Gilgamesh (Chatto poetry) [Paperback]

I bought this Gilgamesh along with the new rendition by Stephen Mitchell. Of the two, I would highly recommend that the potential reader buy the Mitchell version.

My problem with this lusty, powerfully written and masculine poem, is that it is not Gilgamesh. The poet has been so free in rendering Gilgamesh into modern English that the epic story is almost completely lost. I would rate it higher if it had a different title with something like "A New Poem Loosely Based on the Ancient Epic"... something like that. And very loosely at that! Kind of like "Truth-in-Lending".

The reader who is new to Gilgamesh will be totally baffled by this ancient classic if the Hines version is the one he or she buys. I think that the reader who is well acquainted with this nearly 5,000-year-old epic might very well find new delights in Derrek Hines's poem. But again, it just isn't Gilgamesh and should be sold as something else.

Just wanted to second the review above... this Gilgamesh is kind of the hip boy in tight levis version, it has its charms but is not Gilgamesh... and definitely doesnt take its place alongside Heaney's Beowulf... I recommend the Mitchell translation... though I have to say, I have a fond spot for the NK Sandars in the Penguin Classics, coz its the first one I read and I have chunks of it in memory...

Derrek Hines does to Gilgamesh what Christopher Logue does to the Iliad in "War Music;" he's rewritten the epic from ground-up in contemporary English verse. The back cover of this edition of Gilgamesh namedrops Ted Hughes's "Tales from Ovid" and Seamus Heaney's "Beowulf" as points of comparison - but those two books were actual translations. Hines's Gilgamesh is not, and neither is Logue's "War Music." The reason Logue isn't mentioned, I assume, is because whole swathes of Hines's Gilgamesh come off like "War Music, Part Two." I mean, it's more Logue than Logue in parts, with its postmodern spin on ancient epic. Here's how Hines writes the intro of the goddess Ishtar, as she descends upon Gilgamesh:

The incoming, high-velocity blip on the radar screen
flips onto the sky, and cracks the sound barrier.
Before him a Manhattan-high wall of glass air
shatters, and reglazes behind
a woman.
For a moment blue's brakes fail:
everything stammers sapphire
until her eyes cool to human frequencies.
She is ISHTAR . . .

So Logue is a huge influence here. And though Hines proves himself a fine poet, there is one element where Logue is his superior: Logue remembers to craft a narrative. Hines instead relays the story of Gilgamesh in hindsight, spending more time on extended soliloquies on life and death. The battle with Humbaba for example is here relayed via the POV of an anonymous soldier, complete with high-tech metaphors of the battle. But as for Gilgamesh's actual battle with Humbaba? It's dashed off in four lines - beginning, middle, and end. Gilgamesh's quest for immortality is given even shorter shrift; he gains and loses the "Herb of Immortality" in one single line.

It's for these reasons that, as others have stated, this version of Gilgamesh should not serve as one's entry point into the epic. This is certainly written for those who have read more faithful translations of Gilgamesh and are now ready for a snazzier take on it. My only regret is that Hines doesn't spend more time letting the tale unfold. He speeds through every memorable scene - Gilgamesh and Enkidu's first meeting, their battles, Ishtar's proposal to Gilgamesh and Gilgamesh's denial of her, the battle with the Taurus constellation, Enkidu's death, the whole goshdarn STORY, basically - broaching and dismissing them in the blink of an eye. That being said, this book is filled to the brim with poetic moments. Take this fantastic insight:

For who needs the gods when you have poetry
to exalt and redeem man in his fate -
a liturgy without religion?

And here is Gilgamesh's recount of his (all-too-briefly told) trip to the Underworld:

"And of the Underworld, well,
grim it was, but I've seen more terrifying places
in a lover's eyes."

So even if it isn't as jawdropping as Logue's "War Music" or as flawless as Hughes's "Tales from Ovid," this "account" of Gilgamesh at least reaches for the same heights - and sometimes manages to snatch hold.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 5 reviews  2.8 out of 5 stars