Translating Gilgamesh

In an earlier post, I praised the existence of Clara’s assigned summer reading, both the assigned book (Things Fall Apart) and also the whole idea of assigned reading.  Clara was assigned a second book, and here there is not praise, but lament.

But first, it is worth a moment to revisit the idea of assigned summer reading.  I said nice things about it.  And then I read this.  I’ll start by noting that MacBeth is remarkably perceptive in that post.  Quite honestly, she is not only entirely correct in her conclusion, but I had not realized all that myself until I read her post.  No doubt about it:  the only reason I like assigned summer reading is that it gives me some hope that maybe Clara will just read a book worth reading straight through and then maybe we can have a really interesting conversation about it before the school has the chance to chop up the book and utterly destroy any hope of it actually being enjoyed.

And that is exactly why the second book Clara had to read this summer was so depressing.  The book: The Epic of Gilgamesh.  But, it wasn't the book itself that is the problem, it is the translation she had to read.  She was assigned the Benjamin Foster translation, used in the Norton Critical Edition.  And therein is a very useful demonstration of how picking a bad translation can utterly destroy the hope of achieving any good from assigning a book.

The background for those who don’t know it:  Gilgamesh was written roughly 4000 years ago.  All we have of it is some fragmentary stone tablets.  We have enough tablets to patch together the rough storyline, and honestly, there is enough there to make an interesting story.  Comparing Gilgamesh to other epics is a useful literary pastime.  A short version of the story is here.

But, if you are going to assign Gilgamesh to 14 year old kids, one would hope the goal would be to get them to see the story.  And to that end, there is a very useful recent translation by Stephen Mitchell which does exactly that.  Mitchell’s translation reads like an epic tale told by a firelight.  It is fast paced and exciting.  It is, in other words, exactly like what you imagine this tale was like to ancient Babylonians.

The Foster translation assigned to Clara, however, goes for accuracy, not readability.  It is, instead, just what is on the tablets, in all their fragmentary glory.  Reading it would be an exercise in futility, so the editor helpfully tells you what is going on before each fragmentary bit and fills in a few of the blank spots and places where we really don’t know what the word means.  This “translation” is, in other words, utterly unreadable.  An believe me, I tried.  I read the whole thing.  And even though I knew the story and I like the story and I think the story is worth knowing, it was torture.

Consider one of the high points of the story: Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the monster Humbaba.

From Foster’s translation:

Gilgamesh heeded his friend’s command,

He raised the axe at his side,

He drew the sword at his belt,

Gilgamesh struck him on the neck,

Enkidu, his friend, […]

They pulled out […] as far as the lungs,

He tore out the […]

He forced the head into a cauldron.

[…] in abundance fell on the mountain,

[…] in abundance fell on the mountain,

[…]

He struck him, Humbaba the guardian, down to the ground.

His blood […]

For two leagues the cedars […].

He killed the [glories] with him.

The forest […]

He slew the monster, guardian of the forest,

At whose cry the mountains of Lebanon [trembled]

At whose cry all the mountains [quaked].

And in Mitchell’s translation:

Gilgamesh, hearing his beloved friend,

came to himself.  He yelled, he lifted

his massive axe, he swung it, it tore

into Humbaba’s neck, the blood

shot out, again the battle axe bit flesh

and bone, the monster staggered, his eyes

rolled, and at the axe’s third stroke

he toppled like a cedar and crashed to the ground.

At his death-roar the mountains of Lebanon shook,

the valleys ran wild with his blood, for ten miles

the forest resounded.  Then the two friends

sliced him open, pulled out his intestines,

cut off his head with its knife-sharp teeth

and horrible bloodshot staring eyes.

A gentle rain fell onto the mountains.

A gentle rain fell onto the mountains.

Let’s imagine you have to pick one these two translations to give to a 14 year old to convince said student that the book is interesting and has something to teach us.  Which translation do you pick?  Not even a contest.  Sure, if you know the story already, there is perhaps something interesting in seeing all the missing parts in Foster’s translation as a way of seeing what is actually there and what is interpolated.  But, to read the story, why would anyone rather read that?  And to teach something?  Again not a contest—nobody in ancient Babylon heard the story the way Foster translated it.  They all heard it the way Mitchell translates it.  So, why in the world would anyone assign the Foster translation as summer reading?

[Fortunately, I convinced Clara to read the Mitchell translation instead of the one she was assigned.]

So, MacBeth is right.  I don’t really like assigned summer reading all that much.  I just like the idea of a kid discovering that some books are Great and well worth reading just for the pure enjoyment of reading them and talking about them.