What a fantastic book this is, the perfect introduction to that strange, one of the oldest narrative texts we know (the oldest fragments date from the end of the 3rd millennium BCE). I read the Gilgamesh story for the first time 25 years ago in a heavily edited version and then it didn't mean much to me, it seemed like a hero story like there are dime a dozen. But the past five months I read a great amount of studies on ancient Mesopotamian history, and a few of the ancient stories of that time, and that made me reconsider.
Schmidt convinced me of the enormous value and the unique quality of the Gilgamesh story., especially in its more coherent ‘Standard Babylonian’ version, composed at the end of the 2nd millennium. Another strong point of this book is that Schmidt zooms in on the different and often very diverging translations (in English). Quite a few of them take great liberty with the historical and textual reality of the story. Especially the translation of N.K. Sandars, dating from 1960 but still popular, is the culprit: she deliberately distorted the story to give it more dramatic power. His preference is clearly for the rather extensive, very academic translation by Andrew George (versions in 1999, 2003 and 2016), although I suspect that it will be too detailed for the average reader. In any case: this is a gem of a book, about a gem of a story! More extensive review in my History account on Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4918492711 ( )

I read this book before reading each part of Chapter 1 of the Andrew George translation. It would be better to read this after reading the whole, excellent, Andrew George book. And then read Damrosch on the Buried Book. All three books add to the appreciation of this amazing literature. ( )

Gilgamesh is the first literary classic we possess, reaching back at least into the third millennium BC. First revealed by the decipherment of clay tablets in the 1870s, it is a classic with none of the cultural pedigree of Virgil or Homer. Schmidt is no expert in the language or culture of the Mesopotamian cultures which produced Gilgamesh (although he is not ignorant of these) and leaves such matters to the experts of Assyriology. Schmidt is, however, a novelist, poet, historian and translator who is alive to how we receive and interpret works of literature, and this is the focus of his discussion of Gilgamesh: how we moderns have translated, represented and received Gilgamesh.

Schmidt holds Andrew George, the preeminent British Assyriologist and Gilgamesh translator, in high regard and it was my pleasure to read my 1999 Penguin Classics edition and translation of Gilgamesh by George as I read Schmidt. This helped me appreciate the discussion by Schmidt which returns constantly to issues of how we can appreciate a work so removed in time and culture from us, with no history of reception (unlike the Greek and Roman classics). We want to call it an “epic”, but this reads back into second millennium BC Mesopotamia a literary genre that would not emerge for another 1000 years. Gilgamesh is rather, for him, sui generis.

The book is also alive to issues of poetry and translation. Specifically, Schmidt is concerned with how we do or do not iron out the literary peculiarities of such ancient poetry, for poetry is a matter of words on the line. He compares how translators and re-tellers chose some words or phrases over another, and how they expand or contract expressions. And what of repetition, which makes Gilgamesh more akin to the Old Testament than anything with which we are more comfortable? What role did this play? Not, suggests Schmidt, as a feature of oral poetry. For him, Gilgamesh is pre-eminently a written artefact. His appreciation of Philip Terry’s 2018 idiosyncratic retelling of Gilgamesh, Dictator, is especially provocative but fruitful in noting how Terry chooses words and uses language.

Schmidt also makes us alive to the fragmentary and provisional nature of the text. The text of Gilgamesh is drawn from clay tablets found around Mesopotamia and even as far afield as Anatolia and the Levant. He notes how translators such as George must piece together such a disparate jigsaw, filling in blanks in one text with lines from another. Can we use texts from 2000 BC to fill gaps in texts from 640 BC? Nevertheless, unlike the Greco-Roman classics, Gilgamesh, although incomplete, is constantly being recovered in archaeological digs, in plunder and despoiling, and on the shelves of museums as they are finally translated.

At 165 pages, Gilgamesh: the Life of a Poem is a short book and accessible for anyone with an interest in the ancient Middle East. Schmidt is an engaging writer and invites the reader to contemplate how we relate to the foreignness of the past.

Terrific Overview of Many Translations/Versions
Review of the Princeton University Press hardcover (Sept. 2019) ( )