: A Goddess Prays
No. 18 — March 18th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Number 8 is up: The Modern Mischief of the Gilgamesh Poets
No. 19 — June 26th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Lecture 9 is up: Gilgamesh and the Original “Original Sin”.