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

[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!