Antiquitopia

I am about to teach the Epic of Gilgamesh again. My students read the Standard Babylonian version, basically since it is the best preserved. This version transforms the earlier epic versions into something of an epic wisdom text, particularly regarding the Utnapishtim's speech at the end. This speech and the Standard Babylonian version as a whole remind me of Ecclesiastes in many respects. They both concern themselves with the inevitability of death and, in a way, the meaninglessness of much of life. Coming to terms with both aspects leads to wisdom. Nonetheless, they approach this whole coming-to-terms-with-death-is-the-foundation-of-wisdom in different ways. Of course, one is narrative and couched in conversation between Gilgamesh and Utnapisthim. The other is a more wisdom text--a radical one, in fact--but appears more in the form of a treatise as the "Preacher" goes through all aspects of life to show how they are all a "chasing after the wind." The...

From T.S. Eliot's "Choruses from 'The Rock'" (yes, I have been reading a lot of T.S. Eliot lately): All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

There is an article in the NYTimes discussing whether spontaneous roadside shrines should be banned. The reasons against the shrines: 1. It is public space, and the shrines tend to use religious symbols (primarily crosses); thus, they violate separation of church and state. 2. In a related vein, they use public property for private purposes. 3. They are actually a danger; they can distract and, if someone stops to keep up the site, the can create additional hazard, especially on a busy street (this point, of course, varies from location to location, but, if the problem is that someone died in a car accident on a hazardous road, this creates greater hazard). The reasons to let them be: 1. Legislate all you want, but these shrines are weighted with a great deal of tradition, they are spontaneous, and represent a form of folk religion--the point is, legislate all you want, take them down, and people are going to do it anyway (I tend to agree with this point). 2. They help the griev...

I thought this poem by Auden, originally entitled "Funeral Blues" but later left untitled, would be appropriate for Good Friday: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack of the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to good. Now as recited by the actor John Hannah ("Matthew") in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral , which made the poem famous for a bro...

It seems that I am now in the habit of giving not a quote per day, but a poem per day. I am working through the collected works of W.H. Auden, sometimes proceeding in the order of the book, but sometimes jumping around to titles that catch my eye. My interest in time led me to this one: No Time Clocks cannot tell our time of day For what event to pray, Because we have no time, because We have no time until We know what time we fill, Why time is other than time was. Nor can our question satisfy The answer in the statue's eye. Only the living may ask whose brow May wear the Roman laurel now: The dead say only how. What happens to the living when they die? Death is not understood by death: nor you, nor I.

Death mingles and confuses itself with our life throughout. Decay anticipates its time, and even insinuates itself into the course of our growth. (Michel de Montaigne, "On Experience," Essays 3.13; trans. J.M. Cohen) There are perhaps two major themes I have seen arise in most of the works of literature that we have studied this year in my Literature Humanities class. The first is the power, duplicity, and ambiguities of language; the other, death. From the Epic of Gilgamesh , the Iliad , etc., to Montaigne's Essays , Death interweaves itself, or, in Montaigne's terms, insinuates itself throughout my entire fall and spring syllabus, whether in the attempt to overcome it through undying glory ( Iliad ), establishing great works ( Epic of Gilgamesh ; Aeneid ), gaining or failing to gain immortality ( Gilgamesh ; Genesis), or seeking a beatific afterlife ( Divine Comedy ) or, here, through the complacent acceptance of its inevitability. In this more mature vision of ...

In case you were wondering, you can now bring your favorite team's memorabilia into the afterlife. Want a Yankees' casket? You can have one. With how the team has been playing lately, it seems fitting that they would be buried. December 15, 2008 Editorial Notebook Pondering the Ultimate Sky Box By FRANCIS X. CLINES Leaving no merchandising stone unturned, Major League Baseball has authorized the use of team logos on a line of funeral caskets for people who want to carry their fandom unto eternity. Models for the Yankees (replete with interior pinstripes) and the Mets (with handles of mixed Dodger blue and Giant orange) went on sale at the Branch Funeral Home in Smithtown, Long Island. The caskets gleam in cream-colored 18-gauge steel, with the team logo embossed on both the open lid lining and the loved one’s head pillow. They dominate the display room’s 22 caskets, attracting more interest than the Harvard gunmetal model, the copper Pieta, or the solid cherry Senator, accor...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I administered a midterm exam today. Part of that exam was to identify a passage, who wrote it, who's speaking, and why it is significant within the work as a whole. They had to do about six of these before writing their essays. Here is one of those passages. Can you identify it? Ever do we build our households, ever do we make our nests, ever do brothers divide their inheritance, ever do feuds arise in the land. Ever the river has risen and brought us the flood, the mayfly floating on the water. On the face of the sun its countenance gazes, Then all of a sudden nothing is there! Hmm...I guess I can't put any labels on this post until someone correctly identifies the passage!

So, I'm sick of seeing Sarah Palin at the top of my page, so here's something from the earliest epic tradition in world literature...well, the end product of that tradition at least. So, here, from the Standard Babylonian Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh is the quote of the day: Enkidu had defiled his body so pure, his legs stood still, though his herd was in motion. Enkidu was weakened, could not run as before, but now he had reason, adn wide understanding. (Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 1, lines 199-203; trans. Andrew George) Enkidu, created directly from clay, a replica of the original human, was a wild, animal-like man. At the same time, he was powerful, the only match in strength for the two-thirds divine Gilgamesh (how he's two-thirds divine, I have no clue...and no specialist's answer has been satisfying to my mind). This replica of the original man is also Gilgamesh's mirror, his alter-ego, a second self. In this scene, the wild animalistic man, who communes...

Although the wrath of Achilles propels the plot of the Iliad , the Iliad is a poem of death. Because so many people die in the Iliad, I think it would be a rewarding exercise to go through and see how death is described. Outside of A killed B or A slayed B or rather straightforward terminology, death is emerges, floats about, darts here and there throughout the poem. Death often appears personified with a capital D. Death appears as an ever-present force lurking throughout the pages. It is the most powerful force for the mortal heroes, but it is also the most elusive. It is ever-present, but, as we shall see, it is a mist. It cannot be fully grasped even as it is ubiquitous. Once again, death, as a necessary prominent theme in a poem of war, appears right at the beginning. It is the result and necessary corollary to Achilles' wrath: Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, hurled in their mult...

I started reading Umberto Eco's On Literature today, and found some interesting snippets in his opening essay entitled, "On Some Functions of Literature." He discusses many issues, such as the formative influence of literature on language (like Dante's on Italian, Luther's on German, Homer's on Greek, etc.). The combination of different literatures and languages, in turn, shapes individual and communal identities. He discusses freedom and fidelity of interpretation. He has this to say about the relationship between the text and interpreter: "The world of literature is a universe in which it is possible to establish whether a reader has a sense of reality or is the victim of his own hallucinations." He also discusses how certain things are established in literature and cannot be changed because they have entered collective knowledge or can be directly looked up (like the identity of Superman as Clark Kent--Eco loves this example, interestingly en...

First things first, this is my 100th posting ever! It only took me about 13 months of blogging to get here, but today is that great milestone! For that milestone, I would like to give a quote of the day from the Baal Cycle : She [Anat] seizes Divine Mot (Death), With a sword she splits him With a sieve she winnows him. With a fire shes burns him. With millstones she grinds him, In a field she sows him. The birds eat his flesh, Fowl devour his parts, Flesh to flesh cries out. Baal Cycle , 6.2.30-37. The Baal Cycle , sometimes called the Baal Epic , is basically about the Kingship of the Canaanite God Baal. It consists of six tablets that were inscribed around 1400-1350 BCE in the ancient city of Ugarit. The six tablets depict Baal's struggles to establish his kingship over the universe. The first two tablets depict his defeat of the Sea (Yamm), providing the counterpart to the Enuma Elish , in which Marduk establishes his authority by defeating the Sea (Tiamat). The differences...

While I am reading on some Ancient Near Eastern relationships with some of the texts for my dissertation, I have reread the Epic of Gilgamesh, which, as it turns out, I will probably be teaching this fall as well--it is nice when teaching and research can overlap! Anyway, here is the quote of the day: "How, O how could I stay silent, how, O how could I keep quiet? My friend whom I love has turned to clay: Enkidu my friend whom I love has turned to clay. Am I not like him? Must I lie down too, never to rise again?" Epic of Gilgamesh , Tablet X, column V. This passage indicates the intense friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Enkidu has now died, gone down to the underworld ruled by goddess Ereshkigal. The souls, shades, or whatever, of the deceased are usually depicted as birds in Mesopotamian literature, so, Enkidu's shade has flown below, and his body has returned to clay (much like the biblical phrasing of "dust to dust"). It is a place from where...