‘Among the greatest things that can ever happen to a person’ – Rainer Maria Rilke
We are bound to ask, ‘Why did Rilke hold the Epic of Gilgamesh in such high regard?’
The answer may be uncomfortable…
In a letter to a friend he confided that he regarded the story an Epic on The Fear of Death.
The first written story known to humanity deals with last things!
And why shouldn’t it?
Part of who we are and why we are here is intimately caught up with precisely this psychological crisis.
There may be as many answers to such a crisis as there are individuals attempting to overcome it, or the crisis may resolve itself into a straight choice between two psychological movements:
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Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
‘..then a maggot fell out of his nose…’ … OK, that is sheer brilliance!!! 😀 … reminds me of that word game going around a while ago, where you would pick a favourite, or famous, novel and at the end of the very first sentence the next line would be, ‘And then. the murders started’ 🙂
Case in point, the first sentence in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone … Chapter one: The Boy Who Lived … Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. And then the murders started! …which, now that I think about it, if you know the story, is perfectly true! 😀
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In the the case of Gilgamesh, it is possibly even more than that, like the human condition expressed in one sentence… not bad for an over-four-thousand-year-old story!… Progress, anyone?
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