Writings

Tales on tablets

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For the volume on cuneiform narratives I co-edited, I wrote about the episodic nature of Babylonian epics. Akkadian narrative poems were often divided into a series of tablets, and those tablets—I argue—shaped the story told upon them. In Gilgamesh, divisions between tablets often correspond to physical borders in the story, in a conflation of form and content; and in Enuma Elish, the events of Tablet I take on a very different tenor if they are read in the isolated context of that Tablet, instead of the epic as a whole.

“Tablets as Narrative Episodes in Babylonian Poetry,” in The Shape of Stories: Narrative Structures in Cuneiform Literature, edited by Sophus Helle and Gina Konstantopoulos, Cuneiform Monographs 54 (2023, Leiden: Brill), pp. 93–111. Link.

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The shape of stories

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Together with Gina Konstantopoulos, I edited a volume on narratological approaches to cuneiform literary, historical, and religious texts. The goal of the volume is to function as a methodological toolkit, with each of the papers – which span from the third to the first millennium, covering a wide variety of genres in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite – presenting one possible approach to studying the narrative structures found in cuneiform texts, and illustrating that approach through a concrete case study.

With Gina Konstantopoulos, ed., The Shape of Stories: Narrative Structures in Cuneiform Literature, Cuneiform Monographs 54 (2023, Leiden: Brill). Link.

Closure in times of crisis

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Danish. In my tenth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss the Danish word afklaring, roughly translatable as “closure.” Like it’s English counterpart, afklaring denotes a sense of calm and acceptance in relation to a pain either experienced or (more strongly so in Danish) expected. After unpacking some of the forms and ways of achieving such closure, I turn to the afklaring that I try to achieve in relation to the troubled times in which we find ourselves and which only look to grow more dire in the decades ahead.

“Afklaring” (“Closure”), Weekendavisen (13 January 2022). Link.

Monkeys v. robots

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Danish. A selfie taken by a monkey and a comic book drawn by AI clash in a historic copyright case. In deciding whether art created by AI image generators can be awarded copyright, the USPTO is drawing on a surprising legal precedent: the case of Naruto, a crested macaque who took some excellent selfies. As the courts ruled, Naruto is to be seen as his own artistic entity and not merely a tool used by the photographer David Slater, who orchestrated the selfies, meaning that the copyright was void, since Slater was not the author of the picture. But will that conclusion also apply to AI?

“Aber versus robotter” (“Monkeys v. Robots”), Weekendavisen (6 January 2023). Link.

A very Freudian reading

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Danish. For a New Year’s rundown of Danish literary events in 2022, I wrote about “the year’s most Freudian reading experience.” Being the child of two authors has many blessings, as well as a few notable downsides. Among the latter is having to read sex scenes written by your parents. A particularly extreme example of the latter came earlier this year, when my mother published a description of the feeling she experienced when I was conceived, meaning that I ended up reading about my father’s sperm – sperm that was, in some odd way, me.

“Årets mest freudianske læseoplevelse” (“The year’s most Freudian reading experience”), Weekendavisen (30 December 2022). Link.

In search of lost crime

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Danish. The article traces the forgotten origins of crime fiction in medieval Persia. Crime fiction as we know it today consists of two fused elements: crimes and clues, typically in the form of a murder and a series of material remains whose meaning is revealed by a hyper-intelligent detective. It is the latter’s history that I follow in this article, using the surprising etymology of the word “serendipity” as my own clue and tracing a journey from England through France, Italy, Armenia, Iran, and India to a surprising destination. The article was written in response to my mother’s essay about Agatha Christie.

“På sporet af krimien” (“In search of lost crime”), Weekendavisen (23 December 2022). Link.

What is philology?

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The article proposes a new definition of philology as a systematic engagement with crises of reading, focused on the difficulties that prevent readers from gaining access to or drawing meaning from a given text, all the way from scrubbed signs to obscure ontologies. Responding to two recent interventions in the field—Philology by James Turner and World Philology by Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin Elman, and Ku-ming Kevin Chang—the article explores the practices, history, and current state of philology.

“What is philology? From crises of reading to comparative reflections.” Poetics Today ,vol. 43, no. 4 (December 2022): 611–637. Link.

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Thoughtfully thoughtless

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Danish. In my ninth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I draw on Peter Adamson’s Don’t Think for Yourself to explore the concept of taqlid from Arabic philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence. Taqlid refers to a thoughtless reliance on the words of others, as opposed to ijtihad, thinking and examining for oneself. Medieval Arabic thinkers recognized that taqlid was a fact of life: one cannot investigate every topic oneself, so for most topics, we must rely on expert opinion. But in the current political climate, the question of when and how this reliance on experts is justified has become particularly pressing.

“Taqlid,” Weekendavisen (4 November 2022). Link.

Prismatic Gilgamesh

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Drawing on the same notion of prismatic reception that I discussed for Sappho, I discuss the history of Gilgamesh‘s translation and transmedial adaptation, both in the ancient and modern world. I suggest that the best approach for a would-be translator and adapter of Gilgamesh is to seize on that aspect of the epic that resonates most powerfully with them, and amplify it in their own work.

“Prismatic Gilgamesh,” Ancient Near East Today, vol. 10, no. 10 (October 2022). Link.

Nobel and No-bel

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Danish. In this brief piece, I argue that the last three winners of the Nobel prize in literature (Louise Glück, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Annie Ernaux) have a striking resemblance to the three authors who have consistently topped the bookmakers’ lists (respectively, Anne Carson, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Michel Houellebecq). Since it’s widely understood that the prize cannot go to overly similar figures, might the Swedish Academy be deliberately nixing the Nobel hopes of the most popular candidates?

“Samme slags, bare mindre populært” (“Same type, just less popular”), Weekendavisen (14 October 2022)