Simon Armitage's Gilgamesh brings a 4,000-year-old king's misdeeds roaring back to life
Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is brilliantly translated
Philip Terry reviews Simon Armitage's new verse translation of Gilgamesh, the Mesopotamian epic about a demigod king of Uruk who abuses his power, battles the forest guardian Humbaba, and goes mad with grief after his companion Enkidu dies. Armitage renders it in a tight four-beat line, mixing modern and archaic registers, and highlights its echoes of resource wars, ecological ruin, and same-sex love. Terry calls it a tour de force likely to become a standard English version.
His tactile, visceral version is a tour de force, combining careful scholarship with poetic verve and deft linguistic meldings, and it is likely to become one of the standard renditions in English.
- johngossman
The reviewer, Philip Terry, is himself a very good, very clever poet. His "Dictator" is an absolutely brilliant translation into Globish, a simplified English designed for commerce. He reasons that cuneiform had a similar role in cross-language understanding. Terry refuses to use words outside Globish's 1500-word vocabulary, resulting in Gilgamesh being translated "Dictator", but also imposes a bizarre prose form, leaves out holes in the original tablets, and "translates" some idioms literally...all with great humor. The result looks like this:
Then day | light break | …… [And] WILD | MAN make | of he | mouth a | shape… he say | to DIC | TATOR ‘Listen | to the | dream I | dream in | the night The sky | god | + + + the | war god | the god | of know | ledge and | the sun | god all | meet to | gether | in the | great court | of the | sky… And the | sky god | AN + + + | say to | the war | god… “Because | they kill | the MAN | COW of | the sky | + + + and | because | they kill | TREEGUARD the one* | who cut | down the | hard wood | tree on | the moun | tain side | must die”
It shouldn't be your first read of Gilgamesh, but its a fun, insightful second.
- boonzeet
It was also interesting learning about the role of Poet Laureate, and the stipend. £5,750 per annum, and a barrel of Sherry; the latter being a tradition since 1630.
I love these small slivers of old traditions that are kept up into the modern day.
- Sharlin
A very funny and informative book review of Gilgamesh (based on Andrew George’s 2003 edition/translation) by a guest author was recently published at Astral Codex Ten: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-epic-o...
Recommended reading for anyone interested in knowing more about the work.
- fguerraz
I highly recommend this episode of BBC In Our Time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080wbrq
- simonsarris
Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is exceptional, much better IMO than the Tolkien translation. So I'm very excited for this.
The audio performance of it by Bill Wallis is also a family favorite:
https://www.audible.com/pd/Sir-Gawain-and-the-Green-Knight-A...