the varieties of Gilgamesh

Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Gilgamesh is mesmerizing and moving. As far as I can determine by looking at other translations, it is true to the tablets. But somehow it manages to be hypnotic and beautiful, while the other translations read like homework assignments.

There is a really great audio version of Mitchell’s translation, also.

The Gilgamesh Trilogy by Ludmila Zeman, which I’ve blogged about, is a stunningly illustrated children’s version, but it takes huge liberties with the text. It doesn’t just obscure the naughty bits or soften the violence; it changes the story — changes the point of the story.

Gilgamesh the King by Geraldine McCaughrean is a beautifully written version that will appeal to children and adults, but its illustrations are few and, with a couple of significant exceptions, pretty boring.

I’d love to have McCaughrean’s book illustrated by Zeman.

Finally, there’s The Buried Book by David Damrosch, which is not so much about Gilgamesh or Enkidu, but rather about (as the subtitle puts it) “The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh.”

The Buried Book ranges from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to 19th-century archeology (which is a whole lot more exciting than it might sound) to the 7th-century BC Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (who might have been the first literate king in history) and on back to 4,000 years ago, back to the “original” poem.

The Audible version is also excellent.

triple Hecate

From Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, p. 50–51:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

… the triple Hecate’s team

The play within a play ends with a dance and with its audience amused and ready for bed.

Nothing remains but the final bit of entertainment, supplied by the fairy band. Puck comes on the stage alone to say that with the coming of night once more the fairies are back:

… we fairies, that do run
By the triple Hecate’s team,
From the presence of the sun
Following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic.

– Act V, scene i, lines 385–89

Hecate was supposed to be one of the Titanesses in Greek mythology, but in the struggle that resulted in their supplanting by Jupiter (Zeus) and the other later gods, Hecate sided with Jupiter and remained in power. She was probably another personification of the moon.

There were three common goddesses of the moon in the later myths: Phoebe, Diana (Artemis), and Hecate. All three might be combined as a "triple Hecate" and Hecate was therefore frequently portrayed with three faces and six arms.

Later mythologists also tried to rationalize the difference in names by saying that Phoebe was the moon goddess in the heavens, Diana on earth, and Hecate in the underworld.

This connection with the underworld tended to debase her and make her a goddess of enchantments and magic spells, so that the fairies in following "triple Hecate’s team" were following not only the pale team of horses that guided the moon’s chariot (hence were active at night rather than by day) but also shared her power of enchantment and magic.

Her enchantments and magic made her sink further in Christian times until Hecate finally became a kind of queen of witches, and she appears in this guise in Macbeth…