Time Travel, Epic of Gilgamesh

If travelling through time were possible (I phrase 'possible' lightly, because, on some level I believe we access this remarkable ability almost daily — more on that in a moment) by means of an Einstein Rosen bridge to propel me backward and forward through time and space, I would travel somewhere between c. 2000-1400 BCE, Mesopotamia, to when The Epic of Gilgamesh was written.

This story gripped me. Written on twelve clay tablets, The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the earliest surviving literary works, dealing with friendship, death, and our quest for immortality. In the story, after the death of his friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh ventures on a quest to find eternal life in the form of the flower of immortality, a plant called, 'The Old Man Who Becomes a Young Man' that restores a person to their youthful state.  

Gilgamesh retrieves the plant by diving to the bottom of the sea, but a serpent later eats it after being attracted by its fragrance, and so Gilgamesh believes he has failed in quest, and returns to his city of Uruk empty handed. 

But he doesn't really fail. While reading this story for the first time back in 2008, in the comfort of a favourite armchair, I smiled at the fact that Gilgamesh had achieved immortality through the power of words. His tale survived for thousands of years, spanning multiple generations and formats, such as spoken word, print, and electronic text — to become one of the oldest surviving stories in history.

I would travel through time and speak with the author of the Epic of Gilgamesh (or Gilgamesh, if he really did exist), and tell him that he didn't fail. I would speak to him about the beauty of words, and the life that carries on even after we die. Writing and telling stories, shared in any culture is a vehicle for immortality.

The Future of the Book is its power to take us forward or backward in time, and, as a recorder of lives,  has an uncanny ability to take us to other times, places, and moments in our life.

Last Post and Exhibition Opening

Hey all!

Its been great reading everyone's posts this semester, so for my last post I wanted to invite you all to the opening of my exhibition "Science in Colour!" on the third floor of Victoria College from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm this Friday evening!

I know there is also a pub night at exactly this time, but you could come see the exhibition, have some cake (there is a huge cake), and then head on over to the pub!

Here is the Facebook page so feel free to check it out, there are holograms, an interactive colour wheel, 1st edition volumes of Grant's Atlas of Anatomy, and some pretty cool colour blindness tests ... something for everyone!

I hope you all have a great end of term, and to see you all there tonight!

Best,

Sarah

The future of the play text, as imagined from the 1980s and 1990s.

            As much as I fancy myself a Shakespearean, my biggest interest in literature is actually in the staging of American theatre over the last century or so. So, following some of my earlier posts about the future of the book and the ability to include film in the future of the book, I’d like to go back to the 1980s and 1990s (and maybe just a little earlier than that) to tell playwrights and theatre companies about the future of the book that will allow their plays to be recorded more thoroughly.

Part of the reason I choose the recent past, and not the far past, is that many of the technologies that are required for recording audio and video are available to these people (and thus I won’t have to introduce an entire civilization to a futuristic technology that could significantly alter time and technology as we know it). How incredible would it be to have professional-grade recordings of the opening nights of major shows like Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Jonathan Larson’s Rent. Or (from a more “fun” angle) Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera or Cats. Imagine seeing Ethel Merman sing Mama Rose in the original production of Gypsy (whether you love her or hate her – it would be a thrill to see)! Not only would we have more of these things (for we do have plenty of recordings of early broadway shows in the Rogers and Hammerstein collection at the New York Public Library), but by setting this precedent we would make it commonplace for current shows to be recorded.

Having just come back from a theatre trip to New York City (where, among other shows, I saw Waiting For Godot with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen and the opening night of If/Then with Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp), I am desperate to evangelize the importance of documenting these wonderful performances. The production of Waiting For Godot that I saw fundamentally changed the way that I have read and will read Beckett’s text. McKellen and Stewart brought a warmth and a humour to the show (that I think is actually present in the text) that I have literally never been taught exists in the text. And it’s a shame that this production will only exist in the public consciousness as long as theatre scholars like myself talk about it. If filming a Broadway production for posterity was a commonplace practice, we would have a record of these performances that would allow scholars like myself to access them, and we would be able to share them as valuable pieces of entertainment with the masses.

If I could promote this future of the book where it will be essential to include a recorded performance as part of an edition of the play, I could make these practices normalized and much more theatre history could be preserved. It would make interpretative arguments that rely on authorship (broadly speaking) much easier to make, and would help to legitimize performance studies as a field.

If only I had the power (whether in the past or now) to help make this a norm…

Wisdom from a 21st Century Book Junkie

If - nay, when! - I go back to the past, impart my wisdom, and pollute timelines, what advice will I give people regarding books, knowledge, and information?

(Disclaimer: This post was written on caffine deprivation at the end of the school year. I am tired. Please don't take any of the rest of this post seriously. Better yet, don't even grade this post. This is my narcissistic, Divine Manifesto wherein I fancy myself a god.)

Given my knowledge of the "future", I imagine imparting this wisdom in the form of stone tablets with a lot of thou shalls and thou shall nots. I think, if given the option, I would go leapfrog-ing through time, in Europe, and impart this knowledge upon those working with texts:

1) Thou shall write and annotate in the margins of your works. Writing in the margins will help the future generations of scholars to deconstruct many aspects and nuances of daily life. We, the future, like it when you annotate.

2) Thou shall not strip books of lineage markings so as to reclaim the book as your own.  (This was fairly common with the dissolution of royal libraries in Britain between the 14th-16th centuries, especially. In the 15th century, when Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester died, his library was dissolved by John Somerseth. Somerseth allegedly stripped off the Dukes crest from the inside of the book, stamped it with his own crest, and donated it to the University of Cambridge as though it was from his own collection. Cheeky.) I would impart to these royal families and aristocrats the future importance of provenance and lineage, in attempting to reconstruct the past.

3) Thou shall allow illustrators and scribes to sign their work, allowing for further comparative study of books and where they come from. Indeed, I would impart onto them the colophon.

4) Thou shall endeavor to make more Rosetta Stones in every language possible.  The amount of languages we've lost is staggering. The wealth of knowledge we've lost with the inaccessibility to translate is incomprehensible.  For example, I would demand that Linear A - the name we give to the undeciphered language of the Minoans (Greeks), be written along side other languages, preferably Egyptian or Aramaic.

5) Thou shall allow and encourage women to write and publish! This one is obvious for a number of reasons.  But I think this will solve a lot questions about 'anonymous' authors who's work survives today. I'm sure it's all brilliant women behind these seminal works. In keeping with that, Rule 5.1 will be: thou shall not destroy woman's work! I would like to read the Book of Eve, for instance, which was likely destroyed in the 4th century AD by the church official, Epiphanius. (Though I suspect the current Pope has a copy of it under lock and key.)

6) Thou shall declare war against bookworms (silver fish and firebrats). They destroy everything we hold dear. Although they occasion provide information on where the book has been. But that won't be needed since everyone will be operating with a standardized colophon.

7) Thou shall not invade other territories and burn down their libraries. Alexandria is not to be touched, under pain of being incinerated by my futuristic ray gun!

8) Thou shall follow the Archaeological Institute of America's guidelines and policies for preserving materials in stable climates. This means no sheds, attics, or basements. I will bring with me acid free boxes from the future. Not to worry.

9) Thou shall not lose works that I've decided are seminal. I know, some cultures have oral traditions and don't like to write things down - I'm looking at you, Greeks. But I must have the lost Homeric epics. Find a list of other works that are lost to us that really shouldn't be here.

10) Thou shall not censor literature or ideas under any circumstance. Proliferation of books and ideas are encouraged.  Book-burning and other destructive actions against books are also banned. Need I remind you of my futuristic ray gun?