You Are a Thing That Carries So Much Tiredness

1. You Are a Thing That Carries So Much Tiredness Feraco Myth to Science Fiction 12 October 2011

2. No Hearts, No Cities • While the first half of the epic is about losing the things you care about, the second is about what T.S. Eliot wrote about in The Waste Land: shoring up fragments against the ruins of the past. • To be sure, there’s plenty of ruination and woe to go around in the second half. • From Gilgamesh’s all-consuming grief to Utnapishtim’s devastating survivor’s tale, from Ishtar’s Flood to the needless loss of the plant, we’re never allowed to forget that nothing in life comes free of consequences. • Indeed, we’re left with the distinct impression that nothing – not our hearts, not our cities, not the legacy we leave behind – can be protected from the whims of the universe forever.          

3. Something More • But all is not lost. • In the forms of Siduri, Urshanabi, and Utnapishtim himself, we find something different – something penetrating the gloom to offer us a chance, however uncertain, to heal. • And in Gilgamesh’s final discovery, we, too, discover something more.

4. Although the hero myth is the most popular story, many myths involve healing. In these stories, some character is "broken" and must leave home to become whole again.The universal experience behind these healing stories is our psychological need for rejuvenation, for balance…Something is out of balance, and the mythic journey moves toward wholeness. Being broken can take several forms. It can be physical, emotional, or psychological. Usually, it's all three. In the process of being exiled or hiding out in the forest, the desert, or even [an] Amish farm, the person becomes whole, balanced, and receptive to love. Love in these stories is both a healing force and a reward. Linda Seger

5. Absence and Fear • Once he sets out on his journey to find Utnapishtim – the only human who can live forever, the only one who knows “the secret” of how one overcomes death – Gilgamesh begins to experience things he’s never (or rarely) known before. • When he hears the sounds of animals moving towards him in the night, he fears them for the first time • Now that he knows how it feels to be protected by someone else, he’s painfully aware of that protection’s absence.

6. The Scorpion People • Next, he encounters the Scorpion people – monsters whose glances kill, and who guard the passage Gilgamesh must take to meet Utnapishtim. • Mortal men do not pass them; it’s rare that someone even attempts to do so. • But Gilgamesh survives, for he bows – something that must have seemed foreign to him, appearing as someone’s subordinate, demonstrating respect rather than making demands. • His partially divine origins also offer him some protection.

7. David Eng’s Scorpion Man

8. Frost-Chilled, Exhausted, and Burnt • Gilgamesh makes a simple request for safe passage through Masha, the gigantic mountain separating the realm that leads to Utnapishtim from the king’s own. • But the Scorpion Man laughs at him, telling him to turn back: nothing can bring his friend back to life. • Gilgamesh is so enraged by this trivialization of his grief that he begins screaming at the guard, and rather than match his tone, the Scorpion Man’s wife urges her husband to let him go (in the Mason translation, he simply placates him) • “This brave man, driven by despair, his body frost-chilled, exhausted, and burnt by the desert sun – show him the way to Utnapishtim.”

9. Pity and Fear • The Scorpion Man opens the gate to the sun’s tunnel through Masha, which is the only way to the realm on the other side. • The sun moves through the tunnel at night, traveling through the earth for twelve hours until it rises again on the other side. • If Gilgamesh enters the tunnel, he must do so just after sunrise, plunging into total darkness just as the rest of his realm enjoys the brightest light of day. • If he can outrace the sun, he’ll make it; if he can’t, there’s no escape, and he’ll be scorched alive. • Gilgamesh realizes in the Mason translation that the Scorpion people indeed fear his journey; it’s unclear whether they fear his loss or his success.

10. Deep Was the Darkness • The Mason version doesn’t feature much in terms of Gilgamesh’s journey through Masha; the Mitchell version turns it into one of the epic’s tensest passages. • As Gilgamesh races against time, the poet uses a refrain (just as it did as Gilgamesh approached the Cedar Forest) to mark the countdown to his impending doom • “For the _______ and _______ hour Gilgamesh ran, / deep was the darkness, with no light at all / before and behind him and to either side.” • He has no way to mark time himself, no way to be sure that he’s running the right way; he’s just racing and racing and racing.

11. Make It Out Alive • After seven hours have passed, Gilgamesh still sees nothing but darkness, and he cries out in fear. • But at the start of the ninth hour, he feels a breeze on his face. • He still can’t see, but he keeps going. • Nine hours pass. • Ten hours pass. • Eleven. • At the end of the twelfth hour, Gilgamesh bursts from the tunnel, just ahead of the sun as it “was hurtling toward the entrance; he had barely escaped.”

12. Deep Grief, Nice Valley • Regardless of the translation, Gilgamesh must go through literal blackness for hours, utterly alone – a simple but effective metaphor for the initial stage of deep grief. • When he emerges from the passage, however, he gazes upon a beautiful valley – lush, verdant, overflowing with life. • It’s one of the loveliest images in the epic. • As with the passage through Masha, this sight serves as a metaphor for part of the grieving process – namely that life, in all its mixed splendor, its pleasures and pains, awaits those who wish to continue in the face of devastation.

13. Scratched Record in an Empty Room • But Gilgamesh is not ready to rejoin the living world • This reminder of glory only makes him ache for what he’s lost even more deeply. • Instead, he repeats Enkidu’s name and their exploits together for an extended period of time, explaining the depths of his sorrow to no one but himself – evoking nothing so much as a scratched record skipping in an empty room.

14. Never Feel What We Wish to Heal • This does nothing to promote healing, obviously, because he’s incapable of healing himself • He’s reverted to his pre-Enkidu self, back to tearing at himself, oblivious to the larger world around him except to acknowledge that the valley has no way to understand his pain. • After all, it’s a private pain; we can never really feel that which we wish to heal in others.          

15. Cheap Real Estate • Moving through his new land, Gilgamesh approaches the water line, complete with a tavern/inn by the sea. • As to why there’s a tavern/inn by a sea that, in theory, nobody should visit – the Scorpion Man insists that no one save Utnapishtim and his family has ever gone to the other side – I have no explanation. • We do odd things for cheap real estate, I suppose.

16. Water and Duality • Ordinarily meant to evoke both endless possibility with its scope and the cyclical nature of life with its tides, the water here is instead the Sea of Death (alternately called the Waters of Death; the two terms will be used interchangeably from here on out, including on the exam). • Furthermore, we remember that most life perished in Ishtar’s great flood. • Just as we saw in the epic’s beginning that the Tigris and Euphrates can bring life – could even embody it – we’re reminded that water, like love and life itself, has a dual nature, and that it can bring pain and death just as easily as salvation.

17. Transformed Into Something Monstrous • We get a better look at Gilgamesh here, and see that he’s allowed grief to transform him into something monstrous, both violent and weakened; he’s lost weight, clothed himself in the skins of beasts, and looks barely human. • His rage spills in every direction, and Siduri – the barmaid and innkeeper by the sea, the first mortal he encounters – shrinks from him as one shrinks from an inferno. • She hides behind a locked door, frightened of what Gilgamesh brings; when he comes inside, she rejects his claims and minimizes his grief (just as, in Mason’s translation, Gilgamesh himself minimized Enkidu’s initial pain at Humbaba’s gate).

18. Closer to the Blaze • Many of us consider ourselves compassionate people. • If asked, most will say that we reach out to and comfort those who suffer, those who endure moments of weakness, those who need human connection. • And indeed, most people can point to specific incidents where they did, in fact, provide solace and consolation to someone else. • But our instinct is to retreat from fresh pain – not just our own misery, but from others as well – for suffering and misery transfer much more easily than joy. • We’re reluctant to make ourselves unnecessarily unhappy, and it is a special person who willingly walks closer to that blaze.

19. Rehabilitation • In this matter, Siduri is no different. • But she does eventually comfort him – the first of two parallels the epic draws with the harlot’s encounter with Enkidu. • In an interesting reversal, Mason actually stresses this encounter, allowing for something approaching broken romance • In the Mitchell translation, this stop is a mere bump in the road Gilgamesh travels. • Mason allows Siduri to rehabilitate him, or at least try to do so; she cares for his broken body while trying to reach his troubled soul.

20. You will never find the eternal life That you seek. When the gods created mankind, They also created death, and they held back Eternal life for themselves alone. Humans are born, they live, then they die, This is the order that the gods have decreed. But until the end comes, enjoy your life, Spend it in happiness, not despair. Savor your food, make each of your days A delight, bathe and anoint yourself, Wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, Let music and dancing fill your house, Love the child who holds you by the hand, And give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.

21. Impossibilities and Possibilities • It’s good advice: don’t spend your time dreaming of impossibilities when our possibilities are so beautiful. • But by trying to make him think of something else – by trying to make him forget – Siduri dooms her own efforts: her best intentions aren’t worth much, considering how grief-stricken Gilgamesh remains. • He can only speak of standing by Enkidu for six days and seven nights, refusing to accept his friend’s departure until a maggot falls from the fallen man’s decaying nose… • …in other words, not someone who’s ready to agree that life can be beautiful even if it’s temporary.

22. Too Self-Absorbed • Instead, Gilgamesh rejects her – just as she counsels him not to do – and treats her compassion as a burden to be thrown off. • Siduri angrily tells him to seek Urshanabi, who can show him the way across the water – but also tells him that he will fail, because he’s too absorbed in himself to be wise enough to make it.

23. For What? For Whom? • He screams, “I am not blind with self-love, but with loss!” • And as he makes his way toward the Waters of Death, we wonder again for whom, and for what, we mourn when we grieve.