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Gilgamesh

The Life of a Poem

Michael Schmidt

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Belletristik / Essays, Feuilleton, Literaturkritik, Interviews

Beschreibung

Reflections on a lost poem and its rediscovery by contemporary poets

Gilgamesh is the most ancient long poem known to exist. It is also the newest classic in the canon of world literature. Lost for centuries to the sands of the Middle East but found again in the 1850s, it tells the story of a great king, his heroism, and his eventual defeat. It is a story of monsters, gods, and cataclysms, and of intimate friendship and love. Acclaimed literary historian Michael Schmidt provides a unique meditation on the rediscovery of Gilgamesh and its profound influence on poets today.

Schmidt describes how the poem is a work in progress even now, an undertaking that has drawn on the talents and obsessions of an unlikely cast of characters, from archaeologists and museum curators to tomb raiders and jihadis. Fragments of the poem, incised on clay tablets, were scattered across a huge expanse of desert when it was recovered in the nineteenth century. The poem had to be reassembled, its languages deciphered. The discovery of a pre-Noah flood story was front-page news on both sides of the Atlantic, and the poem's allure only continues to grow as additional cuneiform tablets come to light. Its translation, interpretation, and integration are ongoing.

In this illuminating book, Schmidt discusses the special fascination Gilgamesh holds for contemporary poets, arguing that part of its appeal is its captivating otherness. He reflects on the work of leading poets such as Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky, and Yusef Komunyakaa, whose own encounters with the poem are revelatory, and he reads its many translations and editions to bring it vividly to life for readers.

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Schlagwörter

Charles Olson, Epithet, Novelist, Metaphor, Couplet, Indus River, Narrative, Cuneiform script, Transliteration, Wisdom literature, Etymology, Ninsun, Globish (Gogate), Literature, Incipit, Enlil, Scorpion man, Enkidu, Stephanie Dalley, Ted Hughes, Comic book, Humbaba, Epic poetry, Lament, Imagery, Genre, Dignity, Uruk, Harry, Poetry, Writing, A. E. Housman, Author, Wild man, Quatrain, Free verse, Generosity, Clay tablet, Newspaper, Rhetorical question, Sumer, Irving Finkel, Subjectivity, Enmerkar, Lagash, Anachronism, Lapis lazuli, Oral tradition, Diction, Akkadian Empire, Prose, Aeneid, Shamash, Gilgamesh, Ambiguity, Epic of Gilgamesh, Lugalbanda, Cedar Forest, Gilgamesh the King, Ashurbanipal, Writer, Inanna, Narrative poetry, Homer, Ishtar, Louis Zukofsky, Penguin Classics, Assyriology, Shamhat, Shuruppak