dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

The Epic of Gilgamesh

A play.

Way back when,

when men were still a novelty,

and what towns there were

were smaller than a ballpark,

smaller, often, than a pitch-and-putt

and no one sentimentalized the out-of-doors;

when every man was a man of few words

because there were only a few,

and those so open-ended and adaptable

that to pin them down required great force

and weighted presentation,

so that there was no such thing as a meaningless gesture

and people watched each other –

but there were still, believe me, many secrets

and no one was any the wiser -

many years ago and far away

in the ungenerous badlands of a distant country

where the hot sun addled what the cold night froze

and things were rough all over,

there stood what seemed to it's inhabitants

a very splendid city.

It boasted walls, fine walls, made out of stone

and terrible tall,

and monuments - lot's of monuments -

and most remarkably, a gigantic king.

The cities name was Uruk, or Uruk of the Walls,

and the king was called King Gilgamesh.

King Gilgamesh had a passion for marvels -

and since King Gilgamesh was something of a marvel himself,

the men of Uruk were at pains

to make him comfortable.

For King Gilgamesh was governed only by his passions,

and the city of Uruk was governed only by King Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh: I am sorry for Enkindu that he died,

he was my brother.

And I am sorrier still that I lost Enkindu

Whom I least of all wanted to lose

and with whom I was friends.

But I am doubly sorry

that I, who have until now never lost anything

Should be stolen from in this manner,

For while I have made selections

Which are a kind of loss,

I have never before been denied.

And I am sorriest of all

And the reason I am crying is

That the death of my brother Enkindu

Has suggested to me that I'll die too

Someday

And I'm scared.

The Old Man: And so King Gilgamesh

the great King Gilgamesh

was bested by a little thing

an unheroic snake

and he broke down altogether

and he wept the tears of a furious child

for he knew himself to be a failure

and he held himself cheap

and there wasn't a thing which he cared to do

and there wasn't a thing for which he cared

and he knew the frustration

of one who cannot have

what he thinks he wants

and he knew the shame

of one who knows that at least in part

he was himself the author

of his own undoing

and he knew the rage

the hideous rage

the helpless, hopeless rage

of somebody who's been stolen from

who knows he will always be stolen from

because he's here

because he's human

and because he must be off his guard

from time to time.

But as bad as these things were -

and they were very bad-

they did not trouble him so much as did the cold and awful

certainty

that he had not truly wished for

this bauble he had been denied.

That it would not and could not have made him happy.

That the only joy it promised wasn't joy at all

But tremulous relief

at being spared the pain of its loss.

And it was this ironic knowledge of

his own, his inconsolable vanity,

Which made him hate his life and everything he had.

And it was this self-same knowledge

Which later gave him the strength, the presence of mind,

And the imagination to act out the rest of his life

As decent and productive man.

So it was with Gilgamesh.

So it has always been.