Thousands of years later, when Sinbad the Sailor is shipwrecked and arrives on that very same island, the two begin a conversation about courage, loss, salvation and sacrifice.įollowing Calasso's masterful retelling of ancient Greek myths in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony and Indic myths in Ka, this richly imaginative work delves into the crucible of our collective consciousness to reimagine the origin stories of one of the earliest human civilizations. Rather than punish Utnapishtim for his disobedience, Enlil, King of the gods, granted the mortal eternal life and banished him to the island of Dilmun. He advised one of his devotees, Utnapishtim, to build a quadrangular boat to house humans and animals, and saved these living creatures from the Flood. But Ea, the god of fresh underground water, didn't agree. But Ea, the god of fresh underground water, didnt agree. I remember days of desperation.'Ī long time ago, the gods grew tired of humans and decided to send a flood to destroy them. A long time ago, the gods grew tired of humans and decided to send a flood to destroy them. Men just went on multiplying and the noise they made was ever more irksome. Calassos style calls to mind Italo Calvinos dreamlike fabulism. It came at the end of a long, tormented story. Roberto Calasso, 'a literary institution of one' ( The Paris Review ), tells the story of the eternal life of Utnapishtim, the savior of man, in the eleventh part of his great literary project. 'The Flood didn't come suddenly as a big surprise. The Tablet of Destinies, a continuous narrative from beginning to end, delves into our earliest mythologies and records the origin stories of human civilization.
A beguiling new reimagining of one of the most ancient and mysterious origin myths of human civilization
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