Gilgamesh translated

‘Gilgamesh’ Review: Love and Death in MesopotamiaThe epic of Gilgamesh is more than 40 centuries old. Simon Armitage’s new translation feels thrillingly alive.By William Giraldi, WSJApril 24, 2026 Much as I admire Simon Armitage's translation, I must say that I am overwhelmed by the excellence of the reviewer, William Giraldi. He is much plauded for his fiction, literary criticism, and journalism. Reading though this review, I often find myself celebrating his uncanny ability to find the mot juste at the very moment when I was wondering how he would extricate himself from a difficult, intricate sentence / thought. There is something almost absurd about attempting to appraise “Gilgamesh,” as though one were asked to appraise wind, or love, or that first human thought that trembled toward language. And yet here comes Simon Armitage, the poet laureate of the U.K., with his stunning new verse translation, not as a vandal of antiquity but as a lucid accomplice to its endurance. As he does…