The first recorded story is said to be written in Ancient Sumeria, titled The Epic of Gilgamesh. It was written on a set of twelve clay tablets, dating back to somewhere between 2750 and 2500 BCE, detailing a story about the King of Uruk. The story follows the King, Gilgamesh, who brings terror to his city despite being a great warrior. In response to this, the Gods create Enkidu, a beast made human, to strike him down. Though after a battle, the two fall in love and embark on heroic adventures together. During one adventure, they kill a monster of the Gods, angering them in the process. As revenge, the Gods send another monster to kill the two, a monster that Gilgamesh and Enkidu again defeat. Eventually, the Gods send Enkidu to his death as punishment for his trouble. The death of Enkidu devastates Gilgamesh, leaving him to seek out immortality, a quest he fails bitterly. In the end, Gilgamesh returns to Uruk with the understanding that no one can defeat death.
While this is not the only story in existence, it is the first we know of. And how telling is it that the first story we have recorded is one of love and devastation?
When you think of literature, many think of emotion. They may think of the safety they feel when alone in bed with a good book, of the vulnerability that consumes them when faced with the raw melancholy of a heartbreaking ending. One may think of the representation and acknowledgment of emotion that literature allows. This is apparent in almost all mediums of literature, such as novels and poetry.
Poetry allows for thoughts and feelings to flow endlessly using metaphors filled with passion. One line of writing I think of often is by Edgar Allen Poe, reading, “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity”. When reciting this line in my mind, I cannot help but think of the truth of it. As people, we all have things in life that drive us insane, be that a job, an assignment, our peers, or our family. We are constantly assaulted with insanity, leaving only small breaks of calm in between. Though, even our calm is not steady waves against a shore. It is a tidal wave crashing against rocks and sand, eroding all it touches.
My own horrible sanity is maintained by the stories in my books. It is a brief respite filled with the aching acknowledgement of humanity’s vulnerability.
I do not know why I continue seeking out what I know will hurt me. I sometimes wonder what it is that makes me find comfort in devastation.
I remember the first time I truly cried reading a book. It was the middle of Summer, hot winds tangling with the branches of trees. I sat on my bed, cooled by the saving grace of my air-conditioned room, and clicked on a book I had previously downloaded to my phone titled If He Had Been With Me. I lazed about in my house for a full day, reading this book from start to finish.
Even though the narrator made it clear from the first chapter that Finny would die at the end, even as words detailing the rainy night and electrocution of him warned me, I was still unprepared for the onslaught of agony that would consume me upon reading his death. I sat, facing the view of my front lawn out my window, and cried.
It wasn’t nice. My crying didn’t consist of soft sniffles and perfectly rosy cheeks while tears collected on my lash line. No, it wasn’t a pretty cry. In fact, I would describe it less as a cry and more as a howl. I filled the cool air of my room with gut-wrenching sobs as I tasted the salt-filled dew drops running down my face to my lips. I drooled as I was unable to close my jaw from the pure unfairness of it all. I didn’t even make a noise, apart from the occasional gasp and choking of air. I couldn’t. I was helpless to do anything but succumb to devastation and feel my insides rip themselves apart.
I don’t know how long I cried for. I only know that, by the end of it, my vision was blurred and I couldn’t breathe through my nose. I cleaned myself up, splashed water on my face, and sat back on my bed.
I later craved another book that would make me feel the same way as If He Had Been With Me did.
And what irony is that? What does it say about a person who sobs so harshly they cannot breathe, yet chases for the same experience that caused that feeling again?
My favorite kinds of stories are the ones that take on a dark, somber, and mysterious tone. To feel utterly gutted and helpless to a piece of literature is a feeling I chase above almost all others. Second only to the feeling of wallowing in my own stew of sorrow. A feeling all humans could relate to at one point or another.
As John Green once stated in The Anthropocene Reviewed, “To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise… We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am still here.”
As a species, humans are made to feel. Not only do we feel, but we have forever tried to put words to those feelings. We have tried to describe, in any way we can, what it is we feel. There is a reason so many forms of literature exist in which the author devotingly describes the melancholy of the human spirit. There is a reason why the first story ever recorded sought to share heartbreak.
When reading, one may begin to better understand and process their own emotions by living vicariously through a character from a novel. They may, over time, develop the emotional intelligence needed to recognize their own feelings.
When the Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed in 48 BCE, the greatest accumulation of human knowledge was destroyed. Not only was this library filled with historical texts and scientific archives, but it also contained divine works of literature and poetry. It contained dramas and philosophical texts. Perhaps that is part of the reason why such agony was felt at the time of its destruction. Perhaps many were not only mourning the loss of history, but also the loss of their connection these stories allowed for.
All people want to feel seen and heard. We want the connection of feeling vulnerable together. We want to know that somewhere, at sometime, someone else felt what we feel now, and perfectly described it. We want our deepest emotions to be unveiled and acknowledged with gentle reverence. We want connection.
That is precisely what reading is– an acknowledgement of vulnerability which allows for connection.
And even though reading often causes me pain, even though it rips me open and fills my lungs with aching sorrow, I adore the feeling of it sewing me back together by the end. When I’ve felt emotions so deep in my bones they begin to rot me from the inside out, yet I cannot put them to words, reading is both an escape and an acknowledgement.
I give reading 5 stars.