What of our souls shall remain?
On the many deaths of Cupid and Psyche
There is a vast lacuna in Classical Literature. Though a few scattered islands may be visible from the shores of this crater, and though some of these may bristle with the odd twisted tree or captive canebrake, a withering wildflower or bitter briars, the abyss is unmistakable and the depths darker than Avernus. And it is unthinkable, incomprehensible: for, we are told, the Latins and Hellenistic Greeks were a strictly libertine race, and their literature, we are told, was smutty and filthy and obscene. Indeed, there are perfectly good reasons for believing all of this was true. The archaeologists, as much as they may have their sweat-poxed skulls only barely out of the sand, seem to produce good reasons for believing this every day — not only are their reasons good, but in fact enfleshed and enstoned, which is quite an achievement more than anything the critic should hope to produce in all his toil! Indeed, something is missing from our texts.
As may be obvious, texts written down on paper require continuous copying (for the moths and worms too must eat), consequently, a delicate and comely parchment-Venus is sure to meet the ire of the first beholding prude. As such, it is to no benefit of ours that virtually all such texts were solely reproduced by monks and other sorts inclined towards such a reaction, and thus are we poorer.
The Mesopotamians, in all their genius and serenity, while also writing on paper (none of which survives), produced a fantastic volume of witnesses of clay (which is even less biodegradable than plastic) and stone (rather bringing to mind the šut abni ‘the stone ones’ of Ur-Shanabi in Gilgamesh), and as such, their literature suffered no great casualties of the above variety. By this miracle alone are we given an image of the culture of Mesopotamia utterly unadulterated by the curious mixture of vanity and modesty endemic to the four quarters of the world today. Mesopotamian epic poetry, wisdom literature, correspondence and even hymns are often unashamed in making reference to carnal delights and beauty. In every major Mesopotamian Epic work it seems, a reader may stretch themselves for a slow sprig dangling lagging summer bunches from a cuneiform pergola, and sate themselves with primordial beauty plainly in words.
It is not a fruit enjoyed by everyone, sweet as it is, though neither are the mustard panels of a Roman villa; we have become cowards in our austerity.
Indeed, it has become clear that in the internet’s maturity, and perhaps more alarming, in Silicon Valley’s maturity, what once was thought to be everlasting is now nothing. So quatrained the Chaldaean Noah in the first “information age”:
im-matī-ma nāru iššâm-ma mīla ubla
At some time the river rose and brought the flood,
kulīlu iqqeleppâ ina nāri
the mayfly floating on the river.
pānūša inaṭṭalū pān šamši
Its countenance was gazing on the face of the sun,
ultu ullânum-ma ul ibašši mimma
then all of a sudden nothing was there!1
How many mayflies have perished yet in the “information age” presaged to give us all immortality? I would wager, surveying the present situation, that the median unit of thought on the internet has rather more slim chances of survival than the median cuneiform receipt did. After all, we’ve excavated as many as 2 million such tablets, with many more surely yet to be found beneath all that bomb-blasted mud and sand between Cyprus and Shush — an area which at any given time could not have hosted more than a couple dozen million at most, and far fewer who were literate. In our world, with its Billions, in our Internet, with its Billions — it is now clear a relative nothing will remain in 3000-4000 years. It costs nothing to drop a piece of clay in a gutter. Not unlike the manuscripts of Europe, there is a running cost associated with every letter digitally stored.
As such, what remains is sure to be selective, and some may say, “Very well, may it be so! Let our waste slip into the deep as our milky mire slips from the privies of men into the ocean!”, but it is now, more than ever, I argue, sure as the sewer to be more disastrous than any loss of knowledge and thought as has ever occurred.
Medieval copyists redacted and censored often far too strictly, but given the circumstances, could be quite forgiving if they felt a work was important enough. Some, however, clearly delighted in the bright colors of the pagan corpse, were faithful and wise adjuvants in the transmission of these texts to our time. Their motives, in any case, for failing to copy all literature was mostly a matter of resources, not unlike today, and where hard decisions were to be made, they discerned according to spiritual reason.
In actual fact, my only complaint with losing decadent literature is precisely that a corpus devoid of extremity stifles the gradient-thriving creative genius, and indeed the soul as a whole. And, though the medieval scribal complex may have balanced heavily on the austere, their purpose to the soul was as the farmer to his land.
Today, it is not a monastery which determines worthiness of eternal salvation, but a corporation, a spiritual abomination whose purpose is extraction and security. A large corporation is far less risk prone than a scribe who takes it upon himself to copy Apuleius. Such a thing seeks attention, and chiefly, money, but seeks no controversy. The convergence of these constraints is the eventual preservation of the vapid, the pacifying, the apolitical, the areligious, the Potteresque only.
Anyone who has used an “AI” surely has seen this. We are promised a world-changing technology — and a third information age — that cannot say “pussy” “pot” or “piss”: I can think of simply nothing more horrifying.
The Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh X 312-315 (ed. and transl. George — whose translation of these lines I wisely decided could not possibly be bettered even with any quantity of license.)