Reading: Still pretty much just Gilgamesh
Jul. 5th, 2023 09:20 pmMy reading continues fragmented, but I am still, in the mornings and evenings, enjoying the essays in the back of Sophus Helle's translation of Gilgamesh.
He offers details that feel so resonant -- for example, "it is a common feature of cuneiform narratives that they describe their own creation" (Helle 238, footnote 11). I like that for itself and because it provides validation for some of the narrative possibilities in my novel.
Reading some of Helle's observations about the deep symmetry of the epic, I have to restrain myself from trying to rewrite my own story into the same almost fractal symmetry: "the long story of Gilgamesh's triumphs is followed by a tiny mourning, then by a tiny celebration, then by the long mourning of Enkidu's death" (150).
Or the formal observation that the individual tables are often written as standalone episodes within the larger arc, and that "the Akkadian scribes, having no word for 'epic', referred to the story as 'the series of Gilgamesh,'" like a TV show (151).
And the stuff about puns is amazing. In Ea's veiled speech indirectly warning Uta-napishti about the coming flood, (ETA: thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay for mending my missing diacritics): "šamût kibāti means 'a shower of wheat'; but if it is read as three words, ša mūt kibāti, it means 'that (which will cause) the death of wheat,' with stalks of wheat being a commonly used metaphor for the human race" (156). He makes cuneiform sound ecstatically multivalent.
[ETA] I used, a long time ago -- say second year poetry, or it might have been first if I remember the room right -- to write these poems that tried to be phonetically bivalent. They were not very good. I can remember only this: Idols knot peal leaving... and I can't remember what sounded like "god". (ETA: ingot?)
* * * * * *
I am reading bits and pieces of other things -- back issues of literary magazines I let stack up on my shelves and want to get rid of, odd essays or parts of them, various translations of Rumi -- although neither of the versions I have out now are filling my head with fireworks the way he sometimes can.
But mostly I am listening to podcasts like Behind the Bastards, which is the fault ofsabotabby .
* * * * * *
Food is a text, surely. Because I am clever, I had pizza and key lime sparkling water for dinner, zucchini waffles for lunch, and leftover fried rice and smoothie for breakfast.
* * * * * *
[ETA] Oh, and this:
{rf}
He offers details that feel so resonant -- for example, "it is a common feature of cuneiform narratives that they describe their own creation" (Helle 238, footnote 11). I like that for itself and because it provides validation for some of the narrative possibilities in my novel.
Reading some of Helle's observations about the deep symmetry of the epic, I have to restrain myself from trying to rewrite my own story into the same almost fractal symmetry: "the long story of Gilgamesh's triumphs is followed by a tiny mourning, then by a tiny celebration, then by the long mourning of Enkidu's death" (150).
Or the formal observation that the individual tables are often written as standalone episodes within the larger arc, and that "the Akkadian scribes, having no word for 'epic', referred to the story as 'the series of Gilgamesh,'" like a TV show (151).
And the stuff about puns is amazing. In Ea's veiled speech indirectly warning Uta-napishti about the coming flood, (ETA: thanks to
sovay for mending my missing diacritics): "šamût kibāti means 'a shower of wheat'; but if it is read as three words, ša mūt kibāti, it means 'that (which will cause) the death of wheat,' with stalks of wheat being a commonly used metaphor for the human race" (156). He makes cuneiform sound ecstatically multivalent.[ETA] I used, a long time ago -- say second year poetry, or it might have been first if I remember the room right -- to write these poems that tried to be phonetically bivalent. They were not very good. I can remember only this: Idols knot peal leaving... and I can't remember what sounded like "god". (ETA: ingot?)
* * * * * *
I am reading bits and pieces of other things -- back issues of literary magazines I let stack up on my shelves and want to get rid of, odd essays or parts of them, various translations of Rumi -- although neither of the versions I have out now are filling my head with fireworks the way he sometimes can.
But mostly I am listening to podcasts like Behind the Bastards, which is the fault of
sabotabby .* * * * * *
Food is a text, surely. Because I am clever, I had pizza and key lime sparkling water for dinner, zucchini waffles for lunch, and leftover fried rice and smoothie for breakfast.
* * * * * *
[ETA] Oh, and this:
[Our] understanding changes again when we consider that in the ancient world the epic could also be appreciated ... as a performance. In Christian Hess's delightful phrase, Akkadian epics were "songs of clay" (151).
{rf}
