Gilgamesh : A new English Version by Stephen Mitchell, Profile Books,First South Asian Edition Distributed by Viva Books 2006, Rs 325/-

“Who is like Gilgamesh? What other king
Has inspired such awe? Who else can say,
I alone rule, supreme among mankind?
The goddess Aruru, mother of creation
Had designed his body, had made him the strongest
Of men – huge, handsome, radiant, perfect.”


Gilgamesh , the oldest story on earth was written ,in ancient Mesopotamia in second millennium BC and predates the Iliad by at least thousand years. Its hero Gilgamesh was a historical king of the city Uruk (modern Iraq) and had an intimate friend Enkidu.Enkidu was a naked, wild man who was civilized through the erotic arts of the temple priestess Shamhat .With Enkidu Gilgamesh battles many monsters and when he dies he is inconsolable and sets out in search of someone who can tell him how to escape death. A brilliant tale of self-discovery Gilgamesh has been compared to the great epics but was lost to civilization for over two thousand years. The eleven clay tablets in which the story was inscribed in cuneiform was discovered in 1850 in the ruins of Nineveh. The great poet Rilke wrote in 1916 “Gilgamesh is stupendous” .He considered it to be a masterpiece in world literature.


Mitchell’s translation is superb and easy to read

“Humans are born, they live .then they die
------------------------
But until the end comes enjoy your life,
Spend it in happiness, not despair'"


“…….Suddenly ,savagely death
Destroys us, all of us, old or young
And yet we build house, make contacts, brothers
Divide their inheritance, conflicts occur
As though this human life lasted forever”


Gilgamesh’s despair after the death of Enkidu and his travails have been likened to Buddha’s renunciation and search for truth. The poetry is haunting and the feelings expressed by the poet are eternal.

"I cannot bear what happened to my friend.......
My beloved friend has turned into clay----
And won't I too lie down in the dirt
like him and never rise again"

 Mitchell writes a detailed and fascinating introduction to this composition where he describes the historical and cultural context of this epic. The story of the discovery and decipherment of the clay tablets is itself a great tale. A young English traveller Austen Henry Layard found tens of thousands of clay tablets buried in what was left of the library of the last great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. Twenty five thousand of these treasures were taken away to England .In 1872 George Smith a curator in the British Museum first realized that a great story was written on the tablets. Probably such discoveries reflected the brighter side of imperialism and redeemed to an extent the various looting expeditions of the imperialists.

The Unbearable lightness of being/Milan Kundera, Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim ,Faber and Faber,2004

The cover description says it is a story of irreconcilable love and infidelities. I picked up this book because I wanted to read Kundera. I wanted to read Kundera for a while but kept on delaying because I have heard all along that he was a cerebral writer and was not easy to read. The final push came from my friend who described him as a simple yet complex writer. According to my friend you can dwell on a sentence or a phrase from Kundera’s works for hours just to get a sense of what the author was trying to say. I was interested. Kundera did not disappoint me. He was not too intimidating either. The book is about relationships and the essential polygamous nature of man-woman relationships. While reading the book one wonders whether monogamy is a myth that society carefully nurtures. The story revolves around Tomas, Tereza, Sabina, Franz and others. The book begins by challenging the “mad myth of eternal return” which Nietzsche called the heaviest of burdens. “What then shall we choose weight or lightness?” Questions are raised on love, betrayal, sexuality, repression, freedom of speech etc.


Tomas a surgeon who has had over 200 women (erotic friendships) in a span of twenty five years is forced to leave his profession on account of writing a critical letter to the editor of a newspaper condemning the communists. Sabina is a woman who thrives on the concept of betrayal .She abandons Franz who leaves his wife of twenty years to be with her. Franz dies while travelling abroad with his mistress and in his death his wife finally claims him as her own. Tereza is torn between her love for Tomas and the anxiety over his constant infidelities which tear her apart. Tomas realises he loves Tereza but thinks love and sexuality cannot be equated. Tereza’s dog Karenin plays a key role in the novel and is instrumental in bringing Tereza and Tomas together in the end.



The book is strewn with sentences like these

“We can never know what to want because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come”..

” And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?”

“In a society run by terror, no statements whatsoever can be taken seriously. They are all forced ..”


I wonder if the translation has been able to capture the spirit of the original of such a philosophical novel. The 300 page book should be read slowly and in leisure.

Follow the link below to read more about the story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being