Meanings of Gilgamesh

Joan Acocella, in her review of Michael Schmidts Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem, captures the timelessness of this ancient story (Books, October 14th). She points out that the poem has been studied for only seven or eight generations, as opposed to about a hundred and fifty for the Iliad and the Odyssey. The comparative recency of the scholarship, she writes, means that there is no real tradition for reading Gilgamesh. This may be true, but it is worth noting that, in Waldorf schools all over the world, fifth graders have been studying this epic as a standard part of the curriculum since the movements founding, in 1919. In my classroom, students read a version of the poem and, using Popsicle sticks as styluses, pressed wedge-shaped cuneiform into clay tablets. As those of us in the boomer generation confront the inevitability of aging and mortality, we should add Gilgamesh to our reading lists.

Maureen ShaughnessyLake Orion, Mich.

I was pleased to see Acocellas article on Gilgamesh, a work that has been important to me as both a scholar and a person. I was surprised, however, by her characterization of the tests imposed on the hero as he seeks immortality as silly. On the contrary, they are a highlight of the poem. To prove that he is worthy of that ultimate prize, Gilgamesh must go without sleep for six days. He accepts the challenge, but sleep swirls over him like a mist, and he succumbs. To mark the passage of time while Gilgamesh sleeps, a loaf of bread is set out each day. By the time he wakes up, the loaves are in progressive states of decay, showing the perishability of living matter, which Gilgamesh, like humanity as a whole, has failed to transcend. The messageif you can conquer your unconscious, you can conquer deathis a profound one, in line with mystical texts from many traditions.

Michael NaglerTomales, Calif.

In the nineteen-sixties, I read Gilgamesh as a literature student at William Penn, a small Midwestern Quaker college. The English translation we had at the time was, as I recall, quite literal, and the sexual parts were rendered in Latin, in what had to have been, even then, an archaic attempt to protect our young minds. Fortunately, I had enough Church Latin to make out the meaning.

Pat SodakOskaloosa, Iowa

Reading Dana Goodyears Profile of the photographer Thomas Joshua Cooper, I was moved by the description of his environmental photography (The Ends of the Earth, October 7th). I always enjoy New Yorker articles about artists and intellectuals, but I couldnt help thinking about what it would be like to live with someone like Cooperor, in the case of his daughters, to not live with him, as he travelled incessantly in the singular pursuit of his art. After I read the scene in which he tries to capture a shot on a beach while his wife, standing next to him, is sick with the flu, my desire to know more about Cooper slackened, and it isnt surprising that his daughter has written a searing essay about growing up in the shadow of her fathers art. We are all familiar with the trope of the difficult but brilliant artistindeed, some of this magazines best recent reporting has been about the painful realities of such people. I find myself wondering how best to celebrate these artists work while taking into account the complexities of their lives.

Jeanne BonnerWest Hartford, Conn.

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