Into the Archive: Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh by John Gardner, John Maier (1985; 304 Pages; Softcover; Vintage)

“The story of Gilgamesh, an ancient epic poem written on clay tablets in a cuneiform alphabet, is as fascinating and moving as it is crucial to our ability to fathom the time and the place in which it was written. Gardner's version restores the poetry of the text and the lyricism that is lost in the earlier, almost scientific renderings. The principal theme of the poem is a familiar one: man's persistent and hopeless quest for immortality. It tells of the heroic exploits of an ancient ruler of the walled city of Uruk named Gilgamesh. Included in its story is an account of the Flood that predates the Biblical version by centuries. Gilgamesh and his companion, a wild man of the woods named Enkidu, fight monsters and demonic powers in search of honor and lasting fame. When Enkidu is put to death by the vengeful goddess Ishtar, Gilgamesh travels to the underworld to find an answer to his grief and confront the question of mortality.” – Amazon.

This is the first book I’ve got this February. It was a double whammy choice for me, as it is both an early epic (Maier contests that choice of category) and the last John Gardner book, published two years after his death. The fact that it was only $1.39 with $3.99 shipping didn’t hurt either. I had a paperback copy of Gilgamesh before (different translation) which I sold, but it is the sort of thing I feel I should have in the Archive, and I have sometimes felt a nagging absence.

It is a very scholarly edition, which I must confess put me off back in the day when I first tried to read it in a library copy. I was still grieving the loss of Gardner and looking for something more personal of him; the notes and apparatus (the John Maier side of things) were not what I was expecting. Perhaps I was looking for something like Grendel. I’ve come to more appreciate this kind of thing now.

Gardner left a completed typescript of his translation, which he had worked on for years in conjunction with Maier. So, it is more complete than, say, Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf, also published posthumously, but made for private use and never completed. This is the only John Gardner (for a certain value of Gardner) that I lacked. After a new reading it will go quietly onto my shelves. And that, as it were, will be that.