Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem

by Michael Schmidt

Overview

Reflections on a lost poem and its rediscovery by contemporary poets

Gilgamesh is the most ancient long poem known to exist. It is also the newest classic in the canon of world literature. Lost for centuries to the sands of the Middle East but found again in the 1850s, it is a story of monsters, gods, and cataclysms, and of intimate friendship and love. Acclaimed literary historian Michael Schmidt provides a unique meditation on the rediscovery of Gilgamesh, showing how part of its special fascination is its captivating otherness. He reflects on the work of leading poets such as Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky, and Yusef Komunyakaa, whose own encounters with the poem are revelatory, and he reads its many translations and editions to bring it vividly to life for today's readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691205168
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	494,178
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Michael Schmidt is a literary historian, poet, novelist, translator, and anthologist as well as an editor and publisher. His books include Lives of the Poets, The Novel: A Biography, and The First Poets. Twitter @4Michael7

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Michael Schmidt's book is a lively and instructive read, full of insight and response that bring a new voice to the poem's reception."—A. R. George, author of The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic

"This is a remarkable and hugely worthwhile book. I cannot imagine a better introduction to Gilgamesh, but it is also something more than that. Schmidt has written a stimulating literary study that makes this oldest of poems feel new, exciting, and on the move."—Peter McDonald, translator of The Homeric Hymns

"A brilliant book, brilliantly executed. Michael Schmidt's unparalleled love for poetry, ancient and modern, brings to life the continuing vitality and importance of the world's earliest surviving poem, with fascinating new insights on every page. A real treasure."—Ruth Padel , author of Darwin: A Life in Poems

"A great pleasure to read. In this illuminating book, Schmidt sheds a kaleidoscopic light on Gilgamesh, its journeys, and its possible futures. All in a way that is seemingly effortless and without strain, a rare thing in critical discourse."—Philip Terry, author of Dictator

Editorial Reviews

06/10/2019

Schmidt (The Novel: A Biography), a critic and poet, outlines the circuitous, millennia-old path by which the epic of a young Sumerian king came to light and continues to fire literary imaginations. The ancient poem “Gilgamesh,” dating back to 700 B.C.E., comes from 12 clay tablets, unearthed in the 1850s during excavations in what is now Iraq. Subsequent fragments continue to surface, inscribed in different ancient languages. Because of this, “the poem remains provisional, shifting like dunes.” The book’s first half summarizes and analyzes each tablet, together encompassing the story of King Gilgamesh’s wild early years and eventual maturation, his friendship with the wild man Enkidu, and his search for the secret to eternal life after Enkidu’s death. The second half broadens out to encompass the poem’s many implications, such as how the discovery of its pre–Noah’s Ark account of an annihilating deluge reshaped views about the composition of the Bible. Comparing different translations, Schmidt finds that each version, “while taking us on roughly the same road, negotiates the steeper gradients and the numerous pot-holes in different ways.” Thanks to these and other striking turns of phrase, Schmidt leavens what could be ponderous textual analysis with his own poetic skills, creating an insightful, stimulating book sure to breathe new life into the would-be immortal king. Agent: Georgina Capel, Georgina Capel Associates. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] wonderful book . . . Schmidt’s argument for the poem as poetry, in the modern sense—concrete, unglazed, tough on the mind—is touching and persuasive. I read the book spellbound, in one sitting."—-Joan Acocella, New Yorker

"For anyone interested in language, history, or the power of a great story, this biography of a poem assures endless discoveries."—-Jeva Lange, The Week

"Schmidt’s book deeply enriches our appreciation of a work already rich. A solid addition to all collections."—-Thomas L. Cooksey, Library Journal

"[I]f all literary studies were written so engagingly, more people would read them . . . If you have never read Gilgamesh before, Schmidt could be Virgil to your Dante, and if you have read it before, be prepared to let it be explicated in a new and lively way and to flow over your mind like quicksilver."—-John Butler, Asian Review of Books

"Michael Schmidt’s Gilgamesh, the Life of a Poem, is stimulating, informative and elegantly written. It is to be hoped that over time it will be recognised as an indispensable guide for all future readers of Gilgamesh."—-David Cooke, Manchester Review

"In Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem, Michael Schmidt, a British poet and novelist, explains how the special character of “Gilgamesh” has had an outsize influence on modern writers . . . Its “anonymity” invites readers’ responses more powerfully than other ancient works, and this book is, in the main, an exploration of those responses, obtained by Mr. Schmidt through a survey sent to 50 modern poets. . . . [Schmidt’s] freshly framed observations help renew one of the world’s oldest surviving tales"—-James Romm, Wall Street Journal

"[Gilgamesh] is well-written and reads like having a chat with a down-to-earth friend who happens to be a literary scholar . . [R]ather than trying to choose which translation to read, one should start by reading Schmidt’s book. It offers an intelligent but relatable introduction to Gilgamesh as well as to the scholarship and modern artistry which swirls around the nearly 4000 year old poem."—-Kelly Hydrick, Root & Press

"[Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem] offers us an opportunity to consider not just the rewards of tradition, but its very real risks. . . . Schmidt tries to preserve the integrity of a single beloved poem. In forcing us to go back to the basics of meaning-making, Schmidt works toward a hermeneutics of modesty and care, pointing toward a more expansive, and less imperialist, approach to world literature. . . . To translate and read Gilgamesh as we read the Iliad or the Aeneid would be to neutralize the poem — and, for Schmidt and the many contemporary poets whose voices he brings into his book, to miss an opportunity to reimagine our literary origin story, or to posit a plurality of stories rather than one continuous tradition."—-Max Norman, Los Angeles Review of Books

"[Michael] Schmidt presents an extended reflection on Gilgamesh, exploring the challenges and opportunities it offers modern readers. . . . Beginning with the challenge of translating without knowing the original languages, Schmidt uses his correspondence with the translators of Gilgamesh as a model to challenge modern, Western habits of interpretation and approach reading the poem on its own terms: i.e., not as an ur-Iliad but as something unique. Throughout, Schmidt emphasizes Gilgamesh’s alterity, its fragmentariness, its authorlessness, the provisional nature of the text, and its refusal to fit familiar aesthetic and generic categories. This important work fills a gap between translations/introductions and the scholarship of Assyriology."—-P. E. Ojennus, Choice Reviews

From the Publisher