Gilgamesh: Shattering Loneliness

1. Gilgamesh:Shattering Loneliness Feraco Myth to Science Fiction 10 September 2012

2. Gilgamesh has survived in our world because a constellation of our emotions is reflected in it. We could almost say that anything so profoundly human as the image of Gilgamesh was bound to reappear, yet we are still surprised to learn that one of the very oldest stories of man is so inherently contemporary…In an age in which we consume and are consumed by a superfluity of one-dimensional images, this poem calls us to be profound. Herbert Mason The eternal quest of the human being is to shatter his loneliness. Norman Cousins

3. ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. So goes the old saying. But is it true? Is your happiness in the present worth that inevitable pain? And if we are doomed from the start, what possible meaning can we extract from our all-too-brief lives? These are surprisingly old questions, for they lie at the core of what’s essentially our oldest living story – the Gilgamesh epic.

4. Because we’re working with the Mason and Mitchell translations, we’ll only be covering some of the Gilgamesh tales in class. These stories pop up in multiple cultures and in many different eras, and there’s simply no way to reconcile all of them with each other. Recognizing this, Mason chose to work with specific section of the story spectrum “for reasons of dramatic unity” – a wise decision, as it turns out, for his translation of the epic proves unusually focused and tightly told.

5. While it cuts some material, Mason’s work hews to the stories we often refer to as the Standard Version: eleven partially recovered stone cuneiform tablets (plus a controversial twelfth tablet) chronicling the ecstasies and agonies of an ancient hero’s life. If those words seem hyperbolic, it’s because the epic deals with startlingly strong ranges of feeling. It includes quiet, subtler moments, to be sure. But Gilgamesh himself lives with every emotion cranked to eleven, and the poem can’t help but reflect the tenor set by its protagonist, veering from triumph to sorrow in the span of a few pages.

6. With Gilgamesh’s story, our predecessors have given us a saga of rage and death, vengeance and sorrow, joy and acceptance. The plot, characters, and ideas are unquestionably products of a specific cultural moment that no longer exists; some of what remains seems alien, unfamiliar, illogical, or uncomfortable. Its action has roots in history (there was a Gilgamesh, as well as an Uruk), yet deals almost exclusively in the fantastical, leaving readers with an uneasy mix of the recognizable and unreal.

7. Storytelling methods such as these once came naturally to us. But we no longer live in an age where the gods walk amongst men, at least not in literature that we’re expected to read while keeping a straight face. Yet the degree to which this ancient tale still resonates fascinates me. Gilgamesh is unlike any figure I ever could have known, and yet in his sorrow and struggles I see something I recognize. In his friendship with Enkidu, I see a connection our language no longer adequately describes – not mere friendship, not romantic love, and not brotherhood. It is, as Jon Carroll put it, “something beyond; it doesn’t have a name.” And in his desire to defeat death – through fame, through courage, through his sheer refusal to surrender to what must inevitably occur – I see, perhaps, a glimpse of my own future…because I’m not sure I’ll go gently into that good night when my time arrives.

8. Having read the text once already, you recognize that Gilgamesh, like most of our oldest surviving works, is a shorter story. Its brevity, as well as its seemingly haphazard narrative structure – let’s wrestle! Wait, let’s fight a forest creature! Where did this giant bull come from??? – belies its profundity. And while I’ll always wonder about the stories that didn’t survive – which lessons from the ancient world have been forever lost to sand and time? – I’m grateful that Gilgamesh endured.

9. Mason points out that the Gilgamesh epic offers dozens of questions for contemporary audiences to consider. While the plot eventually centers on Gilgamesh’s quest to defeat death – a major concern of the cultures that produced the story – the narrative is equally concerned with how we should greet life, and how the risks we’re willing and unwilling to take come to define our existences. It’s therefore fitting that our story opens in a setting designed principally around the idea of thwarting risk. Gilgamesh rules the walled city of Uruk, a massive complex he erected in ancient Babylon(ia). Uruk’s walls keep invaders at bay, but they also serve as containment for Gilgamesh’s citizenry.

10. The city, impressively constructed though it may be, is presented as a place of isolation and interruption. Gilgamesh lives far from the natural world, hidden within the walls that symbolize his damaged condition. He builds said walls with feverish intensity, driving his citizens to the breaking point and earning their resentment in his zeal to build something that cannot be shaken or destroyed…only to lose interest in his walls, allowing them to fall into disrepair through his neglect.

11. It’s here that we recognize the pattern in Gilgamesh’s seemingly random, capricious actions. Everything he does is shallow, because life – for him – seems to hold no meaning. He rules over a shallow, arbitrary world, and gets caught up in its ways. Building up walls, charging off into battle in order to feel alive, even forcing himself upon his citizens – none of these actions have any sort of meaning, purpose, or permanence for him. Gilgamesh’s ruling style ends up reminding us of a thrashing, dying beast – deeply unstable, violent, unpredictable. And the city’s decay comes to symbolize both the lack of vitality at its king’s core and the separation between the king and his people.

12. Beyond the Walled City lie the Steppe and the Forest – two natural and largely untamed realms. Gilgamesh is of the City, Enkidu of the Steppe, and Humbaba of the Forest. Notice that life lies outside the City, not just in the form of the Steppe and Forest, but in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that gush alongside it, bordering it with symbols of fertility and life. Things are connected outside of Uruk – men frolic with animals, gods protect the forest, and even those who live across the Waters of Death have found marriage and love.

13. This contrast between the natural world and the City couldn’t be starker, and it highlights one of the book’s important points. There is a danger in building the barriers that surround Uruk, in shutting “invaders” out, in preventing yourself from feeling something for your fellow beings. And while it’s true that the walls we erect can shut out a lot of things, that includes the good with the bad…and I’m not sure we can build walls that can keep out all of the worst aspects of life. Only when Gilgamesh leaves those walls behind does the narrative pick up any sort of momentum, because it’s only once Gilgamesh leaves that he begins living – and acquires something worth losing, something worth valuing (companionship).