In The Beginning, There Were Words
"I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story."
That's how the beginning of the Epic of Gilgamesh goes.
It's one of the most famous myths in history. This story has been hailed as the first recorded epic, hailing all the way back to the twenty-first century B.C.E. It's been translated, obviously, but there are certain pieces we can glean from the translation that tell us just how a story began throughout history. As the first blog post of A Day in the Page, where we study what makes stories worth telling, what better way to begin than... the beginning.
Before Sumerian civilization existed, written records were nonexistent. It's indisputable that religion and storytelling has existed far, far before Mesopotamian cuneiform. As humans, we naturally gravitate towards the idea of rationality, and before physics and weather could be
explained away through science, civilizations created gods to fulfill those roles. How else to spread their beliefs, then, but through oral stories? Passing down tradition orally was the only way to communicate tradition and culture before writing, and even after it existed, there is evidence that oral storytelling refused to fade away. The Epic of Gilgamesh embodies this oral tradition perfectly. We begin with the words, "I will proclaim," the only reference we will ever see towards an outside speaker. It is these words, though, that are the most telling. Even the structure of the first paragraph raises parallels with oral tradition. The introduction of Gilgamesh as "this" creates a sort of dynamic action in the sentence. It is not far-fetched to imagine a man gesticulating wildly to a crowd, his voice resonant with the lifetime of experience he has had with proclaiming the deeds of Gilgamesh. Even later we come to understand that Gilgamesh himself recorded his epic on a tablet before entrusting it to the people of Ur. By this time, the story must have been passed down long enough that Sumerians were comfortable with the idea of using cuneiform as a record. Still, it recalls memories of earlier times, when the ability to write was regaled as a noble trait and only those of sufficient rank could be taught to read.
This idea of oral storytelling isn't only present in the Epic of Gilgamesh, though. Beowulf has been a story nearly as well-received as Gilgamesh's, though for different reasons. It is unclear when exactly the story of Beowulf was created, or even if it was completed by the same person who first told it, but we are aware that it was originally meant as a traditional oral story. An excerpt of Beowulf, translated by Clarence Griffith Childs, has a single word for the first sentence: "Lo!" It is a call to attention, a way to garner interest. It carries the same purpose as exclamations such as "listen to me!" or "hear my words!" Even more indicators of Beowulf's status as an oral tradition present themselves: multiple translations all agree that the words "we have heard tell", or something appropriately similar, appear several times in the story. This emphasis on hearing and other sensory imagery all imply a sort of physical connection between storytellers. Even if the story had simply been passed down through the generations as a folk tale, its history as an oral piece stands tall and proud.
That was the way of things for thousands upon thousands of years. Written tradition, even though we have records of large amounts of literate people in Greece, Rome, and China, did not become the norm until books were both easily printable and readily available. In Greece, amphitheaters were built, specifically designed to carry sound so that orators could espouse their beliefs and tell their stories. In Rome, speaking and art became staples just as gladiatorial bouts. Even as far along as the late Middle Ages, literacy wasn't so common a thing that people could read fluently, and books had become scarce outside of monasteries. It was only in the last six hundred years, when the Gutenberg press truly began to exert its influence on the world, that stories began to appear on the page. Even then, novels and other such stories wouldn't gain traction until around 1605, when Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote was released in two parts.
Oral tradition has been a part of human culture, regardless of civilization, color, gender, or even province, for thousands upon thousands of years. Why, then, do we think of printed books when stories are mentioned? I believe that in progressing to a "paper age", we've forgotten a part of that culture. We still tell stories, but we read them out of books, rather than the other way around. The advent of the paper age has driven the necessity of orally passing stories down out of our cultures. We have paper and ink; what more could we need? Why should I tell you a story and expect you to perfectly remember it, detail for detail, when I could record it in a book with less time and effort? It's all a matter of convenience.
It's even had an impact on the direction of our writing styles. Take a look at the first paragraph of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Take that, read it through, and compare it to this:
"The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed."
That's the first paragraph of Stephen King's The Gunslinger, a novella that constitutes the first part of the Dark Tower series. Notice the differences: where the Gilgamesh intro is wordy, proclaiming the praises of Gilgamesh himself, the Gunslinger intro is almost minimalistic. Despite that, we can argue that the Gunslinger's sole sentence evokes just as much of an image as the entire first paragraph of Gilgamesh. The method of delivery has changed, and we change our inputs accordingly; where oral stories used inflection and impression to create more vivid images, the written novel places its words more carefully, gives a greater visual impact using the least amount of space possible.
Oral storytelling has always held a place in our beliefs, in our hearts, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon. We read to our children and tell each other stories about particularly fascinating points in our lives every day. It's a method of communication; we can't live without it. However, with the advent of paper, and the subsequent creation of something so simple as a text editor on a computer, we have drastically altered the course of storytelling as an art form. No longer do we see "Lo!" or "I will proclaim the deeds of Gilgamesh" in the first chapters of our novels. No, we have advanced as a culture to the point where writing has mutated storytelling into an entirely different form. It's up to you, the reader, to decide whether or not the loss of oral tradition is a bad thing. One thing is indisputable, however: we've changed as a people, and in the study of storytelling, there's no going back.
