Gilgamesh:
Bruises and Blessings
Feraco
SDAIE
11 September 2013
It’s interesting that The Epic of
Gilgamesh grows so fixated with death –
with its defeat, more specifically, and
with the perpetuation of life.
Before he goes on the journey to the
Cedar Forest, Gilgamesh doesn’t seem to
value the life he eventually becomes
terrified of losing.
Think about how he spends his time!
He’s overwhelmed by the shallowness
of his existence, acts on base desires
without heed for their impact on others,
and does nothing to change his ways
even though they’re contributing to his
misery.
He’s selfish, inconsistent, and crude;
his mother, Ninsun, believes Shamash
cursed her son with a “restless heart.”
What Gilgamesh needs is a
counterpart, an equal, someone to serve
as an outlet for whatever uncontrollable
urges seize him at any given moment.
He has none.
Gilgamesh is isolated – from his
people, from his gods, from himself.
The only companion he has (save the
women he takes advantage of) is
Ninsun; he doesn’t naturally reach out
to others.
We see this more strongly reflected in
his behavior towards the individuals he
encounters during his search for
Utnapishtim in the epic’s second half,
but that element of his personality is
there from the beginning.
This isn’t a mere character
observation: once one notices this part
of Gilgamesh, one also notices that the
story equates loneliness with weakness,
isolation with instability – and
togetherness with peace.
The lonely king essentially tears at,
and tears down, his world, when he
should be doing what all kings should
do: tending to the foundations of the
worlds they’re meant to hold aloft.
Gilgamesh repeats the binge-purgesuffer cycle, never demonstrating any
sort of growth nor knowing any peace.
And while hungers for more, a desire
that manifests itself violently in his
actions, he doesn’t seem to know how to
break free of the cycle or to reach out to
others.
There’s a concept in Buddhism
called samsara, which in turn is
tied to the concept of rebirth and
reincarnation.
Basically, you enter, leave, and
re-enter the material world, a
reality defined by our desires and
subsequent suffering when those
desires are not fulfilled.
If you die without learning how
to overcome desire, you are reborn,
live again, and die; if you still
haven’t learned, the cycle repeats.
By overcoming desire, the thinking
goes, you can eliminate suffering – and
since suffering and desire are all that
separate us from truth and
understanding, from recognizing the
ways in which everything connects and
unifies with everything else, you will
reach enlightenment once they’re
eliminated.
Once you reach that enlightened
state – nirvana – your cycle of suffering
ends, and you can pass on after death.
It’s interesting to juxtapose the
infinite cycles of suffering with the
Akkadians’ anger towards the very
concept of a single mortal existence –
and to take this Buddhist concept and
apply it to Gilgamesh’s very specific,
ancient tale.
Meanwhile, it’s easy to miss, but the
beginning of the story features a loss for
Enkidu – and while it’s different from
the one Gilgamesh eventually suffers,
it’s just as profound.
After the wild man’s encounter with
Shamhat – whose surprisingly
complicated role in the epic will be
explored later – the animals shun him,
and he loses his ability to communicate
with the only beings he’s ever known.
Thus Enkidu is essentially cast out of
Eden, provided the Steppe counts as
Paradise: his new knowledge of Man
(specifically, Man from the Walled City)
pollutes him in the eyes of his former
friends.
Resigning himself to his new life,
Enkidu then sides with the humans
against the animals, helping the
shepherds by driving the lions away and
capturing the wolves.
This betrayal forever isolates him
from them; there is no going back.
While this transformation reflects
ancient attitudes regarding man’s
relationship with the natural world –
Enkidu was seen as automatically better
off now that he’s encountered civilizing
influences – it’s worth noting that he’s
now suddenly and fundamentally alone.
The gift Gilgamesh and Enkidu give
each other, then, is one of connection – the
thing that breaks the former’s cycle of
suffering while relieving the latter’s
newfound pain.
When they first meet, both men are a bit
unbalanced, needing to reconcile their
wildness with their humanity.
Enkidu becomes the archetypal Young
Man from the Provinces, coming in from
the outside to revitalize Uruk by “curing”
the king of his melancholy.
He removes the king’s isolation and
stands steadfastly by his side – a marked
contrast from the citizens of Uruk, who only
defend Gilgamesh because they must.
And just as Enkidu relieves Gilgamesh of
his loneliness, the king confers a new
purpose upon his friend: Each gives the
other his missing piece of humanity.
One could argue that each brings out the
best in his counterpart, for they aren’t wild in
the same way.
In some ways, Gilgamesh proves more
“savage” than his new friend; while the king
seemingly lives to ravage and consume,
Enkidu lives to preserve and support.
Everything we know about him, save his
wildness, reflects a quality we wish we could
see in ourselves – whereas very little of what
Gilgamesh does seems worth doing.
Enkidu understands compassion and
brotherhood, shows both courage and
caution, and ultimately pays the price –
unwillingly, but still – that spares his friend’s
life.
Gilgamesh only rediscovers his human
values through Enkidu, and the story lionizes
him in turn.
When we first meet him,
Gilgamesh won’t engage with the
world, refusing to acknowledge the
unity of things and living out a pale
shadow of life behind his towering
walls.
So the world goes to him in the
form of Enkidu, breaching the old
defenses, leaving Gilgamesh both
more alive and more vulnerable
than ever before.
With his new friend, the king
comes to know triumph, but also
learns of despair.
If Gilgamesh never meets
Enkidu, never makes a friend, he’ll
never feel the pain of loss…but he’ll
never know the happiness he finds
once his loneliness shatters.
So we come back to our big
questions from earlier Is it a
worthwhile trade? Is it really better
to have loved and lost than to never
have loved at all…in Gilgamesh’s
case?
Moreover, is Gilgamesh’s grief
selfish – does he mourn Enkidu’s
loss simply because he feels
reduced without him?
At first blush, it seems odd that a man
who lived as brutally as Gilgamesh did
would grieve a lost life so heavily.
Perhaps it’s a matter of meaning; his
life was meaningless before Enkidu
arrived, and Gilgamesh has no desire to
return to the way things were.
Or perhaps it’s a larger metaphysical
/ thematic concern: Thorkild Jacobsen
says that Gilgamesh is a “revolt against
death,” that the story essentially posits
that a just and good universe would
allow man’s glories to continue
uninterrupted (whereas death merely
prevents us from reaching our potential
and discovering our true meaning).
Thus we ask ourselves questions about the
nature of death.
Is it simply a ending?
An erasure of possibility and potential?
A gateway to something greater?
Is there meaning in death, or is death
meaningless?
Does some of life’s urgency come from that
final consequence – the knowledge, however
acknowledged, that life ends no matter what
we do?
And can one find meaning in life without
enduring terrible pain? Can one find meaning
without risk?
You need bruises to know blessings, and I have
known both.
Frances Shand Kydd