Unit 1

English 203: 
Literature 
of the 
NonWestern 
World 
Introduction .Explication Questions Review

Explication:

Reading:

If we were in a traditional classroom, I would quote  lines from the text & explain why they are important in several contexts, e.g.: to the plot, to the author's themes, to the values of the civilization that produced the work.  We can do almost the same thing here.

When I taught philosophy courses, I often began by asking why the Greeks & no one else invented philosophy?  Certainly India & China & Egypt developed sophisticated cultures by 700 bce, but they did not develop philosophy in anything like the Greek fashion.  If I was silent long enough, some brave student would likely suggest that "the Greeks were smart" or that "they thought harder than other people."  Walter Ong suggests a better answer.  The Greeks invented the phonetic alphabet that allowed almost anyone, even children, to become literate.  Reading & writing fostered an operational familiarity with the abstract structure of grammar, which, in turn, produced philosophy & a set of typical philosophical concerns that distinguish Western culture.

Because our class focuses on nonWestern literature, we will not read Homer.  This is unfortunate because Homer's work offers an interesting contrast to The Epic of Gilgamesh.  Homer's heroic characters are familiar to us.  We understand their concerns and motives.  We emotionally respond to the arrogance of Agamemnon, the sulky narcissism of Achilles, & the patriotic grandeur of Hector.  This is not true of The Epic of Gilgamesh where the characters seem flat & wooden.  Their thinking is not familiar to us.  The Gilgamesh story precedes Homer by 6 or 7 hundred years, but that does not necessarily suggest that the Gilgamesh story is primitive or undeveloped.  Our text says that the myth evolved over the course of at least a thousand years & that it "was widely known" (10).  The story of Gilgamesh no doubt functioned in Sumerian culture in something of the same way that the story of Jesus works in Western society or the stories of Krishna or Ram work in Indian society.

All these stories (Gilgamesh, Jesus, Krishna, Ram) illustrate the idea that the divine descends to enter our human realm.  GIL is "arrogant, oppressive, & brutal" (11) because he initially has no knowledge or experience of human feelings.  Interestingly, he learns the depths of human emotion from Enkidu who is a kind of mirror image: a beast ascending to the human level.  Naturally we see human nature as a mixture of the 2 stark types: GIL & Enkidu.

13    This was the man to whom all things were known.
        When the gods created GIL they gave him a perfect body.
        Two thirds they made him god & one third man.

The problem with hagiography, or trying to imagine or describe the divine, is haziness or idealization.  We may comprehend the idea of perfection but we retain an unspoken skepticism about encountering such perfection on the streets of Dumas or Hereford.  We understand that it is ideal & not something that can be physically experienced.  Our author deftly anticipates this objection, saying that:
13    In Uruk he built walls, a great rampart, & the temple of blessed Eanna for
       the god of the firmament Anu, & for Ishtar the goddess of lovE  Look at it still today . . . .
       Touch the threshold . . . .  Climb upon the wall of Uruk; walk along it.

The suggestion is that GIL was every bit as real as the walls that he built & that you can feel.  You cannot any longer touch him, but you can touch his work.  In fact you live in the city he built; or if you don't live in it, you know of it.  What could be more real than the civilization/city that GIL gave us?  Notice the repetition of the idea that our world is a mixture of the divine (Anu) & the physical (Ishtar).

There would be no story, if there was no  problem.  The problem resembles Aristotle's notion of God.  The Greek philosopher reasoned that God must be perfect; & being perfect, God would have no inclinations or desires for something that He did not yet possess.  Being the imperfect creatures we are, we are familiar with needs, desires, & longing.  But God cannot be.  He can conceptually "know" these emotional states but He cannot "feel" them under the law of contradiction.  If He truly felt in need of anything, He would not be perfect.  Something like this thinking lies behind GIL's unfeeling nature:

13    His arrogance has no bounds
        No son is left with his father . . . .
        His lust leaves no virgin to her lover

The one third imperfect part of GIL seems to direct the two thirds part of perfect energy or power.  What happens to the young men?  The implication is fairly obvious: they die in the battles that GIL wages.  What happens to the young women is obvious.  Do these actions imply that GIL is malicious or evil?  There is no textual evidence to support this judgment.  Read the opening paragraphs on p. 13 again:
13    No son is left with his father, for GIL takes them all, even the children.
        His lust leaves no virgin to her lover, neither the warrior's daughter nor the wife of the noble

All of this is repeated in the next paragraph.  Such repetition is not an error.  It is a technique used to call attention to important ideas or passages of the text.  So what is important in this passage?  I have already suggested the answer by using bold font to highlight family relationships.  This is precisely what a perfect being would not have.  Children are sent to school to learn what they do not yet know.  We recognize sibling rivalry.  Spouses bicker with each other.  Love & hate are manifestations of libidio.  We cannot have one without the other (love without hate); & these emotions are anything but static or perfect.

A God who does not somehow share in the depths of human emotion may be the focus of adoration as an image of distant perfection, but He is not comforting or consoling.  The people lament that GIL does not console them & Anu "fixes" the situation by humanizing GIL, giving him a "second self":

14    let it be as like him as his own reflection, his second self

"Like as his own reflection," his second self must, nonetheless, be profoundly different.  For Anu also decrees:
 14    Let them [the 2 natures: divine & human] contend together & leave Uruk in quiet.

Like us, Enkidu is made of clay:
14    So the goddess conceived an image in her mind . . . .
        She dipped her hands in water & pinched off clay, she let it fall in the
        wilderness, & noble Enkidu was created

What is GIL made of?  We are not told exactly, but you know it must be something opposite of clay.  In fact we read that after the gods created GIL:
13    Shamash the glorious sun, endowed him with beauty.

More than 2,000 years later, in the same part of the world, Muslim culture will propose that angels are creatures made from light, humans from clay, & jinn (spirits, sprites) from fire.  The fallen angels refused to abase themselves to lowly creatures of clay, despite God's command.

E is initially:
14    innocent of mankind; he knew nothing of the cultivated land.
        E ate grass in the hills with the gazelle

Isn't it interesting that neither GIL nor E has moral knowledge?  GIL is beyond the need for morality, which steers us away from evil & towards good.  E is too innocent & unconscious to be aware of moral alternatives.  Moral depth seems to be born from the emotional life that begins when GIL & E "marry" or merge.

A nameless game trapper discovers E.  The trapper complains that E somehow "helps the beasts to escape & now they slip through my fingers."    So the man's father invents a plan to trap  & domesticate E.  Is this a Fall from Eden?  If so, notice the differences from the story in Genesis.  In most versions, Adam possesses free will.  He has the power to decide his own destiny.  Consequently, Adam bears responsibility for his sin.  E's fate is clearly planned (predestined) before his inception.  He is significant only as a component in a larger creation story -- a story that explains why we human beings are the way we are.

We have three types of beings under consideration: gods, beasts, & humans.  Like Genesis, Gilgamesh suggests that human nature is characterized by love/sex/libido.  We are creatures suspended between the innocence of the beasts & the static composure & completeness of the gods.  Above all, we are creatures in need.  We want, we desire, we love & we hate.  The Fall from innocence into (moral) concern, from childhood into adulthood, is by way of pubescence.  We are "trapped" by our human biology to be concerned for another of our kind:
14     let her woman's power overpower this man.  When next he comes down to
         drink at the wells she will be there, stripped naked; & when he sees her
         beckoning he will embrace her, & then the wild beasts will reject him

This is certainly more graphic than Genesis, but the ideas are recognizably similar -- the ideas of love, concern, mutuality, a shared life of spouses; & these emotions foster family life, which in turn creates civic life.  The trade is: innocence for love or innocence for civic sophistication; from beast to citizen.   Our author suggests other equations:
15      his swiftness was gone  & now the wild creatures had all fled away.; E was
         grown weak, for wisdom was in him, & the thoughts of a man were in his heart.

What are the thoughts of a man?  Perhaps we should rephrase this to ask, what are the needs of a human?  The Eve character asks her Adam/Enkidu:
15    Why do you want to run wild with the beasts in the hills?

There is no (moral) answer for instinct & wilderness.  Unlike the city, they are without obvius purpose or goal.  & what is the purpose of the city?  It is a moral instrument dedicated to nurturing families; nurturing them not just in the sense of rearing a generation of young beasts, but of initiating them into a higher, more sophisticated form of life.  Instead of "running wild," the civilized person chooses to obey the law of reason.  He talks to his spouse & neighbors & comrades instead of commanding them.  Thus we read that E:
15     longed for a comrade, for one who would understand his heart.
         'Come, woman, & take me to that holy temple . . . & to the place
         where GIL lords it over the people'

So E enters the city & what does he find?  Splendor:
15     all the people are dressed in their gorgeous robes, every day is holiday,
         the young men & the girls are wonderful to see  How sweet they smell!

Why does GIL have to win the wrestling match between him & E?  Consider the opposite outcome.  If E had thrown GIL what would it suggest?  That the wild & primitive are more powerful than civilization; that civilization cannot tame & control the primal wildness of untrained humans.  GIL must win because GIL is the god/man who invites us to a higher form of life.  It is also necessary for the two to be friends.  A perfectly static city is lifeless.
17     So E & GIL embraced & their friendship was sealed

Homer's work poignantly  illustrates the fate of human beings.  The gods make mistakes & they are often frivolous, but they never die.  Conversely, no human being -- or almost none -- can evade death.  Homer explores the multiple effects of this inescapable human destiny.  The Gilgamesh text recognizes the human condition but has none of the Greek philosophic depth.  E simply explains that even for the semi-divine GIL,
17    everlasting life is not your destiny.

Our text offers literature rather than philosophy.  Consequently, GIL does not directly wrestle with the concept of death.  Instead, like the man who looks for his lost keys under the streetlamp, because the light is better there -- GIL announces to E:
18     we will go to the forest & destroy the evil; for in the forest lives Humbaba
         whose name is 'Hugeness,' a ferocious giant.

GIL sounds like Achilles when he acknowledges that:
18    as for us men, our days are numbered . . . .
        Then if I fall I leave behind me a name that endures

Like the Greeks, GIL counsels that the important accomplishment in life is to:
19     leave behind me an enduring name

The problem is that GIL simply states a fact or an idea.  He is not speaking from emotional experience  GIL does know what death is until he experiences the death of his "second self," E.  At this point, GIL's emotional education is incomplete.  He is still a boy having fun.  Thus:
20     he kills Humbaba & destroys the evil thing which you, Shamash
         [the sun = reason] abhor

The battle with death repeats the problem stated at the beginning.  Death may have a necessary function in the grand scheme of things.  It may be logically explained, but it is emotionally unacceptable.  Moreover, the Gilgamesh text finds no resolution.  There is nothing like a Christian resurrection, nor a Hindu reincarnation, nor even a Greek posture of courageous & tragic defiance.  At the end of ch. 2 there is more literary misdirection -- i.e, an indirect way of examining death.  The elements are: comradeship, death, innocence (wilderness) & the city (civilization).  Humbaba begs for his life:
24    I have never known a mother, no, nor a father who reared me
        I was born of the mountain . . . .
        Let me go free, GIL

GIL is compassionate:
24    the heart of GIL was moved with compassion.

GIL wants to preserve the wilderness:
24    should not the snared bird return to its nest?

Strangely, it is E who advocates destroying the wilderness:
24    Do not listen, GIL: this Humbaba must die.  Kill Humbaba first & his servants after.
        the guardian of the forest was killed.

Does E go too far with urban development?
25    Enlil raged at them.  "Why did you do this thing?

Enlil & Ishtar do not directly punish GIL for slaying Humbaba & for spurning love (Ishtar).   Instead the goddess attack the one that GIL loves, E.   Like Greek characters, GIL tragically discovers that there are limits to the city & to human life.  The city cannot entirely destroy the wilderness & prosper; human beings cannot entirely repress or spurn love & prosper.  Our author is deft is suggesting that these excesses or presumptions (the Greeks would have called them hubris), impair health.  E falls ill.  When GIL spurs Ishtar & human fate (that we creatures fated to love & to mourn the loss of those we love), the goddess reminds us of the cosmic function of love/death.  She promises that if she is not honored:
26    I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living; &
        the hosts of dead will outnumber the living

Once again, concepts are insufficient to explain life.  Life must be lived; it must be felt.  Because GIL loves E he has been trapped, just as E was by the temple prostitute.  This time it is not the beats that flee, but GIL's beloved "second self."  GIL not only mourns, but now emotionally understands death:
31    Despair is in my heart.
        What my brother is now, that shall I be when I am dead.
        Because I am afraid of death I will go as best I can to find Utnapishtim
        [to learn how to escape death].

Initially, GIL is told something that resembles the Greek outlook:
34    You will never find that [eternal] life for which you are looking.
        When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but
        [eternal] life they retained in their own keeping.

The best that we humans can do is to savor the time that we are allowed to live:
34     As for you, GIL, fill your belly with good things . . . dance & be merry,
        feast & rejoice.  Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish
        the little child that holds your hand, & make your wife happy in your embrace;
        for this too is the lot of man.

This counsel & Utnapishtim's Buddhist sounding insight -- "There is no permanence" (36) -- act as "temple guardians" against those who would casually enter the temple.  Those who cannot muster total dedication are unworthy to enter the temple or to learn its wisdom.  Again UT. seems to be like no one so much as a Zen Buddhist roshi (teacher) when he offers GIL a "test" to demonstrate how deeply he is committed to the project of gaining eternal life:
39     put it to the test: only prevail against sleep for 6 days & 7 nights.
        'Look at him now, the strong man who would have everlasting life,
        even now the mists of sleep [death] are drifting over him.'

The idea here & in Asia & even in Greece (with the example of Hercules who was apotheosized) is to require almost superhuman dedication, commitment, & discipline.  Doing so only gains the seeker entrance to a religious lifestyle.  It does not produce answers.  Perhaps because he has so long searched for profound values, GIL understands that human fate is inescapable.  Death is not an exterior threat, an enemy that might be overcome by athletic strength, military training, or philosophic insight; it is our human fate:
40    Already the thief in the night has hold of my limbs, death inhabits my room;
        wherever my foot rests, there I find death.

 * * *

If you found the topic (death) of Gilgamesh lugubrious, I hope the Egyptian poetry will cheer you up.  Some of these poems are lyrical (meaning that they voice the emotions of the writer); others are descriptive; & others are didactic or celebrative.  This first poem, "How splendid you  ferry the skyways" is celebrative & didactically religious.  The blue sky is metaphorically rendered as the Nile or Mediterranean -- blue water.  What is ferried over the water/sky?  Maybe clouds, but always the sun & the sun measures time & gives life.  Our life is temporal.  We are time.  God gives us time as broad & clear as the blue sky:
3    the needs of each new day firm in your timeless pattern,
      Who fashion the years, weave months into order --
      Days, nights, & the very hours move to the gait of your striding.

God orders time into a timeless pattern.  We can sleep because God is watching:
13    Sole one awake there -- sleep is for mortals
        Who go to rest grateful: your eyes oversee

We rise from sleep/death in the morning, awakened by the power of life/the sun/God; called to find beauty:
17    And theirs [eyes] by the millions you open when your face new-rises,
        [in the dawn] beautiful.

Finally the poem expresses gratitude for God's graciousness.  The sustained metaphor in the poem is that the divine is discernable as the life-giving sunshine.  Our days are bright & we can trust that we can walk through life because:
27    You deign to walk daily with men
31    'Lord of the daybreak,
        Welcome!"

A good deal of the charm in these poems comes from being surprised at how contemporary & emotionally direct they are, spanning 3,500 years to so eloquently speak about the same common experiences in life that we know.  "God is a master craftsman."  Yes we are familiar with this teleological argument.  The poem also offers other familiar theological thinking, e.g., that even though we minutely & scientifically study God's creation:
2    none can draw the lines of his Person.

God is greater than our ability to know.  This is a familiar Judeo/Christian/Islamic point.  Aren't you surprised to find it voiced 3,500 years ago by a polytheistic Egyptian?  You have undoubtedly heard  the cliché point about how  monotheism somehow attains a more sophisticated level of insight than polytheism.  This poem illustrates that this judgment is wrong.  Let me make a more general point, which is that our familiar Christian/Greek/Western judgments generally have the effect of making us comfortable rather than explaining the unfamiliar: Hindu thinking, Confucian thinking, or in this case, Egyptian thinking.  Clearly this poem conceives of the divine in a monistic or unitive way.  It also expresses theological thinking that we are familiar with:

The next poem "When Being began" makes it sound like Moses learned the nature of Yahweh from the Egyptians.  Sigmund Freud wrote a book seriously arguing this notion, that the Hebrew idea of monotheism derived from Egyptian thought.  In any case our poem again speaks of the divine as unitive: "I am who am":
13    the Creator, self-created, the Holy

Perhaps my favorite of these poems is the lyrical expression of an adolescent girl who is embarrassed to be caught expressing a romantic interest in a boy, Mehy:
20    If he sees that I see him, I know
        he will know how my heart flutters (Oh, Mehy!)

Why is the girl reluctant to express her interest in Mehy?  How contemporary.  She is afraid that he will sleep with her & discard her as simply another conquest:
25    No, all he would do is brag out my name,
        just one of the many . . . (I know) . . .
        Mehy would make me just one of the girls
        for all of the boys in the palace
                                        (Oh Mehy)

Perhaps you were surprised to find how overt & contemporary & charming the treatment of  sex is in "Love, how I'd love to slip down to the pond."  I think the translator must have been pretty free when he has the young woman say:
3      Just for you I'd wear my new Memphis swimsuit
        made of sheer linen

She says that she would catch little red fish, but it is seductive ploy:
12    And I'd say, standing there tall in the shallows:
        Look at my fish . . . .
        But then I'd say softer,
            eyes bright with your seeing:
                    A gift, love  No words.
            Come closer &
                    look, it's all me.

She starts out "fishing" for a boyfriend, then she deftly reverses the situation, saying that he has caught her!  Some of my colleagues think the narrative voice here is male!  I think they misread the fish business, considering it too literally.

This is the end of the explication of the text for unit 01.  Go to the top & click on the next section: Questions.