HAUS FÜR POESIE

On the path to this realization, celestial beasts and monsters are slain—creatures with beautiful names such as Humbaba. There are accounts of great floods, and a thieving snake plays a central role as the finale approaches. A classic as it should be: exciting and sexy, as young as on its first day—exactly the kind of material from which today’s Hollywood blockbusters are made (it is a wonder that Christopher Nolan or Roland Emmerich have not yet taken hold of it). The hero from whom the epic takes its title is a demigod and at the same time the king of Uruk (in present-day Iraq) from Mesopotamian mythology. Whether he was a historical figure remains disputed, but the name Gilgamesh is nevertheless mentioned in the Sumerian King List. The story of its discovery and reconstruction is almost as adventurous as the epic itself. The complete version consists of twelve clay tablets in the Akkadian language, preserved in cuneiform script. This is the so-called Standard Babylonian version, probably composed between 1300–1000 BCE, but based on Sumerian narratives that are much older still. The tablets (copies from the 7th century BCE) were discovered in the mid-19th century in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.

There are numerous translations into different languages, which struggle to keep pace with newer textual discoveries that continuously supplement the clay tablet fragments. And so the world’s oldest epic remains a work in progress. This evening presents three recent translations, each reflecting very different approaches by their translators: Gilgamesh Retold by Jenny Lewis, Dictator by Philip Terry (both Carcanet Press, 2018), and Das Epos von Gilgamesch (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2026) by Esther Kinsky.

Lewis’s polyphonic version—she herself speaks of “poetic heteroglossia”—is perhaps the most reader-friendly English-language version. It fills in the gaps in transmission—those lamentable interruptions in the cold chain—while preserving the narrative drive of the original and carrying it into the present. Everything is elegantly brought up to date. In this way, Lewis contributes to the broad reception of Gilgamesh in a manner similar to Emily Wilson’s translations of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad. Her translation begins: “Gilgamesh knew he understood / how the waters broke how the world was birthed.”

Philip Terry chooses a radically experimental approach. As a translator of Queneau, he is well versed in all things Oulipian. He employs the language Globish, a Basic English consisting of just 1,500 words, originally developed to facilitate international business communication. From extreme reduction emerges a distinctive poetic appeal that releases an unexpected abundance of secondary and associative meanings. His translation begins: “!I will I sing of I the one I who see I the bot I om... / of he I who know I all...”

Esther Kinsky presents her translation of Gilgamesh in the form of a prose retelling. She draws on English translations and emphasizes in her foreword that philological precision and poetic intensity need not necessarily exclude one another. She writes:
“Each reader will gain their own insights from this text, which so concisely illuminates the human condition in the world and, from such great temporal distance, shows us that even from a field of ruins a step toward hope is possible.” Her translation begins: ““Der die Tiefe sah – einst, so erzählte man, gab es einen, der so genannt wurde. Er blickte bis in die Grundfesten des Landes.”

Moderation Asmus Trautsch

The event will be interpreted English-German.
Kindly supported by ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen