Gilgamesh: A New English Version
by Stephen Mitchell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen MitchellEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-01-24
ISBN: 0743261690
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Free Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780743261692
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Gilgamesh: A New English Version
Book Review: A non-specialist's humble opinion: stop browsing and read this version!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a classic work of humankind, a tale rich in adventure, sensuality, and psychological depth and complexity. The narrator reaches out and grabs the reader immediately by inviting him or her to look around the mighty city of Uruk, to observe its walls, temples, and gardens (in our mind's eye, if nothing else)--all the works of the man-god Gilgamesh. Yet, our picture of Gilgamesh quickly becomes rather complex--we see him first as a mighty hero, then we see that he is both loved and feared by his subjects, as he fully exercises his sovereign powers. Gilgamesh tames Enkidu, his wild brother in arms, in a rather unorthodox way but in the end we see it is Enkidu who civilizes and humanizes Gilgamesh, who is forced to face his own mortality. Long after the Sumerian civilization ceased to exist and the grand city of Uruk disappeared beneath the sands, through this tale Gilgamesh lives on in the human consciousness--ironically, granting him the immortality he so desperately sought.
When I set out to read the Epic of Gilgamesh, I learned that reading *THE* Epic of Gilgamesh is an impossible task--it doesn't exist! As a tale that is perhaps more than 4000 years old and likely started as a story told orally, it has been passed down in a number of versions in various levels of completeness, in a number of different languages, over a span of several millennia. When I browsed the reviews here on Amazon, I ran across a number of comments disparaging this "version" on a variety of points--the author does not speak the original languages of the tale (Sumerian, Akkadian, etc.), he has "filled in blanks" and moved around pieces of the text, etc. Some reviewers have mentioned that "truer" and "more scholarly" versions exist, but given the extremely wide and indeterminate origins of this tale mentioned above, those claims seem about valid as someone claiming to have the "true" recipe for chicken soup. What exactly does that mean, after all?
I imagine a comment like that will send a few scholars into apoplexy (if the title of my review did not already), but being an academic myself (albeit in a very different field) I feel it is important to add a healthy dose of skepticism to these claims of the existence of an "original" or "true" story lest one think they are being cheated out of the "real deal" by reading a version such as this one. Likewise, as a speaker and translator of foreign languages myself, I understand the delicate balance (some might call it a trade-off) between staying faithful to the letter versus the spirit of the text--in other words, translation is as much art as it is science. The versions full of brackets and ellipses might be technically accurate, so-called "scholarly" translations of a given intermediate version (such as Sin-leqi-unninni's) or two, but at the same time it is not a faithful recreation of the experience of a Sumerian hearing the tale for the first time. Technical accuracy is easier to quantify than the aesthetic appeal of a given version or translation, but that does not mean that aesthetics are not important--especially for the non-specialist (which I would imagine includes the majority of Amazon shoppers).
To that end, I highly recommend Mitchell's version as it gives the best of both worlds. Through copious notes, Mitchell cites where he varies from the older texts and translations so that one may track and compare versions. Meanwhile, he has crafted English verse that cleanly and clearly tells the tale of Gilgamesh better than any "scholarly" or other "non-scholarly" version that I have laid eyes on. His detailed introduction helps set a context for the text, its discovery, its relationship to other texts (such as epics in other traditions, and the tale's similarities with the story of the Biblical flood), and its relevance today.
If you are interested in more technically accurate versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh (such as more conventional translations of Sin-leqi-unninni's "standard" version) then by all means explore other versions recommended by the reviewers much more knowledgeable than me in this area. But for people like me--the non-specialist more interested in reading the epic (with a lower-case "e") of Gilgamesh than chasing after the phantom "original" or "true" Epic of Gilgamesh--save yourself the trouble of thumbing through different versions and pick this one up.
Summary of Gilgamesh: A New English Version
Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, but until now there has not been a version that is a superlative literary text in its own right. Acclaimed by critics and scholars, Stephen Mitchell's version allows us to enter an ancient masterpiece as if for the first time, to see how startlingly beautiful, intelligent, and alive it is.Assyria, Babylonia & Sumer Books
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