If you read this book all literature will be rendered useless in comparison. I wish I listened to anons who said to skip this. They were trying to save me. Skip this book. Not because it isn't as important as the classic homeric texts but because Homer, Dante, Goethe, Zoroasther, Shakespeare, and Jesus Christ wouldn't exist if this book wasn't written. The Iliad, The Odyssey (and everything that claimed to be influenced by these texts) actually stole everything from Gilgamesh. Literally every cliche in every art medium exists because of Gilgamesh. Everyone from Debord, Vaneigem, and Novalis to Evola, Godard, and Dostoevsky owes their entire careers to this epic. Unless you want everything to seem like a copy of a copy of a copy of the original then skip this book. Every book I pick up that isn't Gilgamesh I throw away within the first two lines because I immediately recognize Gilgamesh's influence. Save yourself your innocence. Don't read this book if you wan't to continue reading books.
Holy shit. DONT READ THIS BOOK
All Philosophy is footnotes to Socrates and Plato skip them too.
actually gilgamesh is awful
wht does the prostitute that lures enkidu look like?
wtf is that feeldude
>it is the oldest therefore it is the goodest
stop this meme
Shut the fuck up retard I'm not gonna read it le epic start with sumerians shit
>Debord, Vaneigem, and Novalis to Evola, Godard, and Dostoevsky
This is possibly the weirdest namedropping list I've ever seen
start with the bronze age
>it is the oldest therefore it is the most important
fix'd and legit'd.
You should stop reading one of the dullest legendary cycles in history. Seriously each chapter following the hero, king and their pals from Greece as they fight assorted battles has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the brash language, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of divine intervention, all to make gods ungodlike, to make action seem inert.
Perhaps the die was cast when Homer wrote down what was meant to be an oral tradition; he made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody, just ridiculously profitable promotion for his writing. The Homeric series might be anti-Trojan (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-Epic Of Gilgamesh in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.
>a-at least the Greek is good though
"No!"
The writing is dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time the sun came up, the author wrote instead that "young dawn shone with her rose-red fingers."
I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Homer's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that he has no other style of writing. Later I read a lavish, loving review of the Iliad by the same Aristophanes. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading the Iliad at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to see the plays of Aristophanes." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Iliad" you are, in fact, trained to watch Aristophanes.
It's "Start with the greeks" OP, not "start with the sandniggers"
ahem
what translation did you read?
Sumerian/Babylonian/Archaic near-eastern culture and mythology is a total jigsaw puzzle that autistic archeologists piece together at will.
kek, I wonder if anyone has ever actually thoroughly read literature/philosophy from the bronze age through to contemporary. I'm pretty sure it's happened but It'd have to be by some autist who didn't think deeply about the subject matter, and hence was probably pretty useless.
Dont you recognise this meme?
brava
Homeros was not a person.
Thoughts on the Hittite Song of Emergence/Kingship of Heaven? I'm reading something on the nature of the connection of this broken tablet to Hesiod's Theogony. We're supposed to compare Greek myth to a near Eastern one, is Gilgamesh a better way to go?
My sides, user
Unironically this.
Gilgamesh is interesting and important because it crudely maps out the form that would subsequently be mastered by Homer. But Gilgamesh is not really good on its own.
Lmao well done. Didn't realize what was going on until "marked the envelope several dozen times" and wasn't positive about it until the Aristophanes comment.
Wrong. Gilgamesh is strongly phenomenological whereas Homer is just posturing. It has endless depth whereas Homer is just 'lol this is what its like 2 b REEL man u car 4 kidz n wief n brudders n ansisters n cuntry STRALIA CUNT!'
literally kill yourself
t. australian
>tfw I recognized it immediately by the second sentence
I spend too much time on Veeky Forums
They derived everything from the presocratics
Whats the best translation out there?
Who first put the poetry to paper
guy who wrote gilgamesh
>paper
>debord to evola
ok i'll admit you've piqued my interest
10
One thing I can definitely tell about her is she had hairy armpits.
>tfw incomplete
>tfw conflicting sources
>tfw incomplete translations
>tfw there's several accepted narratives
>tfw we are reading something that is nothing like the original except only the most broad story strokes
>tfw OP is a pseud jerking off over the prose of a translator
>plebgamesh
no
I've read three. One was a very shitty prose "retelling" whose author I forget. The other two were verse, they both sounded good to me, they seemed thoroughly researched, their authors are leading academics in their field (if you don't fancy academia that much, tell me what we have that's better), yet the translations were quite different--not fundamently so and not in what concerns the main details of the narrative, but definitely in style and tone. The two translations are by Stephanie Dalley and Andrew George, respectively. If I were to pick a favourite it would be the George, but that's just my preference based on how I liked his poetical rendering. Obviously, I cannot comment on its accuracy.
>tfw we are reading something that is nothing like the original except only the most broad story strokes>
How do you know that, if we don't have the original?
...
Because at the very least you need to pick which of the translations is correct. There isn't one book, there's several, and those are comprised from fragments of tablets. There was no complete tablet, so they piece it together as they can and fill in the gaps where they can't. The translations don't even use the same fragments. Unless this is some thousand monkeys bullshit, no, it's not the same.
>Stephanie Dalley
>Stephanie
Yeah. I'd go with Andrew George.
There's no such thing as an original anyway when you're talking about such ancient texts. It's not like a modern novel where you can find a printer's manuscript, there were always multiple versions, always different inscriptions, and before that there were likely multiple oral versions. It's like saying "hurr we don't have the original greek myths we only have homer and hesiod" yeah no shit, we have a few of the many versions and retellings, there is no original.
Literally everything ever produced is a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, skip everything after reading it.
>the Mahabharata is a copy of a part of the Mahabharata
B O R G E S I A N
Great work indeed.
derivative meme only make the memewatchers angry
I wasn't aware that Sumerian texts were actually influential in shaping Greco-Roman literature, just that they preceded them chronologically, do you have any proof of this?
They aren't cliches if they're good.
Why even bother with any book that isn't descended from hundreds of years of oral tradition. How could just one dope compete with that. The modern novel is just ridiculous vanity.
read it
How do you get those Ancient Near East books? No way I'm paying £30~ for them, are there any pdf's or such?
Same with the Greeks, innit? Is thorough study of literature from ancient to contemporary even possible unless you don't want to do anything else in life? I mean, how many years would be spent reading, and how many more actually understanding?
>tfw recognized it unmistakeably halfway through the first sentence
i started reading it and it was like a stupid fantasy anime
>tfw I realize where does this come from
People do this with Homer and Virgil. The Aeneid is way better than The Odyssey. Maaaybe better than the Illiad too.
>Be Socrates
>Don't write anything because you believe philosophy is done in dialogue
>Have footnotes nonetheless
He drew in the sand with his toes as he spoke. Hence the term 'footnotes'.
t. underage pseud
>read irish epic
>cuchulain is a DBZ character