People don’t just die. Sometimes they simply disappear, from sight, sound, memory, occasionally to resurface in the form of a question. Did Jean Arthur actually make it to the millennium? When exactly did Mary Pickford expire? How is it possible that so-and-so's obituary is in today’s paper- didn’t he die years ago? And why would anyone want to google away the day in hopes of contacting a childhood classmate from the previous century if not to hold onto a simpler, more youthful past? In truth, can anyone fully grasp the idea of annihilation and still remain sane?
These thoughts never fail to remind of the tragedy of Gilgamesh, a story I once attempted to teach to a few brighter than average though equally lackadaisical and similarly doomed high school seniors. . . .Generally considered the first literary “hero” of record, this ancient king from Mesopotamia -a reputed demigod- is the center of a story related in cuneiform, a myth rediscovered in the late nineteenth century on zillions of fragments of stone chards, a heroic recounting reappearing several millennia after it was first ambitiously embedded into chapters hard as rock by unknown authors. The narrative was translated and re-assembled into quasi tablets by various modern scholars working over a period of decades, during which time some of the translators themselves were “no more”- or alternately, passed on, left the world, ceased to exist, in plain language, were lost to life. In the end, only the story and its fanciful characters achieved immortality, through the telling.
These thoughts never fail to remind of the tragedy of Gilgamesh, a story I once attempted to teach to a few brighter than average though equally lackadaisical and similarly doomed high school seniors. . . .Generally considered the first literary “hero” of record, this ancient king from Mesopotamia -a reputed demigod- is the center of a story related in cuneiform, a myth rediscovered in the late nineteenth century on zillions of fragments of stone chards, a heroic recounting reappearing several millennia after it was first ambitiously embedded into chapters hard as rock by unknown authors. The narrative was translated and re-assembled into quasi tablets by various modern scholars working over a period of decades, during which time some of the translators themselves were “no more”- or alternately, passed on, left the world, ceased to exist, in plain language, were lost to life. In the end, only the story and its fanciful characters achieved immortality, through the telling.
As the plot starts to reveal itself it appears that the hero Gilgamesh’s amazingly naïve tragedy lies in his obdurate refusal to accept the sudden realization that we all die. He is availed of this gruesome fact of mortality somewhat late in life, not as a child, but as an adult who loses his closest friend, an all-too-human alter ego known as Enkidu, after a rather nasty skirmish with a dragon-like monster, who in a brilliant flash of early onomatapoeia is named Humbaba.The hero's ensuing quest consequently becomes eternal life- a spurious journey, needless to say, and this king of Ur comes across some four thousand years later as a rather primitive soul. Come on now, every six year old whose gold fish has met with a bad end realizes the inexorable Fact of Life. But in truth guys, Gilga’s existential angst raises an essential question: Why bother doing your homework if all comes to naught? That unpleasant bevy of boring term papers, book reports, math equations, tedious science experiments, artfully devised crib sheets. . . In short, the students thus were motivated to read on until the very end. The answer to the story’s existential question incidentally, the moment of truth at the end of the quest, turns out to be equally simplistic: eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow. . . leading to the inevitable thought that looking back at all our yesterdays, you really have to wonder how far we've come.
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