Book : Gilgamesh A New English Version - Stephen Mitchell

-Titulo Original : Gilgamesh A New English Version

-Fabricante :

Atria Books

-Descripcion Original:

Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, but until now there has not been a version that is a superlative literary text in its own right. Acclaimed by critics and scholars, Stephen Mitchells version allows us to enter an ancient masterpiece as if for the first time, to see how startlingly beautiful, intelligent, and alive it is. Review Beautifully retold and a page-turner in the bargain. Like Seamus Heaneys recent retelling of Beowulf, this book proves that in the right hands, no great story ever grows stale. -- Newsweek A flowing, unbroken version that reads as effortlessly as a novel...with startlingly familiar hopes, fears, and lusts. Mitchell...cracks open the lessons in Gilgamesh by rebuilding its clay fragments into a poem easy on the eyes and the transcultural imagination....Vibrant, earnest, unfussily accessible.... The muscular eloquence and rousing simplicity of Mitchells four-beat line effectively unleash the grand vehemence of the epics battle scenes, and the characters ominous visions emerge with uncanny clarity. -- The New York Times Book Review Utterly enthralling reading, thanks to Mr. Mitchells skill and flair in recasting the ancient text. -- The New York Sun Seamus Heaney isnt the only one intent on making the classics relevant to our times. Mitchell...offers a limpid retelling of this story about absolute power.... Its message of love, loss, and endurance [is] rendered in fresh, forceful language. -- Los Angeles Times The mysterious, sinewy surge of his verse [is] thoroughly modern, yet an uncanny evocation of the primeval. -- The Boston Globe About the Author Stephen Mitchell is widely known for his ability to make old classics thrillingly new. His many books include the bestselling Tao Te Ching, the Iliad, Gilgamesh, The Gospel According to Jesus, The Book of Job, Bhagavad Gita, and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. His website is StephenMitchellBooks . Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Gilgamesh A New English VersionBy Stephen Mitchell Free PressCopyright ©2006 Stephen Mitchell All right reserved. ISBN: 0743261690 INTRODUCTION THE OLDEST STORY IN THE WORLD In Iraq, when the dust blows, stopping men and tanks, it brings with it memories of an ancient world, much older than Islam or Christianity. Western civilization originated from that place between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where Hammurabi created his legal code and where Gilgamesh was written -- the oldest story in the world, a thousand years older than the Iliad or the Bible. Its hero was a historical king who reigned in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk in about 2750 BCE. In the epic, he has an intimate friend, Enkidu, a naked wild man who has been civilized through the erotic arts of a temple priestess. With him Gilgamesh battles monsters, and when Enkidu dies, he is inconsolable. He sets out on a desperate journey to find the one man who can tell him how to escape death. Part of the fascination of Gilgamesh is that, like any great work of literature, it has much to tell us about ourselves. In giving voice to grief and the fear of death, perhaps more powerfully than any book written after it, in portraying love and vulnerability and the quest for wisdom, it has become a personal testimony for millions of readers in dozens of languages. But it also has a particular relevance in todays world, with its polarized fundamentalisms, each side fervently believing in its own righteousness, each on a crusade, or jihad, against what it perceives as an evil enemy. The hero of this epic is an antihero, a superman (a superpower, one might say) who doesnt know the difference between strength and arrogance. By preemptively attacking a monster, he brings on himself a disaster that can only be overcome by an agonizing journey, a quest that results in wisdom by proving its own futility. The epic has an extraordinarily sophisticated moral intellige