Commentary: on the Epic of Gilgamesh

 

Part of the attraction of the Epic of Gilgamesh, at least for me, is that this is mankind's oldest literary work; the tablets containing the story of Gilgamesh were written approximately 4,000 years ago. Despite this, the text has a contemporary quality not necessarily found in other ancient texts. It is the story of a man's journey to self-knowledge and inner peace; of course, this "heroes' journey" is not exceptional in describing the journey, it is the traditional journey from unself-consciousness to being conscious of one's life; in its simplicity, directness, and its archetype of inner discovery, we can relate to Gilgamesh.

            In the Epic of Gilgamesh we can see ourselves, but to do so we might delete cultural referents and concentrate on the man who is Gilgamesh, a man who is us. We are contemporary people, living at least four thousand years after Gilgamesh lived or was invented, whether he is an invention, a fictional being, or an historical character; we can relate to his journey for it is also our journey, not embellished by belief or gods or being saved by someone else, and in this Gilgamesh, portrayed in mankind's oldest text, is contemporary. He is relevant at both ends of linear time -- alpha and omega, beginning and ending, A to Z, the apparent beginning and the end of the age in which we live -- we can identify with someone from the beginning of time. Ironic, isn't it? But it speaks to the enduring authenticity of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

            There is also the story itself, and what a contemporary story it is as Gilgamesh searches for the meaning of life, the ultimate meaning, the meaning that explains the purpose of life, that explains the purpose of his life. The meaning of life is to understand life better, to be a conscious person, to make sense of life, perhaps to even find some peace in life. Gilgamesh is an archetype for the person who searches for meaning; that's how I read his adventure, his story, his journey. This is one of the ways in which people today can learn from this epic, it is thoroughly contemporary even with its inclusion of gods and experiences impossible for people today to relate to except as literature, myth, and dream content. But at an archetypal and psychological level Gilgamesh and his story open a level of understanding of existence that is valuable for a contemporary audience. 

            Gilgamesh predates Homer's Odyssey and Iliad which date from 1,000 B.C. There is an oral tradition that helped preserve Homer's work but this doesn't seem to apply to the Epic of Gilgamesh, it is a written text. This reminds me of Grimm's fairy tales, collected by the Grimm brothers in the early half of the 19th Century; but research maintains that the stories collected by the Grimm brothers originated as far back as 4,000 years B.C. and I have also read that they are as old as 20,000 years, predating even Gilgamesh. They are archetypal and ageless, beyond time itself, as are all myths that work on a psychological level: don't take them literally but as a way to understand the eternal enigma of human existence.

            Gilgamesh seems to have missed out on an oral tradition as is found in both Homer and the Grimm fairy tales, but we have a written text for Gilgamesh. We know of the Epic of Gilgamesh only because cuneiform tablets containing the text of this literary work were discovered in the mid-1800s and later translated into English, this was fortuitous because even today very few people can actually read these tablets or speak the ancient language in which they are written. It is also a synchronistic discovery, Gilgamesh was discovered just when his story needed to be discovered. But is it possible that the Epic of Gilgamesh is older than 2,000 BC?  

            Another point is that the biblical story of the flood, coming after Gilgamesh was written, is also found in the Gilgamesh epic; apparently, whoever wrote the Book of Genesis, in which the flood story is included, knew or had heard of the Gilgamesh version of the flood. The biblical version of the flood is more or less a direct copy of that which is found in Gilgamesh. Was the Gilgamesh version of this story transmitted orally to the authors of the Old Testament?

            I am old fashioned, I believe in a didactic aspect to what I read; I like to learn things from what I read, especially things appertaining and contributing to my understanding of life. Whether it is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Melville's Moby Dick, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, I am always aware of content and narrative, symbol and archetype that help me better understand both my own life and the life of others. Never underestimate this transcendent aspect of reading.   

The foundation, the load bearing literature of Western society

 

Photo taken in 2010, Stephen Morrissey with a bust of Tagore,
on the UBC campus, Vancouver

If you've ever done home renovations then you're familiar with load bearing walls. Basically, a load bearing wall holds up the walls, floors, and roof above it. I live in a small Cape Cod house in Montreal, constructed just after World War Two, and the load bearing wall sits on a single beam that runs across the width of the house, in the basement there is a steel post giving added support to the beam, but it is the beam and the wall above it that is doing the load bearing. 

I think of literature and being a poet in the same way. There is foundational, load bearing literature, that supports both contemporary Western and international literature; for any poet it's a good idea to know something of this literature. That is why getting an education, either formal or self-taught, is important; it is important to have read Victorian and Romantic literature, or Restoration literature, or Whitman or Chaucer or Dante or Tagore, or other poets; it is important to have read Homer, the Holy Bible, and the earliest literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh; or T'ang Dynasty poetry, Du Fu, Li Bai, and Han Shan. Read Dylan Thomas, Walt Whitman, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Dryden and Milton and Shakespeare. Read Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg. Read the bible, it is the load bearing foundation of Western literature. You don't need to be an authority on canonical writers or read everything by these writers, but at least know they exist and where they belong in literary history and one day read their work, or the work of a few of these writers. This reading is a poet's foundational knowledge, it is the load bearing literature that makes a poet's work possible. 

But we live in an age in which the attitude of some poets is that a literary foundation isn't necessary -- they find it oppressive, or the writers are oppressive, or what have you -- so just read the current writers they approve of, and cancel the work of dead white men and women. Of course, this is self-defeating but it is an attitude that even some school boards are following as they delete or censor books by foundational writers, the writers and thinkers who made contemporary literature possible. I mention this because we are living in a time of cancelling literature that doesn't support an ideological Woke world-view. School boards that delete or cancel literature in favour of only certain contemporary writers are not doing their students any favours, they are keeping them ignorant. 

And yet, all poets need the foundational work of previous generations. The older generations of writers are the load bearing writers that give contemporary literature substance and depth; without this load-bearing literature every new generation of writers is a dead end, writers reinventing literature, inventing the wheel. And what a waste of time this is when even just a good anthology will help introduce younger poets to literature that is necessary to be a real poet, not a poet manqué.

I know that real poets, young poets, will follow this advice because they want to learn and they have the enthusiasm to go beyond what is currently fashionable. I once wrote that "poetry will never die"; this was in response to the popularity of Tik-Tok, YouTube, social media, video games, and popular culture. And today's Woke people make things worse, they are intolerant of anyone who does not agree with them, cancel culture is their weapon. So, while poetry will never die it might have to go underground as long as the Woke era is still active; but even Wokeness will pass, it's just a matter of time, and the load bearing foundational literature of Western society (and by extension all great literature) will still be there waiting to be read.