Epic moment

Sometimes we just have to stand aside and let our students become the teachers.

By David Alford

Sep 17, 1999 | To be ungracious about it, most of us in this profession are closet prima donnas who secretly or not so secretly want to hold center stage. We may stand aside at the edge of the proscenium like a master of ceremonies shepherding an act, but when the chips are down, it's "God, please give me the glory." Even in the presence of the most scintillating performance by one of "my" students (notice the possessive), there is always some aspect of the spectacle that I manage to take pride in, as if excellence were not really possible without my inspiration. Actually, I am not asking God to give me the credit: I am God.

But occasionally a student breaks through the mask and sows genuine humility, which grows for a few minutes in the infertile ground and then withers before the onslaught of ego. Such a moment happened yesterday, in Humanities 1, "Old World Culture," and the event was so stunning, so immortal, I felt like I had experienced a kind of death and transfiguration.

The class began with a fairly mundane discussion of the "Epic of Gilgamesh," an old Sumerian story from about the third millennium B.C. I tossed out a list of 34 possible connections between elements of the story and our modern consciousness, such things as "abuse of power" and "civilization vs. nature." We were meandering along in typical classroom conversational fashion: too much of me, not quite enough of them, me feeling clearly in control of the gradual meanings we were together shaping.

I asked if anybody could point to parts of the text that particularly struck them and a young mother named Rebeka raised her hand. She asked us to look at a passage in which "Man-Scorpion" asks Gilgamesh -- who has recently lost his comrade-in-arms and brother Enkidu to angry gods -- why he has embarked on his arduous journey in search of everlasting life. Then she read aloud:

For Enkidu; I loved him dearly, together we endured all kinds of hardships; on his account I have come, for the common lot of man has taken him. I have wept for him day and night, I would not give up his body for burial, I thought my friend would come back because of my weeping.

Next Page: Traveling leagues into the darkness

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