Tag Archives: world literature

“Like a Tortoise Retracting Its Limbs”: The Bhagavad Gita as Literature, and Its Doctrine of the Two Selves

One of the most enduring pieces of world literature is the Bhaghavad Gita. And one of the keys to reading the Gita is to understand its doctrine of the two selves.  In the Gita the two selves are: the “big … Continue reading

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Over a Brief Item on Chinese Weddings, a Times of London News Editor Put the Headline “Better Wed in Red.” If You Don’t Get the Headline’s Pun, What Does That Say About You—and the Editor?

The above item and image about couples planning their marriages to coincide with the 8-8-08 opening of the summer Olympics in Beijing, appeared in the Times of London on August 6, 2008. I thought the headline—“Better wed in red”—was a … Continue reading

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No Matter What You Do, Superman, You’re Still Going to Die: Gilgamesh, Tennyson’s Ulysses, Charles Darwin, and the Nietzschean Quest for Eternal Return

In Part 2 of the Gilgamesh Epic, Gilgamesh says this: Where is the man who can clamber to heaven? Only the gods live for ever with glorious Shamash, but as for us men, our days are numbered, our occupations are … Continue reading

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World Literature’s First Existentialist Musings: Before Ecclestiastes, Hamlet, Dostoevsky, and Camus, There was The Epic of Gilgamesh

At the start of Part 2 of the Epic of Gilgamesh, when Enkidu and Gilgamesh have now become friends, Enkidu tells Gilgamesh: The father of the gods has given you kingship, such is your destiny, everlasting life is not your destiny. … Continue reading

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WWF in Ancient Mesopotamia: Enkidu Wrestles Gilgamesh

In Part 1 of the Epic of Gilgamesh we discover these basic plot elements: The city of Uruk is established and ruled by an Apollonian and imperialist young man named Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is perceived, by at least some of his subjects, … Continue reading

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Gilgamesh: A literary Pompeii

When we talk about reading the Epic of Gilgamesh today, we are talking about a version of the story discovered in 1872 at Nineveh, the city perhaps best known for its prominence in the Biblical book of Jonah, in the … Continue reading

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