- U.S. Soldiers from Crazy Horse Troop, 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment provide security for the Provincial Reconstruction Team and representatives of United Nations Educational, Scientific, - Photo by The U.S. Army on Flickr
The secret lies in merging prose and verse, as Shakespeare did. Jenny Lewis et al have sent the history of verse drama since Ronald Duncan into the lumber room. After Gilgamesh is based on Andrew George's 1999 translation of the ancient Accadian epic of Gilgamesh.This text set the history of world literature back to the dawn of civilisation. The cuneiform tablets of the original are over four and a half thousand years old.
New Levels of Time
The play, which was superbly acted by the Pegasus Youth Theatre, according to David Bellan in the Oxford Times of Friday, 1 April 2011 is an imaginative elegy on war. The play takes place at two levels of time, with a third intermediate level. With a big bang, modern times tell the story of Jo, the narrator, her brother Robbie, and his best friend Karim. As Robbie recollects the path to disillusionment that led up to his lying injured and silent in a military hospital bed, Jo receives a copy of Gilgamesh translated. She reads it to him. At once we are in Uruk, ancient Iraq. Robbie and Karim are analagous to Gilgamesh, the demi-god, and Enkidu, the brave mortal who loses his innocence.
New Levels of Language
The language operates at many levels, as verse must today. There are the strophic, Eliotine choruses and the quick, colloquial banter of terrible Gods. Yet back at the Modern level, the diction modulates to parody war-gaming vocabulary and TV reality games, an ambitious rhetoric that comes near to the achievement of Dennis Potter. Just as Gilgamesh takes on the Gods more and more, so Robbie comes to see the senselessness of the combat he is engaged on. The death of his best friend, Karim parallels the death of Enkidu. The heroes are cut down across time. The four grip the edge of a mountain, each pair unknown to the other, progressing toward disaster.
New Levels of Power
A verismo set of episodes presents the plight of the ordinary people of Iraq. A simple analogy is drawn between the tyranny exercised by extremists and the pathological bullying of the local strongmen. Equally as pathological are the military and political leaders who sent Robbie into fight. Oil and power are their sole ambitions. An interesting central part to the drama, the Collage of Loss considers the varied opinions of diverse voices on the tragedy and unpredictable conduct of war. It is a quiet climax, rather like the address of the knights in Murder in The Cathedral.
New Levels of Hope
Then with another big bang, the denouement is unrolled. The Gods too are vulnerable and could be overthrown. The Commanders are out of time, the Gods displaced from Heaven and Jo is reunited with her brother as he gains consciousness. In a world whose mise en scene is set by the Post-Modern disillusionment, it is promising to hear the conditionalised optimism of the closing moments of the play.
After Gilgamesh is an issue-oriented piece of writing. Like Joan Lingard's Across the Barricades, its audience is the young adult. A discussion conference took place on Questions of power and the power of questions on the 10 April 2011 at Oxford University, organised by the Mulfran Press. It augured to be just as controversial.
Sources
- Eliot, T. S., Murder in the Cathedral, London, Faber and Faber 1965.
- Lingard, Joan ( Adapt.) Neville, David (1990) Across the Barricades Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Duncan McGibbon - By contributing writer, Bath (UK) Institute Convenor and Wells Festival Prize-Winner, Duncan McGibbon
