Reality and Imagination in Murakami’s The Murder of the Commander and the Ancient Epic of Gilgamesh
The theme of the novel the murder of the commander by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is similar to the epic “Gilgamesh” (King of ancient Uruk in the third millennium BC) in many points, although the context is different, but this theme carries an atmosphere similar to that of the epic of Gilgamesh more than a matter of analogues and origins. The novel partly belongs to the mythic world, with no world in which gods and demigods are fraternizing with humans. Did Haruki try to create new legends like The Legend of the mothers in the second part of Faust / Goethe, but in a modern, age-appropriate way We find a lot of points of convergence between the two novels in the part of the forest adventure (reality), although the goal of the trip is different, as well as the vision of the lower World (Fantasy/ metaphor corridors), which is very close to our novel. They are really similar, but they are also different!
The environment in which Gilgamesh lived is very similar to the environment that the author of the yayani painted, where the virgin nature, with all its elements represented: the forest, the Prairie, the mountain (the home of the gods), the river – sea – ocean (the boundary between existence and nothingness), the cave (dwelling), the Horned Owl, and the crow (representing the cycle of day and night life). If Gilgamesh( two-thirds God, one-third human), the Japanese author chose the hero of his novel An Artist (Painter) and art also carries divine inspiration, and both are described by his extreme predilection for women, then in the epic of Gilgamesh : his lust does not leave a virgin for her lover, neither the daughter of a warrior nor the wife of a nobleman, and yet this is the patron of the city, wise, handsome, stubborn[!],
And in our version he himself happens to say: .. And I don’t know why! I never felt any guilt about seducing women who were learning at my hands. It even seemed to me that having a sexual relationship with them is quite normal, like asking someone we run into on the street about the clock. Just as Gilgamesh took “Enkidu” as a companion on his journey in the forest, we find our protagonist taking” munchki” as a companion on his journey in the forest.. And just as Gilgamesh was alone on his journey in the lower world, the hero of our novel was alone on his journey in the lower World.. The results of the adventure in both cases were similar, as we will see.
In the forest Gilgamesh was accompanied by ” Enkidu “and the goal was to eliminate” Humbaba”, the God of the forest, we read: After twenty leagues breakfasts, after another thirty leagues they stopped to spend the night, fifty leagues they cut in one day, and in three days Tana had cut the March of a month and two weeks. They crossed seven mountains before reaching the Forest Gate, approaching it in Wonder. They had not yet seen the majestic Azure trees, but they were most impressed by the supports of the gate. It was seventy-two cubits high, twenty-four cubits wide, the axis, throat and shoulder were all elaborate. Her work was made in Nippur-the holy city of Enlil. They went together, leaving the gate behind them until they reached the Green Mountain. …., There Gilgamesh dug a well in front of the setting sun. He went up the mountain and put good food on the ground and said: “O Mountain, O home of the gods, gives me a comforting dream”. Then they took each other by the hand and lay down to sleep, and the sleep flowing from the night contained them….
And the next day they cut twenty leagues, and then they had breakfast, and after another thirty leagues they stopped to spend the night. They dug a well before the sun went down and Gilgamesh climbed the mountain, put good food on the ground and said: “O Mountain, O home of the gods, sends a dream to Enkidu. Send him a comforting dream…, and when they came down from the mountain Gilgamesh grabbed the axe in his hand, and knocked down the cedar trees. When Humbaba heard the noise from afar, he became angry… Humbaba came out of his powerful House made of cedar trees, and the.., the eights wind blew on hambaba, smeared his eyes, paralyzed his mobility, he could not run or run, and he was forced to surrender. Gilgamesh heeded the word of his companion, took the axe in his hand, took off the sword from his region, struck Humbaba with a stab of his sword in the neck, and his comrade Enkidu struck the second blow. At the third blow.
Humbaba fell; he was lying in the stillness of the dead. The chaos came after that, it was Humbaba who they knocked down was the guardian of the forest, this is who haramoun and Lebanon were trembling at his words. Now the mountains have moved the hill ranges have moved, because the keeper of the Cedars is dead. So the hero of our novel was accompanied by his friend” munchki”, and the goal was to check the sound of the” bell”, which our hero hears in his hut, and its source is the forest. We read: I caught the flashlight by hand. “Munchki” came out of the door, took out of the trunk of the Jaguar a large flashlight, which seemed to have prepared him for this adventure. Then we climbed the seven steps into the wild forest.
The Moonlight was not the same as yesterday, but it illuminated our foothold. We turned behind the mock-up of the temple, making our way through the branches to the Crouch of the rocks. And then we heard the hearing there again. There is not the slightest doubt that a mysterious sound is seeping out from among the voids of the rocks. “Munchki” slowly circled around her, examining her voids very attentively using the light of a lamp. But he did not find anything out of the ordinary. Just a number of ancient rocks covered with mold, randomly stacked on top of each other. He turned to me. His face in the moonlight looked to me like a mask. Did my face look the same to him; you see “It could be someone, asking for help,” he said, as if talking to himself.
But who was it that managed to get under this pile of heavy stones?”” …, Menchik kept thinking deeply, and then he said: a professional company should be called to remove that amount of rock. The workers used a special car to transport a small excavator to the top of the mountain. We continued the work from a distant place, almost all the rocks were removed at mid-noon, we discovered other stones under the crouch, lined up relatively regularly, forming a flat stone base, resembling a square with an area of two meters from each rib, and under it a solid grid, and its depth is less than two and a half meters. Completely surrounded by stones. It seems that its bottom has only natural soil; completely devoid of grass.
The room was completely empty: no trace of someone calling for help, no mummy resembling stiffened flesh. Except that at the bottom there is a bell. When the workers left, the place was overshadowed by the usual mountain silence. The place that had been turned upside down looked as sad and painful as a human skin that had undergone surgery. The branches of the Jungle, which were proud of their height and prosperity, crashed under the weight until the last breath. The rain had completely stopped, but the sky was clouded with gray, overcast clouds.
And if Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu dared to the forest and its guardian, it was the reason for Enkidu’s death, as we will explain, as it was the reason for his journey to the lower world; in search of immortality. The same act brought a similar result to the “munchki” of the hero’s companion in our novel, in which the latter had a near-death experience. In the epic of Gilgamesh we read: ANU said to Enlil: “one of them should die, because they have killed the bull of heaven and killed a lamb, let him be the one who stripped the mountains of cedar trees”. But Enlil said: “Let Enkidu die, but Gilgamesh will not die”. And so Enkidu fell ill, he lay down before Gilgamesh and the tears flowed from his eyes in Rivers. Gilgamesh said to him: “beloved brother, why are they leaving me to take you?”
He also said, “Do you see, do I have to sit outside the door of the spirits next to the ghosts of the dead, and never see my beloved brother again?””. And in our novel we read: Menshki said: “about the stone hole in the forest. I spent about an hour there the other day. I sat on the bottom of it alone without a lamp, after I closed it and piled heavy rocks on top of the lid. And I asked you to come back in an hour to get me out of it. Do you remember”…”Death is not the cruelest thing that I feared when I was locked in a closed and dark place.No.no? I was scared when I thought that I was risking staying alive like this forever. I was really scared then. A breathtaking fear. I was hallucinating, I saw the walls coming together to crush me. It is necessary to overcome this fear if one wants to survive there. He should win over himself. And this is the benefit of a near-death experience.”
The epic of Gilgamesh, as an introduction to the underworld, was based on the story of the flood in ancient Iraq (the epic environment), an ancient Sumerian and Babylonian myth that predates religious narratives…The Japanese writer based his novel on an ancient Japanese legend, The Legend of the mummified Buddha Mummy : a Buddhist monk from ancient times, following the path of death to achieve eternal enlightenment, built a room of stones underground, equipped with a bamboo tube emerging from the surface of the earth to provide ventilation.
Before entering it, the monk follows a diet known as” mukujiki”, so that if he dies his body does not decompose, but turns into a fully mummified mummy. The weather was decided to get out of there after three years and three months. Thus, the monk’s mummy is placed in a coffin inside the temple, and people make pilgrimages to him in worship and distress. And in the lower world in the epic of Gilgamesh we read: when Gilgamesh heard this he complied with what the scorpion man said, he followed the path of the sun to his east through the mountain. And as soon as he cut one league, the darkness intensified around him. He couldn’t see anything in front of him or behind him, there was no light. Two hours later it was very dark…..
And after he had cut eight leagues, Gilgamesh uttered a loud cry, for it was so dark that he could not see anything in front of him or behind him…, and after twelve leagues the sunlight flowed. And there (the garden of the gods) lived by the sea, the woman who owns the vineyards, the winemaker “sidori”, who advised him, saying: there down in the forest you will find “archanabi” Noti “atnapishtim” (Noah), maybe she crossed the water with him! And already he crossed with him and got to “atanapishtim.As Gilgamesh was alone, he did not have a boat to cross, he had to find the Nauti, and the directions were uncertain. The hero of our novel is carried by the Nauti (faceless) to the other bank of the river on a boat too; in search of “Mariya akikawa”…
He describes the boat: it’s just a wooden box floating on the surface of the water, I didn’t understand what was driving the boat, but we were moving towards the opposite bank, in absolute silence. I don’t hear the sound of an engine or any machine of any kind .It is a description that is almost identical with the boat, the note and the journey of the epic “Gilgamesh”, atenapishtim says, in secret, updating himself: Why does the boat sail without ropes and mast, why the sacred stones are broken, and why the captain does not lead the boat?”! We read from the account of the murder of the commandant a description of the lower world: after that, I made up my mind and bent over like a man on all fours, inserting my upper half into the hole…, its height ranged from sixty to seventy centimeters, and its width did not reach one meter.
And it seemed to me that it goes on endlessly, like a natural tube of darkness, narrowing in places and widening in others. Sometimes it takes the form of a horizontal curve, and the upward slope is sometimes and the downward one is in Phase… I tried to turn around. It was impossible to change the direction of travel. Terror took over all over my body. And I literally froze in that place…, and with great difficulty .My heart was making a restless sound, like the sound of an iron window window being shaken by a violent wind. The burrow grew narrow, and it was difficult to advance. A severe panic swept over me, and my limbs became immobilized, as if paralyzed. My breathing became hard and heavy. The burrow ended abruptly. My body rushed into a space of emptiness in which there is nothing. Finally, I understood. You are located in the hole that is behind the model of the temple in the middle of the wild forest!
