Gilgamesh
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- €7.49
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- €7.49
Publisher Description
'A powerful translation' The Telegraph
'As narrative verse, this Gilgamesh entrances and enthrals.' Independent
'Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh is a wonderful version' Harold Bloom
Discover the foundational work of world literature - the world's oldest epic poem, vividly translated by Stephen Mitchell.
Gilgamesh is a born leader, the king of Uruk. But he is arrogant. To control Gilgamesh, the Gods create Enkidu, a wild man, his equal in strength and courage. They are destined to come to conflict - and yet together they could rid the world of evil, and Gilgamesh may finally discover the one secret the Gods have kept from humanity: the gift of eternal life.
Written in the second millennium B.C. the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the most important surviving works of ancient literature, a thousand years older than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. A core influence on religion, culture and the heroic tradition, it is essential reading to understand the birth of ancient civilisations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The acclaimed translator of the Tao Te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita now takes on the oldest book in the world. Inscribed on stone tablets a thousand years before the Iliad and the Bible and found in fragments, Gilgamesh describes the journey of the king of the city of Uruk in what is now Iraq.At the start, Gilgamesh is a young giant with gigantic wealth, power and beauty and a boundless arrogance that leads him to oppress his people. As an answer to their pleas, the gods create Enkidu to be a double for Gilgamesh, a second self. Learning of this huge, wild man who runs with the animals, Gilgamesh dispatches a priestess to find him and tame him by seducing him. Making love with the priestess awakens Enkidu's consciousness of his true identity as a human being rather than as an animal. Enkidu is taken to the city and to Gilgamesh, who falls in love with him as a soul mate. Soon, however, Gilgamesh takes his beloved friend with him to the Cedar Forest to kill the guardian, the monster Humbaba, in defiance of the gods. Enkidu dies as a result. The overwhelming grief and fear of death that Gilgamesh suffers propels him on a quest for immortality that is as fast-paced and thrilling as a contemporary action film. In the end, Gilgamesh returns to his city. He does not become immortal in the way he thinks he wants to be, but he is able to embrace what is.Relying on existing translations (and in places where there are gaps, on his own imagination), Mitchell seeks language that is as swift and strong as the story itself. He conveys the evenhanded generosity of the original poet, who is as sympathetic toward women and monsters and the whole range of human emotions and desires as he is toward his heroes. This wonderful new version of the story of Gilgamesh shows how the story came to achieve literary immortality not because it is a rare ancient artifact, but because reading it can make people in the here and now feel more completely alive. Author tour.
