the darkness of the sun: from gilgamesh to grunge

last july* i wrote about my summer's study, which i called the apocalyptic summer:  explorations of the text and images and commentaries on the apocalypse to john the divine, the book of revelation.  one of the most important images in that book is the temple, and i became especially interested in the temple within.

that interest led to consider the journey within, journey into the heart, often the heart of darkness, the underworld journey.  it is a journey necessary for all of us if we are to find eternal life, but it is not something one is likely to hear about in sermons, not even on holy saturday, when as we say in the symbol of the faith, jesus the christ 'descended into hell.'  and yet it is a journey that has been wondered sung about for as long as we have written records and memories.**

to help with this winter reise, this journey into the inner darkness, i have moved for the winter into a tiny space in the dark of a clump of fir trees.  not quite so dark and confining as new grange, perhaps, but probably sufficient for a yankee.

yesterday i read david ferry's english rendering of the gilgamesh epic,*** as old a story perhaps as any we have.  it includes the hero gilgamesh's journey into the underworld to find the secret of life.  he is overwhelmed by grief at the death of his companion enkidu.  much as dante experiences in the divine commedy, there are layers to gilgamesh' journey.  this is ferry's wonderful wording of the third layer:

'The Scorpion Monster Being said to him:

". . .
This is the path of the sun's journey by night.

Lightless the sun utterly lightless goes
from the setting to the rising through the mountain.

This is the path of the sun, utterly dark,
twelve leagues of darkness through, utterly lightless.

No mortal would ever be able to go this way."
Gilgamesh said, his body seized in terror:

"This is the way that Gilgamesh must go,
weeping and fearful, struggling to keep breathing,

whether in heat or cold, companionless."
. . .

After the Scorpion Dragon Being spoke,
Gilgamesh went to the entrance into the mountain

and entered the darkness alone, without a companion.
By the time eh reached the end of the first league

the darkness was total, nothing behind or before.
He made his way, companionless, to the end

of the second league.  Utterly lightless, black.
There was nothing behind or before, nothing at all.

Only, the blackness pressed in upon his body.
He felt his blind way through the mountain tunnel,

struggling for breath, through the third league, alone,
and companionless through the fourth, making his way,

and struggling for every breath, to the end of the fifth
in absolute dark, nothing behind or before.

the weight of the blackness pressing in upon him.
Weeping and fearful he journeyed a sixth league,

and, blind, to the end of the seventh league, alone,
without a companion, seeing nothing at all,

weeping and fearful, sturggling to keep breathing.
. . .

[he similarly struggles without sight and with difficulty of breath for the eight, and ninth leagues, crying for his lack of any companion.]

'Just then, at the end of the ninth league, just once
the rough tongue of the North Wind licked his face.

It was like the tongue of a wild bull or a lion.
He struggled on through the darkness, trying to breathe.

. . .

through eleven leagues of the darkness, nothing at all
and something, ahead of him, a league ahead

a little light, a grayness, began to show.
Weeping and fearful, struggling to keep breathing,

he made his way through the last league of the journey,
twelve leagues in the darkness, alone, companionless,

weeping and fearful, struggling to keep breating,
he made is way and finally struggled out free

into the morning air and the morning sunlight.

He emerged from the mountain into a wonderful garden.
Gilgamesh looked at the garden and wondered at it.

The fruits and the foliage of the trees were all
the colors of the jewels of the world,

carnelian and lapis lazuli,
jasper, rubies, agate, and hematite,

emerald, and all the other gems the  earth
has yielded for the delight and pleasure of kings.

And beyond the garden Gilgamesh saw the sea.

(David Ferry, Gilgamesh:  A New Rendering in English Verse (Farrar, Straus and Giroux:  1992), pp. 50-53.)

and i do not think i am pushing stewart's thesis of the re-emergence of primal images and texts in popular music with sound garden's 'black hole sun.'****

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBXGxgreM1k



*(http://www.neocappadocians.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html)
**i can't recommend too much r. j. stewart's excellent book, the underworld initiation (http://www.amazon.com/Underworld-Initiation-journey-towards-transformation/dp/1892137038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322869827&sr=8-1) in which he discusses, among other things, the survival of the necessity of the inner journey in folk songs.
***(http://www.amazon.com/Gilgamesh-New-Rendering-English-Verse/dp/0374523835/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322870187&sr=1-3)