Blank Spots

Well, you knew I would read GILGAMESH eventually, because you know just about everything, don't you? You're a real smart guy, huh? Looks like we got us a college fella. Yes, I was reading GILGAMESH and Enkidu was putting a curse on Shamhat... don't worry! He takes it all back a couple of pages later. Anyway, he's like "Owls will roost in your"... and that's it! What of hers will owls roost in? We just don't know! Much like Humpty Dumpty, GILGAMESH hasn't been put back together again. There are lots of missing pieces. In this translation, by Sophus Helle, there are blank spots on the page where the missing pieces would go. Later in the same stanza, for example, it's blank spot, blank spot, blank spot, "purple" blank spot, blank spot, blank spot, blank spot, blank spot, "sullied thighs" blank spot, blank spot, "thighs sullied" blank spot, blank spot. So what's going on there? We may never know how those thighs got sullied or what was purple. Luckily, as Sophus Helle mentions in his introduction (which also includes not one but TWO Star Trek allusions [see also]), they are finding new pieces of GILGAMESH all the time. There's even a "website" ("click" here) where all the latest bits and pieces of GILGAMESH can be tinkered with at your leisure. Speaking of poetry, I read a New York Times obituary of the French poet Jacques Roubaud, which quoted him as saying "an Oulipian author is a rat who himself builds the maze from which he sets out to escape." And it's really funny (is it, though?), because Dr. Theresa and I were talking about something similar yesterday as we drove back from Memphis, where we had celebrated the New Year. Dr. Theresa was saying that she sometimes saw the act of writing as consisting of nothing but problem-solving, and I was like, "Yeah, it's interesting, because you're solving the problems but you're also creating the problems." And we talked about that for a while. Look, it's a long drive! Not that long. Anyway, so I'd say Jacques Roubaud's aphorism applies to all writers. Or people! And no, I never heard of Jacques Roubaud before reading his obituary. I get most of my knowledge from obituaries. I'm not a big smart guy like you, smart guy.