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The world's oldest work of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the adventures of the semimythical Sumerian king of Uruk and his ultimately futile quest for immortality after the death of his friend and companion, Enkidu, a wildman sent by the gods. Gilgamesh was deified by the Sumerians around 2500 BCE, and his tale as we know it today was codified in cuneiform tablets around 1750 BCE and continued to influence ancient cultures-whether in specific incidents like a world-consuming flood or in its quest structure-into Roman times. The epic was, however, largely forgotten, until the cuneiform tablets were rediscovered in 1872 in the British Museum's collection of recently unearthed Mesopotamian artifacts. In the decades that followed its translation into modern languages, the Epic of Gilgamesh has become a point of reference throughout Western culture.In Gilgamesh among Us, Theodore Ziolkowski explores the surprising legacy of the poem and its hero, as well as the epic's continuing influence in modern letters and arts. This influence extends from Carl Gustav Jung and Rainer Maria Rilke's early embrace of the epic's significance-"Gilgamesh is tremendous!" Rilke wrote to his publisher's wife after reading it-to its appropriation since World War II in contexts as disparate as operas and paintings, the poetry of Charles Olson and Louis Zukofsky, novels by John Gardner and Philip Roth, and episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Xena: Warrior Princess.Ziolkowski sees fascination with Gilgamesh as a reflection of eternal spiritual values-love, friendship, courage, and the fear and acceptance of death. Noted writers, musicians, and artists from Sweden to Spain, from the United States to Australia, have adapted the story in ways that meet the social and artistic trends of the times. The spirit of this capacious hero has absorbed the losses felt in the immediate postwar period and been infused with the excitement and optimism of movements for gay rights, feminism, and environmental consciousness. Gilgamesh is at once a seismograph of shifts in Western history and culture and a testament to the verities and values of the ancient epic.

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Ancient history

History of film

Ancient

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Publié par	Cornell University Press
Date de parution	15 décembre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780801463419
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Gilgamesh among Us

Frontispiece.Statue of a Hero (Gilgamesh?) Taming a Lion.From the Palace of Sargon II, King of Assur in Khorsabad. Louvre, Paris. Photo Erich Lessing. Permission of Art Resource, NY.

GilgameshamongUs

ModernEncounterswiththeAncient Epic

TheodoreZiolkowski

CornellUniversityPressIthaca and London

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2012 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Ziolkowski, Theodore. Gilgamesh among us : modern encounters with the ancient epic / Theodore Ziolkowski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9780801450358 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Gilgamesh. 2. Gilgamesh—Adaptations. 3. Gilgamesh— Inﬂuence. I. Title. PJ3771.G6Z56 2012 892'.1—dc23 2011027253 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood ﬁbers. For further information, visit our website at www .cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

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PrefaceAcknowledgments

Contents

IntroductionThe Story The Text The RediscoveryThe Early Translations

1.TheInitialReception(1884–1935)TheFirstLiterarization Babel and BibleThe German Connection The Spread of the Epic

2.RepresentativeBeginnings(1941–1958)ModesofModernization Four Poets in English Four German Initiatives A Major German Thematization The First Musical Settings

3.ThePopularizationofGilgamesh(1959–1978)PoeticAdaptations The First Fictionalization The Gay Gilgamesh Gilgamesh and the Philosophers A Comic

ix xv

v i i i C o n t e n t s

InterludeGilgamesh

Three American Fictional Exuberances The Operatic

4.TheContemporizationofGilgamesh(1979–1999)NewContexts Gilgamesh Psychoanalyzed Gilgamesh Deconstructed Gilgamesh Historicized Gilgamesh Drums for the Greens Gilgamesh Postﬁgured Gilgamesh Personalized Gilgamesh Hispanicized Gilgameshiana    Gilgamesh at Millennium’s End

5.GilgameshintheTwentyFirstCentury(2000–2009)

PoeticVersionsinEnglishandFrench A New Focus  Gilgamesh as Ritual Drama Two Fictional ReVisions The Politicization of Gilgamesh 

Conclusion

ChronologyNotesIndex

109

154

189 199 207 221

Preface

WhyisascholarofmodernEuropeanliteraturewritingaboutGil gamesh? This book began as chapter 2 of a work tentatively entitled “The Road to Hell,” in which I planned to explore modern literary variations of such mortuary journeys as those depicted in the myths and literatures of the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome and in the Christian tradi tion. But when I had ﬁnished the introduction and turned to the epic of Gilgamesh as the earliest ancient example, my material rapidly reached a point at which I realized that the topic deserved more extensive scrutiny— treatment perhaps analogous to that of my earlier booksVirgil and the Moderns, Ovid and the Moderns,andMinos and the Moderns.So I abandoned the initial project and devoted myself instead to the modern reception of Gilgamesh. IcannolongerrecallwhenIﬁrstencounteredGilgameshorinwhichtranslation I ﬁrst read the epic. By the time I was a graduate student of German literature at Yale University in the early 1950s, I was familiar with the epic because it ﬁgured in the thought and works of so many of the

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