Read the other Great Myths Here Just before his death, Gilgamesh’s friend Enkidu dreams of the Underworld. While what remains of the story is fragmentary, it is remarkable in part for being one of the earliest descriptions in literature of an Underworld. In this case, it is less a place of punishment than one of eternal boredom and gathering dust. […]
Read the other Great Myths Here In an immensely moving scene, after traveling to the underworld, Aeneas encounters his deceased father there: But in the deep of a green valley, father Anchises, lost in thought, was studying the souls of all his sons to come – though now imprisoned, destined for the upper light. And as it happened, he was […]
Odin & Baldr The High One heard the lowest prophecy: already riddled with the worst of dreams, his boy Baldr would be killed by his brother. And worse: another brother would avenge him, family hacking down family. And worse: these murders would lead to the end, to three winters of war and three more years of only winter, and all […]
[Amid the long illness that leads to Enkidu’s death:] As for Enkidu, his mind was troubled, he lay on his own and began to ponder. What was on his mind he told his friend: “My friend, in the course of the night I had such a dream!” “The heavens thundered, the earth gave echo, and there […]
Following yesterday, here is Book 31 from To the House of the Sun, and my version of the Underworld journey. In Books 29 and 30, Conrad has spent the winter of 1865 communing with the ghosts of the Donner Party at Donner Lake; but upon seeing his starved body suddenly rejuvenating, they flee, and he begins to sink through the […]
Below are excerpts from three of my favorite Underworld journeys from mythology, which also informed my own Underground scene in To the House of the Sun: Book Six of Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas comes upon the shade of his father, who is amazed to see his son, still alive, visiting the land of the dead; Tablet Seven of Gilgamesh, where […]
