Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse - Compare Prices on New & Used Textbooks, Cheap Textbooks

A new verse rendering of the great epic of ancient Mesopotamia, one of the oldest works in Western Literature. Ferry makes Gilgamesh available in the kind of energetic and readable translation that Robert Fitzgerald and Richard Lattimore have provided for.

		Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse by David Ferry (Translator) ISBN-10: 9780374523831 ISBN-10: 0-374-52383-5 ISBN-13: 9780374523831 ISBN-13: 978-0-374-52383-1 Paperback 1993-06-01 Farrar, Straus and Giroux Find Lowest Price
Editorials

Amazon.com This is one of the more recent translations of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, about the hero-king of ancient Mesopotamia whose adventures--searching for eternal life, surviving a worldwide deluge in an ark filled with animals, to name a couple--make up one of oldest pieces of literature on record. David Ferry's version attempts to provide the most readable rendering of the epic, artfully finding a poetic voice that's particularly accessible to the modern ear, as well as working to smooth over the gaps in the poem caused by the fragmentary record of the original clay tablets.
Product Description A new verse rendering of the great epic of ancient Mesopotamia, one of the oldest works in Western Literature. Ferry makes Gilgamesh available in the kind of energetic and readable translation that Robert Fitzgerald and Richard Lattimore have provided for.
Reviews

A Word for Veritas Press Homeschoolers. This version of Gilgamesh is very easy to read. If you are using Veritas Press Omnibus this is the version to get. A note to be aware of though is that it does have adult themes in it so if you are using it for 7th grade as recommended by Veritas Press then you should read it first to be familiar with the areas with sensative content. The best thing to do is to buy two copies and read it with your student.
An Amazing Story I first encountered the tale of Gilgamesh in my college mythology class in which we used this version by David Ferry. As has been said before it is a very good translation of an epic story. Now some might not like the idea that Ferry took some poetic liberties with the story, but by keeping it a literal translation you lose the power and beauty of the story, and basically the main point of the mythos.
LOST IN TRANSLATION?! The classic Babylonian tale Gilgamesh has been stripped of its heritage by a Harvard conspiracy of formalist secondhand vernacular, a misappropriation of visual craft by Dimitri Hadzi (Hadzi's Twin Gates occupies the front cover of the book.), and careful packaging that sacrifices a sincere scholasticism and cultural integrity for profitable accessibility. Having read Gilgamesh a year ago, the prospects of reading the story again for class was initially seen as more of a joy than a burden. I remember being moved by how Gilgamesh struggled over the death of his companion Enkidu. Gilgamesh's foolish search for immortality, struck me in its poignant display by how it was ultimately undermined by a simple passing distraction. Dimitri Hadzi's involvement is in many ways an accurate portrayal of where the direction of how the "formalist approach"[1] is continued in the translation done by David Ferry. This type of juxtaposition is harmful to the cultural integrity of Gilgamesh since "modernist primitivism ultimately depends on the autonomous force of objects-and especially on the capacity of tribal art to transcend the intentions and conditions that first shaped it."[2] Formally speaking, David Ferry has been able to synthesize a version of Gilgamesh by an osmosis from other translations because he "cannot read cuneiform and [he] do[es] not know the language, or languages the Gilgamesh epic was written in". Noticing off-hand that most of the direct contributors of the book are Harvard affiliates, it made me think of what the intentions are of this rendition. The author, sculptor, introduction, and review are all either done by Harvard grads or Professors. I found this version to be a disappointment compared to the previous version I have read. So... If you don't like Gilgamesh... maybe it's just the translation that doesn't speak to you. [1] "According to this first view, privileging the study of an object's form (its color, shape, patterns, textures) results in a responsible understanding of what art is really about: an object's aesthetic qualities. The second approach, the anthropological approach, emphasizes contextual education: how an object fits into a culture's social practices. According to this second view, the more one knows about a culture, the better one can contextualize work from that culture and thus responsibly understand the work." Leonard Diepeveen and Timothy Van laar. Art With A Difference: Looking at Difficult and Unfamiliar Art (New York:McGraw-Hill,2001),49. [2] Museum of Modern Art, "Modernist Primitivism: An Introduction," in "Primitivism" in 20th-Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, ed. William Rubin, vol. 1 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984),x
The Relaxing Version It is no secret that Ferry ignored many of the laws of translation and compiled a much more modern version of the story. For people who have never read Gilgamesh and would like to enjoy the story without fretting over the basic intellectual and scholarly elements, this is exactly what you want to read. It is poetic, relaxing, and enjoyable.
A work of art! Translating poetry is a tricky thing. Some people maintain that it can't be done. I would say that the translator can set himself three possible goals. First, he can try to create a "trot," a plain, "literal" translation where every word of the original is explained. See Nabokov's "Eugene Onegin" for an example of this. Second, he can try "simply" to translate it, to give his reader a good idea of what is there on the page, the mood, and so forth. LOTS of translators do this. Third, and most elusive, most difficult, is to create a work of literary art IN ENGLISH (or whatever the target language is). Hopefully this third goal will automatically include all the most important elements of "mere translation." But, if the translator succeeeds, he will have created an independent work of art which will then take on a life of its own. The most famous example of this would probably be FitzGerald's "Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam," probably better described as a fantasy and variations on themes of Omar Khayyam. Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's "Iliad" surely has legs, still in print after all these years. David Ferry has attempted the third goal in his translation of "Gilgamesh," and to my mind he succeeds. The result is a moving and beautiful work of literary art, and I predict a very long life for it.