Sick Curse
Book Review: Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh
Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Gilgamesh is filled with passionate and racy passages. I’m sure it’s pretty raw in the original, and Mitchell really brings out the all the edgy emotionality. Take, for example, this utterly devastating curse, when Enkidu puts down Shamhat, his consort and civilizer:
Shamhat, I assign you an eternal fate. I curse you with the ultimate curse. May it seize you instantly as it leaves my mouth. Never may you have a home and family. Never caress a child of your own. May your man prefer younger, prettier girls. May he beat you as a housewife beats a rug. May you never acquire bright alabaster, or shining silver, the delight of men. May your roof keep leaking and no carpenter fix it. May wild dogs camp in your bedroom. May owls nest in your attic. May drunkards vomit all over you. May a tavern wall be your place of business. May you be dressed in torn robes and filthy underwear. May angry wives sue you. May thorns and briers make your feet bloody. May young men jeer and the rabble mock you as you walk the streets. Shamhat, may all this be your reward for seducing me in the wilderness when I was strong and innocent and free.
I know this is a curse and not a diss, but even Kendrick Lamar can’t touch this level of devastation.
Mitchell probably takes a lot of liberties in his version of the epic, and it’s not a good resource for scholarly study. But if you are looking to get the most raw and impactful telling of this great story, it’s a winner. The impassioned narration by George Guidall in the audio book version brings the vivid language to life.
I don’t have anything new or particularly insightful to say about the Epic of Gilgamesh itself. It’s a wonderful tale, and definitely worth reading. And it’s brief. This reading clocked in at two hours. Another two hours of essay and explanation by the translator is not bad at all. It makes explicit all the subtleties and symbolisms and deeper meanings in the story that you may or may not have missed. It’s not too childish, and not too erudite.
Like the Iliad and the Old Testament, it’s a story that speaks of the tumultuous gap between the world with Gods commanding us, and the one where we have to figure things out for ourselves. Of our minds expanding into self-consciousness.
At last, he stood up, and walked toward the water hole to rejoin his animals. But the gazelles saw him and scattered. The antelope and deer bounded away. He tried to catch up, but his body was exhausted. His life force was spent. His knees trembled. He could no longer run like an animal as he had before. He turned back to Shamhat, and as he walked, he knew that his mind had somehow grown larger. He knew things now that an animal can’t know.
Wow, that is a curse-and-a-half isn't it?! That is some creative cursing!
The true origins and meaning of these ancient epic poems are fascinating. You mention "The Iliad." This is what the Rev'd R W Morgan has to say about "The Iliad" in his "History of Britain" (1848)(Page 18):
"Homer is one of the mutative forms of the word Gomer—the g being under certain [Kymric grammatical rules] dropped. The Epic Poem of the Iliad, or Fall of Troy, assigned to Homer, is a collection of the Heroic Ballads of the Bards of the Gomeridæ or Kymry, on the great catastrophe of their race in the East. It was originally composed in the Kymric or Bardic characters. These were afterwards changed by the Greeks into the Phenician, and in so doing, they were compelled to drop the Cymric radical "Gw." Hence the metrical mutilation in the present Greek form of the Iliad. The "gw" is the letter attempted to be restored by modern scholars under the name of the OEolic Digamma.
The OEneid is similarly the Epic of the British Kymry of Italy on the same subject—Virgil being a descendant of the Kymric conquerors of Italy under Brennus, and, as his writings everywhere evince, an initiated Bard. Neither of these immortal poems have any connection, strictly speaking, with the historic races of Greece and Rome. They are the Epics of the heroic race, or race of Gomer."
https://thenationalcv.org.uk/More%2016%20History%20of%20Britain%20%20by%20R%20W%20MORGAN%20(1848)%20(2).pdf
Gomer is the father of the Welsh. Welsh "Iliad" or "Gwiliad" means "Search" or "Look out for" in English.
"Kymric or Bardic characters" is a reference to the ancient Kymric/British alphabet known as Coelbren/Kolbrin, which has its origins in Ancient Egypt and which explains why it is relatively easy to de-code Egyptian hieroglyphs using Welsh as the key. Mainstream academics try to dismiss Coelbren as fake/forgery; but that is demonstrably nonsense:
https://www.cymroglyphics.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=59&product_id=61
The truth about the origins of Homer/Gomer's "Odyssey" is equally fascinating. According to the British forensic historians, Wilson and Blackett, "Odyssey" is a re-telling of a voyage of circumnavigation by a subject of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesees II:
https://www.cymroglyphics.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=60&product_id=98