I have readAbū Nuwās ...
Zoltan Szombathy, Mujun: Libertinism in Medieval Muslim Society and Literature (2013) |
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I have written... nothing ...
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trying to understand the deep time of Iraq
the oldest literature on Earth
For a long time, Comparative Literature lived in a relatively shallow time perspective, if I dare say so. Greek and Latin texts, very well assimilated, constituted at the same time a temporal frontier and a familiar territory. There was nothing older than one's own Homer, an author with whom critics like George Steiner were familiar since their early childhood. Myself, I could read it only in Polish, having no possibility, not even a dream, of learning Greek, but it was all there, at least roughly speaking.
Nonetheless, as Comparative Literature is today, after David Damrosch and so on, literature older than Homer is in fact a must. There is at least the epos of Gilgamesh. But I wonder how much farther one may go in this direction, And what is the weight of such a time perspective on the subsequent literary creation. Is it a forgotten past, unearthed and appropriated by white, colonial archaeologists? What does this time depth does to a contemporary Iraqi writer?
Nonetheless, as Comparative Literature is today, after David Damrosch and so on, literature older than Homer is in fact a must. There is at least the epos of Gilgamesh. But I wonder how much farther one may go in this direction, And what is the weight of such a time perspective on the subsequent literary creation. Is it a forgotten past, unearthed and appropriated by white, colonial archaeologists? What does this time depth does to a contemporary Iraqi writer?
