O! Enkidu! 𒂗𒆠𒄭
Celebrating the publication day of the other story of the Epic of Gilgamesh
As hunter-gatherers weave between birdcalls and boulders, the city reaches for one wild young man. He enters its gate and gains a new self. Lucid and confident, this legend of love and betrayal moves us into its dream-flight. Desire has a ritual; grief, a flavor; determination, a knife.
— Tucker Lieberman, author of Enkidu Is Dead and Not Dead / Enkidu está muerto y no lo está
Eric Farnsworth shows us the Epic of Gilgamesh on a human scale through Enkidu’s story, illuminating the foundations of our current world to suggest what we might create instead. Superb and highly original, O! Enkidu! is a conversational and poetic page-turner that will stay with you long after the last page.
— Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, past Kansas Poet Laureate and author of The Magic Eye
Today’s the release day for Eric Farnsworth’s book, O! Enkidu! In the oldest recorded story of the Western world, a wild man is created by the gods to bring down the most powerful king the world had ever seen. And in that tale the wild man, Enkidu, is instead “civilized” and helps the king increase his power.
That’s the story told by the scribes, anyway. But there’s another story here. And in O! Enkidu!, Eric Farnsworth tells us that story with a compelling simplicity evocative of Le Guin and Hemingway.
For more information about O! Enkidu!, see this link. And below is an excerpt of Farnsworth’s powerful tale.
𒂗𒆠𒄭
Walking.
Putting one foot in front of the other.
Repeatedly.
Moving is better than not moving.
There is a rhythm to it.
Enkidu hasn’t decided where he is walking, only to walk. To choose a destination requires something he lacks, but walking is good. The parts of his body that do the walking also do the deciding, if there is any deciding being done. In any case, it feels better to walk.
He walks all day. There is nothing else to do. He walks at night if there is moonlight to show a path. He sleeps beside the trail when he can’t walk anymore.
He dropped the woven bag when the dried meat was finished.
He hasn’t replaced his grass skirt.
He carries only himself.
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At first, he followed the animal pathways, but he is getting closer to the city and the wild things have turned aside, circling back to their home places.
Here the ways all belong to humans. He has passed by the people’s fields and their dwellings and the paddocks where they keep the animals they have tamed. He has bent down to drink water from the channels. They have tamed the water, too.
The birds are different here, chirping a strange language. His feet are crusted with cow manure and dirt from the roadway.
Now, whichever direction he looks, there are more people. Everywhere he sees their doing. There are people working their fields with mattocks and hoes. He sees women carrying baskets of soil on their heads.
The people watch him pass by, but they don’t speak to him. As if he were not a man, only just some movement that distracts from their work day.
The air is filled with smoke and manure and fermentation and some acrid mineral smell. The wind makes no sense: it is carrying too many things. When people on the road come toward him, he stands aside but doesn’t hide. They don't greet him and he doesn’t menace. They see a big naked man and hurry on their way.
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Finally, in the distance, he sees the walls of Uruk.
His sleeping mind stirs and begins to wonder. What violence these people must suffer to build such a massive defense? Or maybe it’s not their lives. Maybe it’s their possessions they are protecting.
So many possessions they must have! So many enemies coming here to raid them! He can’t imagine what could be so highly prized to require such a wall. Clearly, to build a wall this massive took the labor of many men’s lifetimes.
Only at this point does he pause to consider where he is going. He has been following his feet and this is where they have brought him. There is a hollow in his chest telling him that the city is entirely strange to him. Doubtless, it is full of people and customs and dangers that he knows nothing about. There is no way he could predict what might happen if he continues forward.
The moment passes, and his feet resume walking.
Here in front of him is the great river blocking the path to the city. He sees men with boats going back and forth across the river, carrying people and animals and produce from the farms. The passengers speak with the men in the boats. They are bargaining. These boatmen require some kind of payment before they will pole their boats across the river.
Enkidu pushes through the reeds at the river edge, steps into the water, and swims to the other side. The river is muddy, and the water tastes of too many animals too close together, but it is cool and smooth on his body.
He reaches the far bank and stands in the sun at the edge of the reeds beside the river, feeling the water from his hair drip down the backs of his legs. Standing there drying, his hands tucked into his armpits, he looks back across the river at the way he has come.
Not so wet now, he turns and parts through the reeds, back onto the road, and approaches the city gate. It looks as if his feet will carry him through it. As he gets nearer, he watches people come and go and crowd around the gate.
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There are soldiers.
Richly dressed men are stopping people who pass through the gate. Soldiers block the people’s way as the rich men look through the things people carry. Sometimes the rich men take things from the people. Sometimes they give them back.
Some of the people who are sitting by the gate are dressed in rags. Others are playing musical instruments. As Enkidu moves into the shadow of the city wall, everyone stops what they are doing and they stare at him.
A pair of soldiers step into the roadway and stand themselves in front of him, shouting in their language. One has a long bronze knife hung from his belt. The other holds a wooden pole topped with a bronze spear point. A question and a threat — the soldier shakes his spear as punctuation. Enkidu stands still, he doesn’t know their answer and cannot give them what they want.
Some of the richly dressed men call out to the soldiers and begin walking toward them. They point at Enkidu and speak amongst themselves. A crowd has circled around him; most of the people look short and slow on their feet.
Enkidu can smell the fear on their breath.
The rich men finish their consultation, and two of them step away from the others and begin walking through the gate. One motions to the soldiers, and the soldiers push Enkidu to follow them. This is what his feet were waiting for, so he doesn’t resist.
Inside the fortification now, he can see what these people are protecting. There are mud brick houses stacked on top of each other, many people going in and out of them. The people are busy, going here and there. They have many possessions. Some they carry. Some are laid out for trading.
He sees things made of leather and bronze and clay and all manner of fibers. There are baskets of produce, cucumbers and onions. Many rows of tall clay jars. Animals both killed and alive. The small children are busy too, chasing quick-running ducks, or picking pebbles from baskets of beans.
There are cook fires in clay ovens and clay bowls broken on the ground. The street is just as dusty inside the gate as outside, but here the dust is a little darker, with more bodies to color it.
The men are taking Enkidu down a wide street toward the middle of the city. The ground is packed clay, dead. Branching to the side he sees smaller lanes with more mud brick houses stacked up. There are more people going in and out.
A large structure is visible up ahead and they are moving toward it. As they continue, the houses alongside the street have been getting bigger, and the people around them are more finely dressed.
Here the pair of rich men leading them loosen their shoulders and walk a little easier. The houses are larger now but fewer people go in and out. The walls of the houses have been coated white, some painted with pictures.
The large structure ahead is set in a grand plaza. Workmen are carrying materials to new buildings along one side of the square.
Everywhere there are donkeys and carts and sheep and baskets of farm produce and grain. The dust and the smell of all the bodies remind Enkidu of how his people know when it is time to move on and make a new camp.
The walls enclosing the plaza are decorated with patterns made from small red and white and yellow tiles. Angled stripes of colored tiles set into mud brick. The patterns cover such a large area! They have made so many tiles!
The soldiers push through the crowd toward a building set a few steps up from the plaza, hustling Enkidu up the stairs past the crowds to stop at an arched doorway. As he stands behind the pair of rich men, Enkidu sees an old man and woman standing inside the doorway facing them, both draped with fabric made of impossibly fine thread.
Even this place seems to be on the way he is going. He doesn’t need to fight them yet. The rich men tell a story to the old man and woman, then step aside and wait. In low voices, the old man and woman consult with each other, nodding as they speak, like a pair of herons.
A young messenger runs down the steps and disappears into the crowded plaza. When the messenger returns, the old man and woman nod again and turn back to the pair of rich men. They look at Enkidu, and then point to one of the new buildings. The rich men and soldiers take Enkidu that way. This was the right outcome.
They arrive at a pair of doors standing almost double Enkidu's height. The doors are hewn from cedar wood and hung on bronze hinges. The doorway of the building is faced with pale polished limestone. In front of the doors are two men wearing skirts of lion skin, Both of them are bigger but softer than the soldiers.
Enkidu feels a shiver at the small of his back.
He is confident that he could beat these two men, but they aren’t giving off any human feelings.
The soldiers push Enkidu forward past the pair of rich men, and the lion-clad eunuchs nod their heads and open the doors.
Enkidu steps in, and the eunuchs close the doors behind him.
His eyes adjust to the dark of the room just in time to see a young naked backside hurry around a far corner. The floor is the same limestone as the outside doorway. The walls and ceiling are plastered. The only light is from two small openings above the doors. Enkidu has almost decided to follow the quick child when he sees his destination in front of him.
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There is a woman facing Enkidu a few paces away. The woman is not Ninsigal, her hands have never skinned a gazelle. Even so, he feels a sensation of having arrived somewhere. She stands with her hands open as if to welcome him.
She is older than Ninsigal, fully curved under her fine linen draping. Her eyes are dark and don’t seem to show any malice. Nor are they giving away any secrets. Enkidu can see that she knows many things.
She comes toward him slowly and calmly takes one of his hands in hers. She bends forward and kisses his face, just like she is his brother. The quick young boy has reappeared with a tray. The woman turns toward the boy and takes the tray with her free hand.
She leads Enkidu to a low platform covered with a plaited reed mat. Meanwhile, she is speaking softly in her language. As he watches her lips, Enkidu believes he can understand her.
They recline on the mat and she passes him a large cup of water. He hadn’t known how thirsty he was. She refills the cup and he drains it again. He watches her long tapered fingers as she begins feeding him figs and dates and spoonfuls of a smoky pigeon stew. The boy returns with another tray, thick grainy beer and barley-spelt bread with honey.
It was then that Enkidu remembered he was naked.
The woman had seen him the whole time.
And thus we reach this place in our story.
The end of
the beginning of
the middle.