Gilgamesh (6 page)
After twelve days of agony, Enkidu dies and leaves Gilgamesh alone with his grief. It is a tragic moment in the epic, though epics are not necessarily tragic; the Homeric poems contain both the tragedy of Achilles and the romance of Odysseus, with its happy ending (for him, if not for the suitors and the little dangling maids). Enkidu could easily be seen as a tragic hero, pulled out of his Eden into the corrupt world of humans to suffer an arbitrary death sentence from the gods. And, as reconciled as he seems, there is a certain lingering bitterness about his death. One might say that his death was caused by Gil-gamesh's monster-hunting, just as his birth was caused by Gil-gamesh's tyranny. But more accurately, Enkidu caused his own death by insisting that Gilgamesh kill Humbaba; if they had let the monster live, all would have been well. The fact that neither Enkidu nor Gil-gamesh ever realizes this is part of the pathos of the situation.
Gilgamesh's lament at the beginning of Book VIII is one of the most beautiful elegies in literature. In it he asks both the natural world and the world of the city to join him as he mourns his friend. The simple, repeated phrases of his lament are exquisitely sorrowful.
“My beloved friend is dead, he is dead, my beloved brother is dead, I will mourn
as long as I breathe, I will sob for him like a woman who has lost her only child.”
Gilgamesh's grief is too intense for any understanding to penetrate. There is no way, in spite of Enkidu's first dream, that he can make a causal connection between the killing of Humbaba and Enkidu's death. For him, the events just occurred, one after the other, and he can still boast of the killings, unconscious that they have cost him his beloved friend. Indeed, the music of his grief is so enchanting that, for the time being, we don't even want him to understand.
“Beloved friend, swift stallion, wild deer, leopard ranging in the wildernessâEnkidu, my friend, swift stallion, wild deer, leopard ranging in the wildernessâtogether we crossed the mountains, together we slaughtered the Bull of Heaven, we killed Humbaba, who guarded the Cedar Forest.”
Actually, he is in a trance of pain: even if he could understand why Enkidu died, it wouldn't matter; the brute fact of the event would blot out any other consideration. He is so overwhelmed by the sight of Enkidu's lifeless body that, a dozen lines after lamenting that his friend is dead, he can no longer even find a name for death. As a great warrior, he has seen and caused many deaths. But now, for the first time, death is an intimate reality, and he can barely recognize it.
“O Enkidu, what is this sleep that has seized you, that has darkened your face and stopped your breath?”
Even though he has been up all night, sobbing for Enkidu, he can't let himself know what has happened. It's as if he has never seen a corpse before. He reacts like a young child, or like an animal sniffing at the dead body of its mate, bewildered. He half-expects Enkidu to answer. When he touches Enkidu's heart, he seems surprised that it isn't beating.
It takes a while longer for Gilgamesh to finally acknowledge that his friend is dead. But even then, his first gesture is to make death into a kind of marriage. He can't help treating Enkidu as if he were still alive and in mortal danger; after being the desolate bridegroom, he becomes the anxious mother.
Then he veiled Enkidu's face like a bride's. Like an eagle Gilgamesh circled around him, he paced in front of him, back and forth, like a lioness whose cubs are trapped in a pit, he tore out clumps of his hair, tore off his magnificent robes as though they were cursed.
Finally, it's over. Gilgamesh orders a magnificent votive statue of Enkidu; he goes through all the necessary rituals to ensure that the gods of the underworld will welcome him and help him to “be peaceful and not sick at heart.” But the ritual gestures, though meticulous, seem desperate. At best, Enkidu will be one of those miserable dirt
eating human birds who squat or shuffle in utter darkness, forever. This is poor comfort. So, abandoning all his privileges and responsibilities, giving up his roles as warrior and king, reversing Enkidu's journey from wilderness to civilization, Gilgamesh puts on an animal skin and leaves Uruk.
His departure is reminiscent of another royal departure a thousand years later, in the legend of the Buddha. Like Gilgamesh, Gotama, the future Awakened One, is transfixed by a vision of human vulnerability and feels compelled to leave his palace and all his possessions behind, so that he can search for the secret of life and death. Gotama's grief is not personal, though; he hasn't lost a beloved friend; he hasn't lost anyone except himself, his own identity. When, for the first time in his sheltered life, he sees sickness, old age, and death, his whole idea of what it is to be human, what it is that someday awaits him, collapses, and he is plunged into a desperate questioning. His story has a happier ending than Gilgamesh's: after six years of futile austerities, he sits down under the Bodhi tree, determined not to move until either death or understanding comes, and at dawn, when the morning star appears, suddenly he wakes up from the dream of suffering. “When you see the unborn, uncreated, unconditioned,” he later said, “you are liberated from everything born, created, and conditioned.”
Gilgamesh too asks an all-consuming question about life and death. But his question is not driven by a deep need for understand-ing; it is driven by fear. (Rilke called
Gilgamesh
“the epic of the fear of death.”) Fear is the reverse side of the cool warrior ethos, in which
the consciousness of mortality motivates the hero to establish his fame.
“Our
days are few in number,” Gilgamesh had said, imperturbably. “Why be afraid then, / since sooner or later death must come?” Why indeed? Except that terror comes unbidden, on the way to monsters or in the presence of overwhelming loss. Love has changed everything; it has made Gilgamesh absolutely vulnerable. His earlier consciousness of mortality turns out to be a pale, abstract thing in comparison with the anguish he feels as he roams though the wilderness.
“Must I die too? Must I be as lifeless as Enkidu? How can I bear this sorrow that gnaws at my belly, this fear of death that restlessly drives me onward? If only I could find the one man whom the gods made immortal, I would ask him how to overcome death.”
In his previous, heroic mode, Gilgamesh thought he knew that only the gods live forever. Now, terrified, he is no longer certain. His first questionâ“Must I die too?”âis not rhetorical; he really doesn't know the answer anymore. It is the question of a child at the threshold of adult awareness, who for the first time is faced with the concept of dying. Every child, to
become
an adult, must realize that the answer to that question is yes. (Once he has passed through the gate of “I will die,” he can later, if his questioning goes deep enough, pass through the gate of “I was never born.”)
Gilgamesh wants to find the one exception to the rule of mortality, his ancestor Utnapishtim, who was granted eternal life and dwells somewhere at the eastern edge of the world. The fact that there has been one exception to the rule of mortality means that there may be a second exception. This hope postpones Gilgamesh's necessary acceptance until a time when he is more ready for it, less raw with grief. Like a thousand later heroes in folktales and Zen stories, he sets out in search of a teacher who can give him wisdom. In this he is bound to be disappointed. Wisdom isn't an object; it can't be grasped by words, nor can it be passed on. But until Gilgamesh completes his quest, he won't be able to realize the futility of it. “This thing we tell of can never be found by seeking,” said the Sufi master Abu Yazid al-Bistami, “yet only seekers find it.”
The first arrival we hear about is at the Twin Peaks, two high mountains overlooking the tunnel into which the sun sets for its nightly underground journey and out of which it rises in the morning. Two terrifying monsters called “scorpion people” guard the eastern end of this tunnel, just as Humbaba guarded the Cedar Forest.
After Gilgamesh recovers from his dread and approaches them (he is no longer in a monster-slaying frame of mind), the creatures turn out to be quite courteous and tell him that the road to Utnapishtim lies through the tunnel. The scorpion man, at his wife's compassionate urging, allows Gilgamesh to enter the tunnel, warning him that if he fails to get to the western end before the sun enters, he will be burned to a crisp. For twelve hours, nonstop, Gilgamesh runs through the pitch blackness, and he exits just as the sun is setting.
This is a symbolic death and rebirth, in which he passes through the darkness of an underworld and emerges into the dazzling,
Arabian Nights-
like garden of the gods.
But in its effects, it is not much of a rebirth. Gilgamesh is the same anguished, violent man he was before. Indeed, when he meets Shiduri the tavern keeper, he looks so murderous that she runs into her tavern and locks herself in. Gilgamesh deals with this by threatening to smash down the door. Force is still his automatic reaction-the way he responds to the world.
Shiduri is a strange character: a matron, possibly a goddess, who brews beer in a tavern at the edge of the ocean, apparently for those rare customers who can outrace the sun. She is frightened but curious, and from the roof asks Gilgamesh questions about his appearance and his destination that are repeated later in the poem. Gilgamesh once again gives eloquent voice to his grief. “Shouldn't my heart be filled with anguish?” he cries out.
“My friend, my brother, whom I loved so dearly, who accompanied me through every danger-Enkidu, my brother, whom I loved so dearly, who accompanied me through every danger-the fate of mankind has overwhelmed him. For six days I would not let him be buried, thinking, âIf my grief is violent enough, perhaps he will come back to life again.' For six days and seven nights I mourned him,
until a maggot fell out of his nose. Then I was afraid, I was frightened by death, and I set out to roam the wilderness. I cannot bear what happened to my friend-I cannot bear what happened to Enkidu-so I roam the wilderness in my grief. How can my mind have any rest? My beloved friend has turned into clay-my beloved Enkidu has turned into clay. And won't I too lie down in the dirt like him, and never arise again?”
This speech is as palpable and moving as his lament in Book VIII.
Shiduri sends him on to the next stage of his journey, but not before giving him a charming piece of conventional wisdom that can do him no earthly good. (No advice can. He needs to come to wisdom by himself.)
“Savor your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.”
But Gilgamesh is incapable of enjoyment; he must persevere until he finds Utnapishtim. Shiduri tells him that the only man who can help is Urshanabi, Utnapishtim's boatman. If Gilgamesh asks, perhaps Urshanabi will sail him across the vast ocean in his boat, crewed by the Stone Men, who are invulnerable to the Waters of Death.
Instead of being civil to the man on whom everything now depends, Gilgamesh proceeds with the senseless, self-defeating violence he is used to: he attacks Urshanabi and smashes the Stone Men to pieces. Fortunately for him, however, Urshanabi is a genial, forgiving fellow, who proposes an alternative method of crossing the Waters of Death, using punting poles instead of the demolished Stone Men. They sail “without stopping, for three days and nights, / a six weeks' journey for ordinary men,” cross the Waters of Death, and finally land on the shore where Utnapishtim is waiting. Gilgamesh doesn't realize it yet, but he is standing face to face with the man who is his last hope.
T
he archetypal hero's journey proceeds in stages: being called to action, meeting a wise man or guide, crossing the threshold into the numinous world of the adventure, passing various tests, attaining the goal, defeating the forces of evil, and going back home. It leads
to a spiritual transformation at the end, a sense of gratitude, humility, and deepened trust in the intelligence of the universe. After he finds the treasure or slays the dragon or wins the princess or joins with the mind of the sage, the hero can return to ordinary life in a state of grace, as a blessing to himself and to his whole community. He has suffered, he has triumphed, he is at peace.
The more we try to fit
Gilgamesh
into the pattern of this archetypal journey, the more bizarre, quirky, and postmodern it seems. It is the original quest story. But it is also an anti-quest, since it undermines the quest myth from the beginning. Gilgamesh does slay the monster, but that, it turns out, is a violation of the divine order of things and causes the death of his beloved friend. He does journey to the edge of the world, he meets the wise man, but still there is no transformation. Utnapishtim asks him the same questions Shiduri asked, and Gilgamesh answers with the same anguished cries, whereupon Utnapishtim offers him yet another piece of conventional wisdomâbeautiful words, but as useless to him as Shiduri's were. What's the good of saying, like everybody's obtuse uncle, that Gilgamesh should realize how fortunate he is, that life is short and death is final? It is like all well-meaning advice that tells us to accept things as they are. We
can't
accept things as they are, so long as we think that things should be different. Tell us how not to believe what we think, and then maybe we'll be able to hear.
In any case, for Utnapishtim to say that life is short is a bit disingenuous. Life
isn't
short-for him. That's the point! Why else has
Gilgamesh traveled to the edge of the world to see him? The desperate, grief-stricken man standing before Utnapishtim feels less fortunate than the very fool he is purportedly so superior to. He wants to transcend death, not accept itâright now, not in some happy future.
