Gilgamesh

Rating:
Summary: Not Really Gilgamesh
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: I agree with Frank Perry
Review: 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...