Parse with me

[radiantfracture]

If you were to read the following two sentences, the subject being Gilgamesh and its effect on the English literary tradition:

Into a canon based in the Bible and the Greek and Latin classics, a religious and a secular canon with a highly developed culture of reception and interpretation grown up around it, entered a new text that belonged, as it were, in both currents and in neither. It was millennia older than either, with elements in common with each, which unsettled our understanding and gave us a sense of the extending, shadowy backstories of our traditions. (Schmidt 4)

--would you say that "both currents" refers to the Bible and the Greek/Latin tradition?

{rf}

Comments

[juushika]

Yes, to both.

[radiantfracture]

Okay, cool--

wait--

both what?

[juushika]

hahaha sorry

Yes, I'd read it as "both currents" applies to both the Bible and the Greek/Latin tradition. Because that pair, that "both," is the one introduced in the first clause, I'd assume that's the "both"/neither/either referred to in following clauses until otherwise specified.

[redbird]

That's probably what's meant, but "both currents" could also plausibly mean "the religious canon, and the secular canon."

[radiantfracture]

Right, and on that basis I think I've concluded that he's allying "religious" to "Bible" (ok) and "secular" to "Greek and Roman" (seems weird)

[katuah]

I would agree with this assessment.

[juushika]

FWIW I don't see this divide; I parsed it as "the Bible and the Greek and Latin classics form a canon (which I am trying to avoid calling western canon) which is both religious and secular and has a highly developed..." etc etc

It mostly just feels like a messy way to avoid referring a lump of "Western canon" ... while still contrasting Gilgamesh to/differentiating it from that canon.

[davidgillon]

I'd interpret "a religious and a secular canon" as specifically saying two canons, not one.

[radiantfracture]

a messy way to avoid referring a lump of "Western canon"

This is a compelling assessment.

[anne]

It's not weird to the kind of scholar who would write a sentence like that. There's the Bible, and everything not the Bible is secular.

[isis]

This is how I read it as well.

[yarrowkat]

yes, that is how i read this.

[ranunculus]

I would say that the writer needed to learn to write.

[larryhammer]

This. Don't do multiply subordinate clauses until you learn how to hinge your antecedents correctly.

[ranunculus]

Dad always said to write to a 5th grade education. Most of the time I agree. Once in a while using words with a more precise meaning is warranted, but, just because you know the words doesn't mean you should use them.
As for the Gilgamesh epic, it is a great old story. It should serve to remind us that all peoples have such stories and that such stories reach back into the misty dawn of our species. What I wonder about is what the stories told by Neanderthal, Denisovan and other humans were like. How did they differ from the stories told by Modern humans? Were they really similar, love, hate and the lust for power?

[larryhammer]

Thus the importance of anthropological SF.

[yhlee]

By the end of the first sentence I had forgotten what the hell the first clause was. :]

[radiantfracture]

Exactly!

There are four couplets here:

(Bible) and (Greek and Latin)
(Greek) and (Latin)
(Religious) and (Secular)
(Reception) and (Interpretation)

-- and then a "both" that clearly doesn't belong to its closest antecedent (because it's "reception and interpretation", nestled in a prepositional phrase lodged inside a parenthetical noun phrase reduplicating the subject of the sentence, which subject begins as the unified "a canon," then turns into two canons (a religious and a secular) and then back into one ("it") and finally into two currents within one canon, resulting in a sentence like a highly troublesome river sprawling over its delta.

And why "as it were," for Enlil's sake?

(rapid shallow breathing)

[sovay]

resulting in a sentence like a highly troublesome river sprawling over its delta.

This is why I like inflected languages!

[edenfalling]

Yes, that is how I would read that passage.

[sovay]

--would you say that "both currents" refers to the Bible and the Greek/Latin tradition?

That is how I take it, although the suggestion that the classical tradition is where we get the secular part of the Western canon strikes me as nope.

Have you read Martin West's The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (1997)? You have probably encountered its information in generations of subsequent scholarship, but it was the first really substantive effort to look at the interrelation of classical Greek and ancient Near Eastern literatures and does so with more than just a list of typologies.

(I must have been in college when I encountered the idea that Enkidu was to Gilgamesh as Patroklos to Achilles, a beloved companion/φίλος ἑταῖρος. I can tell because I still have on my hard drive 4000 unfinished words entitled "Gilgamesh, Malcolm, Achilles," datable by internal references to 2001–02 and concerning a man who has lost his lover and is neglecting himself toward suicide in the magical thinking that part of their shared soul went down to the underworld with him; it breaks off at the point where katabasis is suggested. It occurs to me now that that this knot of ideas reworked itself from scratch a couple of years later as "Kouros," although the later story has more Geštinanna going on.)

[radiantfracture]

although the suggestion that the classical tradition is where we get the secular part of the Western canon strikes me as nope.

Well, precisely -- and in no sense do I think of Greek and Roman studies as being carried out in a secular -- spirit? -- for most of the history of English literature.

Have you read Martin West's The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (1997)?

Best to assume I haven't read anything. Then nobody is disappointed.

I think you have mentioned it, though, and maybe pointed me to the archive.org link.

(Reads a bit)

...I like that he calls it a "little book" that ends up 700 pages long.

(Reads a bit more)

He's very wry!

This looks pretty wonderful. Thank you. I wonder if I can read it using the voice reader.

(Tries)

Well, it's oddly melodic.

I still have on my hard drive 4000 unfinished words entitled "Gilgamesh, Malcolm, Achilles,"

That sounds gorgeous. (Is the title a reference to Rilke's "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes"?)

Your unfinished / transformed work also chimes in a wonderful way with a play I will mention in my Next Post.

I think I have not read "Kouros," but I have ordered the book.

[sovay]

Well, precisely -- and in no sense do I think of Greek and Roman studies as being carried out in a secular -- spirit? -- for most of the history of English literature.

Non-Christian ≠ secular! I want Richard Dawkins, I'll read Richard Dawkins. (I won't read Richard Dawkins.)

Best to assume I haven't read anything. Then nobody is disappointed.

I am hardly disappointed. I worry all the time about telling people things they already know.

Well, it's oddly melodic.

I hope that's the same as comprehensible.

That sounds gorgeous. (Is the title a reference to Rilke's "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes"?)

Not consciously: I was just bracketing the character with the culture heroes. I did discover and love Rilke in college. This fragment remains one of my favorites.

Your unfinished / transformed work also chimes in a wonderful way with a play I will mention in my Next Post.

I shall check it out!

I think I have not read "Kouros," but I have ordered the book.

Thank you. I hope you will enjoy it. I will also send you things if you want!

[davidgillon]

I'd say both Biblical/Religious and Greek/Latin/Secular, given the English tradition would be Christianity is religious, everything else is myth.

[agoodwinsmith]

When I read it, my assumption was that the "two" were Latin (1) and Greek (2).

[radiantfracture]

I think that's the way I read it first, too.

[hilarita]

I'd agree that the 2 currents are the Bible current and the Greek/Latin current, though I'd hesitate to call the latter secular.

I think, grammatically, we have
Into (a canon based in the Bible and the Greek and Latin classics,) a religious and a secular canon ... entered a new text that belonged ... in both currents and in neither.

(Parentheses added for clarity, plus ellipses for subordinate clauses that mean we lose track of whatever it was the sentence was about.)
It's not the clearest pair of sentences.