Who is Gilgamesh?

Written by Pangur Agthaporus

4/17.13 Professor Oliver Philosophy 230-001: Meaning & Purpose of the Arts

Regarding the question over who this Gilgamesh character is exactly, and was he in fact a historical persona, or some mythic-hero of antiquity that is subsumed into the epic of Gilgamesh? Joining both the author and hero Gilgamesh, as well as his compatriot Enkidu, in their quest to seek immortality, the matter of who Gilgamesh is, can be interpreted and analyzed in a variety of ways. Here it will most likely not be accomplished by taking a discursive approach that employs comparative mythological, literary critical, and self-referential interpretation, maybe I might help begin to unravel the mystery that shrouds who exactly was this hero of antiquity known as Gilgamesh? More importantly seems to be the question of how does dramatic irony and irony in the use of character and the contrapuntal exchange between the two literary devices work to help us understand who Gilgamesh was exactly. Firstly, with respects to the former device, it conveys a sense of the unsuspecting victimage that the hero has befallen. Secondly, the audience knows very well of the heros predicament, as the omniscient author had foreshadowed what was to become of the hero. Both of these literary devices give rise to the paradox between ultimate reality - which is associated with audience foreknowledge of the heros victimage and the immediate reality which is, of course, the characters understanding of his victimage.1 In this sense of understanding who Gilgamesh is, it is his character that becomes each of us, for what we cannot see in ourselves, we see in Gilgamesh, but there is something more than just the reflexive inversions of the reader and the character Gilgamesh, for the story, indeed, tells us of a higher truth. If when reading this story we place ourselves in Gilgameshs shoe - vis--vis creative imaginations - these higher truths begin to metaphysically jump off the page. One of these higher truths that initially comes to mind, is that Gilgamesh is two-thirds Man and one-third God. Perhaps we are also two-thirds man and one-third, that indeed, we have strayed far away from the sacred flame that dwells within every man and woman heart. Similarly, dramatic irony allows for the understanding that Gilgamesh is the Ancient man of knowledge from Antiquity that so many scholars reflect on and he is also the modern man in the sense of not understanding even a sliver of the totality of his victimage. So much so that Platos Allegory of the Cave brings to light the current plight of mankind to which the modern man, in his utter inoperability to retain analytical reasoning and expand the boundaries of his/her creative imaginative potential, becomes as it has, an inversion of the Perfect Man, and what might be deemed Hamlets Mill. This is a conjecture - at best that was forth by De Santillana, and Von Dechend, proclaiming When he discovers remote galaxies by the million, and then those quasi-stellar radio sources billions of light-years away which confound his speculation, he is happy that he can reach out to those depths. But he pays a terrible price for his achievement. The science of astrophysics reaches out on a grander and grander scale without losing its footing. Man, as man, cannot do this. In the depths of space he loses himself and all notion of his significance. He is unable to fit himself into the concepts of todays astrophysics short of schizophrenia. Modern man is facing the non-conceivable. Archaic man, however, kept a firm grip on the conceivable by framing within his cosmos an order of time and an eschatology that made sense to him and reserved a fate for his soul. Yet it was a prodigiously vast theory, with no concessions to merely

Sasson, Jack M/. Some Literary motifs in the composition of the Gilgamesh Epic, Studies in Philology, 69: 3 (1972: July) [P. 268]
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human sentiments. It, too, dilated the mind beyond the bearable, although without destroying mans role in the cosmos. It was a ruthless metaphysics.2 The friendship of Enkidu and Gilgamesh comes to portray the paradox of mans ontological status and the minds evolutionary development in history. To reiterate what Socrates had to say about the issue to which he posits that the highest state of humankind is to personify the creative intellect and analytical reasoning. Here perhaps Enkidu might be seen as symbolic of first ontological status, creative intellect and, secondly Gilgamesh, comes to embody the analytical reasoning capabilities of an individual(s), which is to say that together they can overcome anything. Wherefore it is the quintessential motive for the epic hero that is a sort of portmanteau of these paradigms to view that someone (i.e. a Guardian Angel) might be reading our books this very moment, looking into the depths of our soul(s). We must realize the chains of reasoning that bind the minds imaginative possibility to grasp the formers finite capacity and latters infinite capacity to comprehend one(s) existence. To this end, the words of Laurens Van der Post ring most true, as he said There is a way in which the collective knowledge of mankind expresses itself, for the finite individual, through mere daily livinga way in which life itself is sheer knowing.3

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De Santillana, Giorgio, and Hertha Von Dechend. Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time. David R. Godine Publisher, 1977. (p. 5)

Laurens van der Post, Venture to the Interior