The Epic of Gilgamesh - Prepared Three Ways

[voidampersand]

Gilgamesh / a new English version by Stephen Mitchell, 2004
Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg, 1984
The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs, 1985

My favorite winery has copies of Gilgamesh for sale, because that's how they roll. It's the Mitchell version, which I hadn't read, so I got it. This led to me also reading

Comments

[kalimac]

Fascinating. I've had similar experiences reading translations of Beowulf.

How dos the repetition in the Kovacs line you quote match up with the original, do you know?

[voidampersand]

There are a lot of gaps, and the consensus text is pieced together from many copies (about 35 at the time of the Kovacs translation, I think). In some cases gaps in the Standard Version are filled in from the Old Babylonian Version which is 500 years older and has greater differences. But the Mesopotamian poetic style is very heavy on repetition. Not only within a line, but passages are repeated within the same copy. That's what makes it possible to put the pieces together. When reading a line, there may be different interpretations of the meaning of a word or a name, but there is no doubt about the rhythm.

[randy_byers]

I read two or three translations of Gilgamesh some time back, but I no longer remember which ones. I've never read the Silverberg, however.