This is a short and accessible book about the Epic of Gilgamesh, what we might know of its composition, its discovery in scattered tablets centuries later, and its rich legacy and reception.
Michael Schmidt is a literary historian, poet, novelist, translator, and anthologist as well as an editor and publisher. His books include The Novel: A Biography and The First Poets. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he received an OBE in 2006 for services to poetry and higher education. He lives in Manchester, England. Twitter @4Michael7
"An insightful, stimulating book sure to breathe new life into the
would-be immortal king."
*Publishers Weekly*
"[A] wonderful book . . . Schmidt’s argument for the poem as
poetry, in the modern sense—concrete, unglazed, tough on the
mind—is touching and persuasive. I read the book spellbound, in one
sitting."---Joan Acocella, New Yorker
"For anyone interested in language, history, or the power of a
great story, this biography of a poem assures endless
discoveries."---Jeva Lange, The Week
"Schmidt’s book deeply enriches our appreciation of a work already
rich. A solid addition to all collections."---Thomas L. Cooksey,
Library Journal
"[I]f all literary studies were written so engagingly, more people
would read them . . . If you have never read Gilgamesh before,
Schmidt could be Virgil to your Dante, and if you have read it
before, be prepared to let it be explicated in a new and lively way
and to flow over your mind like quicksilver."---John Butler, Asian
Review of Books
"Michael Schmidt’s Gilgamesh, the Life of a Poem, is stimulating,
informative and elegantly written. It is to be hoped that over time
it will be recognised as an indispensable guide for all future
readers of Gilgamesh."---David Cooke, Manchester Review
"In Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem, Michael Schmidt, a British poet
and novelist, explains how the special character of “Gilgamesh” has
had an outsize influence on modern writers . . . Its “anonymity”
invites readers’ responses more powerfully than other ancient
works, and this book is, in the main, an exploration of those
responses, obtained by Mr. Schmidt through a survey sent to 50
modern poets. . . . [Schmidt’s] freshly framed observations help
renew one of the world’s oldest surviving tales"---James Romm, Wall
Street Journal
"[Gilgamesh] is well-written and reads like having a chat with a
down-to-earth friend who happens to be a literary scholar . .
[R]ather than trying to choose which translation to read, one
should start by reading Schmidt’s book. It offers an intelligent
but relatable introduction to Gilgamesh as well as to the
scholarship and modern artistry which swirls around the nearly 4000
year old poem."---Kelly Hydrick, Root & Press
"[Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem] offers us an opportunity to
consider not just the rewards of tradition, but its very real
risks. . . . Schmidt tries to preserve the integrity of a single
beloved poem. In forcing us to go back to the basics of
meaning-making, Schmidt works toward a hermeneutics of modesty and
care, pointing toward a more expansive, and less imperialist,
approach to world literature. . . . To translate and read Gilgamesh
as we read the Iliad or the Aeneid would be to neutralize the poem
— and, for Schmidt and the many contemporary poets whose voices he
brings into his book, to miss an opportunity to reimagine our
literary origin story, or to posit a plurality of stories rather
than one continuous tradition."---Max Norman, Los Angeles Review of
Books
"[Michael] Schmidt presents an extended reflection on Gilgamesh,
exploring the challenges and opportunities it offers modern
readers. . . . Beginning with the challenge of translating without
knowing the original languages, Schmidt uses his correspondence
with the translators of Gilgamesh as a model to challenge modern,
Western habits of interpretation and approach reading the poem on
its own terms: i.e., not as an ur-Iliad but as something unique.
Throughout, Schmidt emphasizes Gilgamesh’s alterity, its
fragmentariness, its authorlessness, the provisional nature of the
text, and its refusal to fit familiar aesthetic and generic
categories. This important work fills a gap between
translations/introductions and the scholarship of
Assyriology."---P. E. Ojennus, Choice Reviews
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