american-holocaust

170 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTdwelling, and far less cooperative ogre named Humbaba, and togetherwiththe help of the sun god-Enkidu and Gilgamesh destroy Humbabaand cut off his head. Impressed by Gilgamesh, Ishtar, the goddess of love,proposes marriage to him, along with all the riches and accompanyingpleasures she can give him; but Gilgamesh rejects her, knowing of herreputation as a fickle consumer of men. After another sequence of eventsGilgamesh proclaims himself "the most glorious among heroes . . . themost eminent among men" and receives the approving acclaim of multitudes.The spurned Ishtar has her revenge, however, and Enkidu is killed,leaving Gilgamesh to cry "bitterly like unto a wailing woman," for sevendays and seven nights, before launching a quest for the secret of eternallife. At last he is given it, in the form of a thorny plant from the bottomof the sea-but before he can use it the plant is stolen from him by aserpent, and Gilgamesh returns home to live out his days condemned tothe ultimate fate of all mankind.There are, certainly, numerous themes in the Gilgamesh story that haveworked their way into the patterns of subsequent Western literature, andcertainly the quest for eternal life, whether in the form of the earthly paradiseor the fountain of youth, is relevant to understanding the adventuresof Columbus and many of the European explorers who followed him. Ofmore immediate concern, however, is that the world of the adventurer isnot only a male world, but a world in which women are at best irrelevantor ineffectual, and at worst are harlots, castrators, or murderesses. As such,they must at all costs be avoided. Paul Zweig has shown how this is truenot· only in the obvious cases (as with Beowulf having to overcome bothGrendel and Grendel's monstrous mother, or in Odysseus' various dealingswith Calypso, Circe, Scylla, and Charybdis), but also in the genre that, ofall male writings, seems most sympathetic to women-the medieval romance.For on the whole, Zweig observes:medieval romance follows an implicit pattern which enables the adventurerto triumph over his female adversary. Typically, the romance opens as theknight gratefully swears oaths of love and loyalty which bind him to thelady of his choice. Before the story even begins, he is "defeated," helplesslyin love. All he desires, apparently, is to sit idly at the feet of his queen. Whatcould be more painful than to leave the lady's presence? But that is preciselywhat he must do; because his lady requires proof-he encourages her torequire proof-of his love. And so the knight is banished into the wandering,unattached life of adventure, proving his courage and improving his reputation,all for the greater glory of the lady, whom he may, in fact, never seeagain. 66But, of course, seeing her again is not the point. The point is to live a lifeof exploration and danger-though a properly chaste and Christian life ofexploration and danger, fighting against devilish men and beasts of the