Literature – Page 5 – Northcoast Antiquarian

Nietzsche, Proust, and My Antiquarian Self

Recently, I mentioned that I had read Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On the Use and Abuse of History.” My rough and tumble summary is as follows:

In “On the Uses and Abuses of History,” Nietzsche delineates three principal approaches to history: monumental, antiquarian, and critical. He argues that each methodology serves distinct purposes and carries unique implications for the perception and utilization of historical knowledge.

Monumental History: This approach venerates history as a continuum of extraordinary deeds and eminent individuals, offering inspiration for present and future endeavors. It emphasizes the perpetuity of greatness, encouraging individuals to aspire to the achievements of historical giants. Nietzsche asserts that by demonstrating what was once attainable remains within the realm of possibility that monumental history acts as a powerful motivational force.

Antiquarian History: Antiquarian history esteems the past for its own intrinsic value, driven by reverence and loyalty. It concentrates on the preservation of customs, traditions, and artifacts, fostering a sense of continuity and belonging. Nietzsche argues that this approach is indispensable for cultivating a collective memory and identity and providing comfort and a sense of rootedness within a historical continuum.

Critical History: Critical history is characterized by its evaluative and interrogative stance towards the past. It enables individuals and societies to extricate themselves from outdated or oppressive traditions, serving as a liberating force that facilitates progress. Nietzsche states that by challenging and reassessing historical narratives, critical history promotes a dynamic and progressive engagement with the past.

Balancing These Approaches: Nietzsche stresses that equilibrium among these historical approaches is essential for an appropriate engagement with history. An overemphasis on monumental history may lead to the undue glorification of the past, which stifles innovation. Conversely, an excessive focus on antiquarian history risks engendering a stagnant conservatism resistant to necessary change and progress. Additionally, overreliance on critical history can result in destructive cynicism and a disconnection from one’s heritage. A balanced historical perspective integrates the aspirational qualities of monumental history, the conserving virtues of antiquarian history, and the emancipatory critique of critical history. This synthesis fosters a society that respects its past, cherishes its heritage, and remains receptive to change and improvement.

My introduction to Nietzsche’s characterizations of historical approaches was revelatory, as it revealed much about my own approaches and reactions to history and historical objects. It also clarified the occasional disconnect I experience when engaging with contemporary historical studies, methodologies, and historians. In brief, I perceive that the current academic climate exhibits a pronounced imbalance, favoring critical history.[1] This predominance serves the interests of individual academicians and ideologues, rather than the broader objectives of history or society. Conversely, within the realm of political society, there is a noticeable tilt towards monumental history, almost entirely neglecting antiquarian and critical perspectives, which poses significant risks. Interestingly, I find myself slightly imbalanced in the Nietzschean sense, perhaps excessively favoring antiquarian history, thereby rendering myself somewhat out of step with both the Academy and political society. The quest for balance is imperative.

However, the aforementioned observations merely serve as a prelude to the more profound enlightenment I experienced while delving into Nietzsche’s concept of antiquarian history. In a particularly insightful article by Stephen Bann, entitled “Clio in Part: On Antiquarianism and the Historical Fragment,” published in 1987, I encountered a truly remarkable quote from Marcel Proust. This quotation elucidated, with striking clarity, my perspectives on literature, history, historical artifacts (including coins), and my self-identification as an antiquarian. It profoundly articulated the essence of what this self-identification entails and reinforced my understanding of my approach to these fields.

To provide a fitting introduction for individuals unfamiliar with the work from which I take Proust’s quote, which is to follow, it is essential to contextualize Proust’s reflections on the imaginative power of antiquities. In “Contre Sainte-Beuve,” a collection of essays in which Marcel Proust critiques the method of literary criticism employed by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, he vividly describes how historical imagination can transform our perception of ancient sites, such as the fictional estate of Guermantes. Guermantes, a recurring symbol in Proust’s magnum opus “In Search of Lost Time,” represents an idealized vision of the past, embodying the timelessness and continuity of history. The following excerpt from “Contre Sainte-Beuve” beautifully captures the essence of this transformation, illustrating how the past and present converge through the lens of imagination:

“And if Guermantes does not disappoint one as all imagined things do when reduced to reality; this is undoubtedly because at no time is it a real place, because even when one is walking about in it, one feels that the things one sees there are merely the wrappings of other things, that reality lies, not in this present but far elsewhere, that the stone under one’s hand is no more than a metaphor of Time; and the imagination feeds on Guermantes visited as it fed on Guermantes described because all these things are still only words, everything is a splendid figure of speech that means something else…. As for the castle towers, I tell you they are not only of that date, they are still in it. This is what stirs one’s heart when one looks at them. People always account for the emotional quality of old buildings by saying how much they must have seen in their time. Nothing could be more untrue. Look at the towers of Guermantes; they still look down on Queen Matilda’s cavalcade, on their dedication by Charles the Bad. They have seen nothing since. The moment when things exist is determined by the consciousness that reflects them; at that moment, they become ideas and are given their form; and their form, in its perpetuity, prolongs one century through the midst of others.”[2]

That final sentence resonates with me profoundly, both emotionally and instinctively. It elucidates why I have often conveyed to friends and family that, despite not having physically traversed great distances in my lifetime, I have, in truth, journeyed to more places and temporalities than almost anyone I know. This has been achieved through my extensive readings and the curation of my collections.

It also illuminates why, nearly twenty-five years ago, when a beloved friend and colleague faced a life-threatening health condition, I found it fitting to send her an antique silver Ethiopian Coptic Cross from my collection. This cross, approximately a century old, was likely crafted from silver originating from a Maria Theresa Trade Thaler. Accompanying the cross was a note explaining that, although it resided in my collection as an antiquarian item, it was made by the Faithful, for the Faithful, to aid the Faithful in prayer. Thus, the aura of its origin and use still imbued it with a sacred presence, which she, as one of the Faithful seeking prayer, would find comforting during that critical time. The words of Proust, I believe, provide a more cogent explanation of what I, ever the antiquarian, attempted to convey in my letter.

[1] A powerful discussion of the current imbalance in the Academy, with its excessive favoring of critical history and the attendant detrimental societal affects, is found in an essay by Julian Young. Unfortunately, the essay, which has a convincing introduction and general analysis of the situation, suffers horribly from poor analysis in the section entitled The Anxieties of Youth and fails absolutely in the particulars of its conclusion, which approaches an ideological agenda despite its disclaimers. The essay is still recommended for it strong beginnings as it only goes off the rails towards the very end. Young, J. (2023). The Uses and Misuses of History: Reflections on Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation. Society, 60(670-683). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00879-0

[2] Bann, S. (1987). Clio in Part: On Antiquarianism and the Historical Fragment. Perspecta, 23, 37, quote is cited in fn25 to Proust, M. (1984). By way of Sainte-Beuve (S. Townsend Warner, Trans.). London: Hogarth. 182-183.

In Praise of Sîn-lēqi-unninni, Ancient Co-Author of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Clay tablets. Story of Gilgamesh and Aga. Old Babylonian period, 2003-1595 BC. Sulaymaniyah Museum Collection, Iraqi Kurdistan

Clay tablets. Story of Gilgamesh and Aga. Old Babylonian period, 2003-1595 BC. Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraqi Kurdistan. (CC-BY SA 4.0. Dr. Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin).

Homer, even if the fictive creator of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is inseparable in the mind from those masterful and inspiring works of literature. Equally inseparable should be Sin-lēqi-unninni from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Andrew George, whose engaging translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh is readily acknowledged by later translators of the epic as “a master class in philological precision and ingenuity,” has this to say about Sin-lēqi-unninni:

According to Babylonian tradition the [Epic of Gilgamesh] was the work of a certain Sîn-lēqi-unninni, a scholar from Uruk who was believed to have been a contemporary of Gilgamesh himself. However, Sîn-lēqi-unninni bears a name of a kind not found before the second millennium, so the tradition clearly preserved an anachronism. Instead, there is little doubt that Sîn-lēqi-unninni’s name was associated with the epic because he was the man who gave it its final, fixed form. Sîn-lēqi-unninni is thus one of the earliest editors in recorded history. From a comparison of the standard version of the first millennium with the older fragments we know that the person responsible for the standard version remodeled the poem. He provided it with a new prologue and recast the story to emphasize the theme of wisdom gained through suffering. Probably he was responsible for interpolating a version of the flood story, adapted from the old poem of Atra-hasis, and for appending to the epic as Tablet XII the rump of one of the Sumerian poems of Bilgames in an Akkadian prose translation. He left his mark also on the prosody, reducing variation in parallel and similar passages by combining their lines and repeating them verbatim to produce a text characterized by long sections of repetition where older versions had none. For this he often stands accused of damaging the poem’s literary qualities, but at the same time it can be argued that he introduced a profundity of thought that was probably lacking in the older versions.

Though the editorship of Sîn-lēqi-unninni probably changed the poem so radically that it is no wonder the Babylonians later named him as its author, it is clear from the multiple versions of the second millennium and from the existence of textual variants in the standard version of the first millennium, that he was not the only individual to leave his mark on the written epic. However, we know nothing of these others.
George, Andrew (2008) ‘Shattered tablets and tangled threads: Editing Gilgamesh, then and now.’ Aramazd. Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 3 (1). pp. 11-12.

George, perhaps, does an injustice to Sin-lēqi-unninni, by relegating him to the role of editor alone. Sin-lēqi-unninni was not mere scribe, nor compilator, nor even editor; rather, because of the number and weight of the substantive additions and structural changes he made to the epic, we may rightly view him as an ingenious co-creator of the ever-inspiring epic, such that modern publications could have a title page reading Sin-lēqi-unninni’s Epic of Gilgamesh.

Book cover, Andrew George The Epic of Gilgamesh

Like George, my first introduction to Gilgamesh was the narrative prose synthesis by N.K. Sandar, The Epic of Gilgamesh. George read the 1960 copyrighted version in the Penguin Book series whereas I read the 1972 revised copyrighted version (reprinted in 1981). Also, like George, I have been enthralled by the epic ever since; although, admittedly, he more so since he devoted his life to Assyriology and teaching the Akkadian and Sumerian language and literature. Indeed, his inspired, scholarly translation of the work, The Epic of Gilgamesh, referenced above, was also published by Penguin Books (©1999, 2003, 2020), and is likely my favorite translation.

The life that you seek you will never find:
when the gods created mankind,
death they dispensed to mankind,
life they kept for themselves.
The Epic of Gilgamesh (2020), A. George, p. xlv

Two other translations of the poem in my library, both meritorious and worthy of note, include the recently published Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic, by Sophus Helle (2021), which sought to strike a middle ground between George’s scholarly translation and the “translations of translations,” which can be used to described the other work in my library, Stephen Mitchell’s Gilgamesh (2004). Harold Bloom described Mitchell’s version of Gilgamesh as the “best I have seen in English” at the time it was published.

Book cover, Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh is a well I go to for reflection and creative thought repeatedly. This is not surprising, as The New York Review of Books concisely notes that Gilgamesh inspires reflection and creativity on a multiplicity of levels:

In the century and a half since its rediscovery, however, and especially since World War II, Gilgamesh has made up for lost time. It has been translated into at least two dozen languages and been the inspiration for countless works of theater, film, poetry, fiction, and visual art. Musical responses to Gilgamesh include several operas, a ballet, hip-hop, jazz fusion, and an ear-pummeling track called “Gilgameš” by the Greek extreme metal band Rotting Christ.

Gilgamesh has also been acclaimed as the earliest work of ecological literature and included in The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature as a founding text of queer writing, for its treatment of the relationship between Gilgamesh and his wild-man friend, Enkidu. The cultural energy of Gilgamesh shows no sign of dimming; the novelist Naja Marie Aidt describes it as a “fireball” that “has torn through time,” constantly in a process of reentry to the present.
New York Review of Books (October 20, 2022), “A Fireball from the Sands,” by Robert Macfarlane.

Some of my favorite more recent creative endeavors include two musical works. The first is a Lament on the Death of Enkidu, set to music and sung in Akkadian, based on the poetry of the epic. Peter Pringle, the creator, notes that he was helped along in his pronunciation of the Akkadian by Dr. George. It is simply stunning. Take a moment to listen and reflect on your mortality.

Gilgamesh’s Lament for the Death of Enikidu

The second is a nod to the ecological message that many find in the epic related to the consequences of the indiscriminate felling of the cedar forest in Lebanon. As explained in the New York Review of Books:

During the UK’s pandemic lockdown, [Robert] Macfarlane cowrote an album with the singer-songwriter and actor Johnny Flynn, Lost in the Cedar Wood. They collaborated on lyrics, sharing photos of notebook pages while in their respective homes, and Flynn would set them to music. “It felt like a wild wonder, to be able to feed words into the Johnny Flynn Song Machine and get a demo back a few days later!”

In addition to daily life in lockdown, the album is inspired by the Epic of Gilgamesh: “We wanted to write something both ancient and urgent,” said Macfarlane. “At the heart of Gilgamesh is the story of an unwise ruler, Gilgamesh himself, taking his axe to the Sacred Cedar Wood and felling these extraordinary trees. A few months after we began work on it, the Fairy Creek calamity started to unfold on Vancouver Island, with the premier of British Columbia, John Horgan, allowing the logging of the old-growth cedar forest there, including trees up to 2,000 years old.” Lines like “It was the first of the tellings/Of all of the fellings” (from the song “Tree Rings”), while unfortunately evergreen, took on a particular significance.
New York Review of Books (July 10, 2021), Ramblin’ Man. Robert Macfarlane, interviewed by Willa Glickman.

Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane’s Tree Rings

To circle back to the beginning, this remarkable creativity is very much, I believe, the result of the creativity and authorship of the ancient editor of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Sîn-lēqi-unninni. He deserves more credit for the depth and reflection which is inspired by the ancient epic in its most familiar form. Let us celebrate his memory every time we read the epic or enjoy any of its derivative inspirational works.