Reading: Still pretty much just Gilgamesh
Jul. 5th, 2023 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureMy 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 tosovay 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}
no subject
Date: 2023-07-06 05:28 am (UTC)I loved studying it. Also, if you have not encountered this passage from Diana Wynne Jones' A Tale of Time City (1987), enjoy.
to write these poems that tried to be phonetically bivalent. They were not very good.
That's still cool.
P.S. If you do want the missing diacritics, they're šamût kibāti and ša mūt kibāti.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-07 01:04 pm (UTC)Thank you for remedying my laziness!
no subject
Date: 2023-07-07 01:08 pm (UTC)Also I enjoy superfluous pedantry
no subject
Date: 2023-07-07 05:02 pm (UTC)Oh, good.
(I don't think you're lazy, I just happen to have an Akkadian transcription font left over on my computer.)
no subject
Date: 2023-07-07 05:16 pm (UTC)I was definitely being lazy! Or at least sleepy -- I think it was quite late when I finished this post, despite the timestamp. It looks much better with the diacritics.
Ha! Of course you do. Well I will see if I can afford you more opportunities to use it.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-07 05:49 pm (UTC)I am pretty sure you could teach yourself Akkadian, in your copious spare time. It's a very regular Semitic language that just happens to be written in a rebus. We were taught out of Caplice.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-06 12:15 pm (UTC)And the stuff about puns is amazing. In Ea's veiled speech indirectly warning Uta-napishti about the coming flood, (forgive my missing diacritics): "samut kibat means 'a shower of wheat'; but if it is read as three words, sa mut kibati, 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.
That absolutely rules. Is this the translation I should read? (I haven't read any Gilgamesh since high school and we didn't read the whole extant thing at the time.)
Song of Clay would be a cool series title for Riftworkers, if you're looking for one.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-06 11:34 pm (UTC)Oh, it's on. I'm already way too invested.
It's a nice balance of accessible and erudite. I'm getting a lot of pleasure out of it.
Stephen Mitchell's translation is probably the most readable because he smooths out the gaps and removes a lot of the repetitions, and because he is a gifted poet; Helle leaves in the repetitions and marks all the spaces where the tablets are damaged (a bit like Anne Carson's Sappho translations in If Not, Winter, which I love.)
And Mitchell leaves out Tablet XII, so Helle is superior on that front...
Damn you're good
no subject
Date: 2023-07-07 07:58 pm (UTC)It's like they're all character archetypes that I like way too much. Hunter S. Thompson expy with a soft spot for kittens, spooky witchy anarchist trans woman, tired responsible woman with a filthy mouth...
And Mitchell leaves out Tablet XII, so Helle is superior on that front...
But it's CANON.
Damn you're good
At everything but my own stuff!
no subject
Date: 2023-07-08 12:52 am (UTC)Factually inaccurate
no subject
Date: 2023-07-08 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-06 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-06 02:42 pm (UTC)Do you already know the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Standard Version? I like it a lot, even if it does leave out Tablet XII.