Island SixThe Isle of

Sports Heroes and

Enkidu
(Extract from: Muse of the Long Haul Thirty-One Isles of the Creative
Imagination)

Copyright, Dr Ian Irvine, 2013 all rights reserved. All short extracts from the texts discussed used
under fair usage related to review and theoretical critique under international copyright law. All
other images copyright Andy or Ian Irvine, 1984, all rights reserved. Front page image: Glencoe,
Scotland, 1984, copyright Andy Irvine.
Publisher: Mercurius Press, Australia, 2013. NB: This piece is published at Scribd as part of a
series drawn from Ians soon to be print published non-fiction book on experiential poetics
entitled: Muse of the Long Haul: Thirty-One Isles of the Creative Imagination.

Island Six The Isle of Sports Heroes and Enkidu

Whilst reading Chetwynd in England in 1984 I looked up Gilgamesh and Enkidu and came
across the following:
Hero and Shadow (see EGO/Shadow)
When man becomes a social political being he gets cut off from a freer, wilder side of
himself, from the spirit of nature (and the Gods,) and needs to relate to it again. [This is
described in the] relationship between [Gilgamesh] and the more animal Enkidu 1

In my ageing Penguin Classic version of the Gilgamesh epic (as translated by N.K. Sandars) it is
stated that:
When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body. Shamash, the glorious
sun, endowed him with beauty, Adad, the god of the storm, endowed him with courage,
the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others. Two thirds they made him
god and one third man.

If the story, as Jungians would have it, represents an early attempt to integrate lost, unconscious
aspects of the Shadow archetype, then it is ironic indeed that the story was lost to the worlds
collective cultural consciousness from the 7th century BC onwards. The original story seems to
go back to the 3rd millennium BC, predating Homer and much of the Old Testament. It was
apparently copied by the Assyrians in the first millennium from texts stored in the ancient
literary archives at Babylon, Uruk and Nippur. Thereafter it was lost until the 19th century when
Austen Layard, a young Englishman, responsible for the excavation of the ancient cities of
Ninevah and Nimrud came across a number of auspicious looking tablets. They were found in
the palace at Ninevah and were written in cuneiform. It took many years to piece together all the
ancient tablets containing the various poems comprising the Gilgamesh epica kind of
collective psychoanalytic activity in itself! However, in 1928 and 1930 Campbell Thompson was
able to publish a fairly definitive version of the resurrected Gilgamesh epic.
Gilgamesh should be the primary court exhibit for Freudians interested in prosecuting the
masters theory on the link between civilisation and instinctual sacrificeas outlined in
Civilisation and its Discontents. Although Gilgamesh is the very model of the refined, urbane
aristrocratas much as one could be in a third millennium town!he nevertheless depends a
great deal upon the savage vitality of his companion, Enkidu the natural man. As a civilised,
demi-God king Gilgameshs restlessness and erratic nature begin to cause problems for the
people of Uruk. The Gods (who figure prominently in the narrative) are asked by the people to
solve the problem of the kings neurosis. After consultation among themselves they decide to
make Enkidua wild uncivilised man beloved of animals. He is to become Gilgameshs
competitor and friend. Enkidu, however, firstly needs to be civilised enough to enter the
company of the great hero. To this end he is seduced by a prostitute, and then, step by step
introduced to the mores of civilisation. His progress is fastfrom beast to shepherd to
apparently civilised man. The crucial prostitute scene is narrated as follows:
1

Chetwynd, A Dictionary of Symbols, p.170.

And now the prostitute said to Enkidu, When I look at you you have become like a god.
Why do you yearn to run wild again with the beasts in the hills? He listened to her
words with care. It was good advice that she gave. She divided her clothing in two and
with the one half she clothed him and with the other herself; and holding his hand she led
him like a mother to the sheepfolds, and to the feeding place of the shepherds.2

The words and actions of the woman perhaps illuminate the source of an ancient split between
men and women. The scene clearly articulates a fall of some kindit is every bit as profound
and troubling, in terms of the collective history of the psyche, as the Fall outlined in the Old
Testament.
Eventually Enkidu arrives at Uruk where he becomes involved in a wrestling match with
Gilgamesh. The people are amazed at his appearance and shout: He is the spit of Gilgamesh
and This is the one who was reared on the milk of wild beasts and His is the greatest strength
and, most tellingly of all, Now Gilgamesh has met his match. The two wrestle until Gilgamesh
throws Enkidu to the ground after which the two become great friends. With this beast-man now
on the scene the kings former restlessness is diverted into expeditions with his shorter, bigboned double, Enkidu. After initial successes, however, the two get into deeper and deeper
trouble with the Gods due to their hubris. The god Anu eventually steps in and pronounces: One
of the two must die.
Enkidu is chosen, since the god Shamash wishes to preserve Gilgamesh. After an illness
kills Enkidu, we come across the remarkable scene in which Gilgamesh is overcome with grief:
When Gilgamesh touched his heart it did not beat. So Gilgamesh laid a veil, as one veils
the bride, over his friend. He began to rage like a lion, like a lioness robbed of her
whelps. This way and that he paced around the bed, he tore out his hair and strewed it
around. He dragged off his splendid robes and flung them down as though they were
abominations.3

After Enkidus death Gilgamesh feels defeated and alone. There ends the tale in the old
Sumerian, but in later versions (as recorded by the Assyrians) he undertakes a long spiritual
quest for wisdom.
From a Jungian perspective the tragic end to the ancient Sumerian version of the story
illustrates the unhappy situation of human beings condemned to civilised life. Subjectivity is
split asunderillustrated by Gilgamesh and Enkidu who are described as uncanny doubles of
each other. The temporary solution of Gilgamesh living through Enkidusymbolic of freedom,
innocence and oneness with natureproves unsustainable. As the story begins Gilgamesh is split
off from his more beast-like self, and requires a makeshift integration (of shadow and ego) in
order to be more just with his subjects. As the story proceeds the laws made by the increasingly
civilised gods prove too rigorous for man and beast-man alike, and eventually only the noble,
civilised and sad Gilgamesh is permitted to existto, if we extend the metaphor into history, go
forth and found the civilisations of the Ancient Near East, Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, etc.
Although the details of this ancient tragedy were buried (literally in the soil and
metaphorically in the collective unconscious) for millennia, the consequences of humankinds
profound psycho-spiritual sacrifice (due to the switch-over from hunter gatherer to agriculture
2
3

Ed. N.K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 65, Penguin.

Ed. N.K. Sanders, The Epic of Gilgamesh, p.92.

based urban living) nevertheless exerted pressure on all future psycho-spiritual and cultural
developments. If Enkidu as he appears in the story is not recognisably a monster (as we would
come across, say, in a Stephen King novel) he nevertheless concentrates in his being crucial
aspects of what later became archetypal male monstershis beastliness, his bulk, the contrasts
between him and civilised humans, etc). The Jungians are thus probably correct in labelling
him a literary precedent to later Shadow archetypes. In a sense any serious self-exploration these
days, by man or woman, inevitably uncovers the confrontation between self as conditioned by
an all-pervasive, often capitalistic, urban bureaucratic civilisation and self as product of some
other simpler way of living, i.e. to some degree in-tune with wild nature (where-ever that is to be
found these days on planet earth!).
There is a sense in which Gilgameshever after the archetype of heroic man i.e.
archaic prototype of Campbells Hero with a Thousand Facesis in truth a tragic half-human
figure. The severance between natural man and civilised man that occurred around that time
created a Hero Complex that has reverberated down to the present time. According to US poet,
Clayton Eshleman, later splits overlaid an earlier severance, split between animals and humans
that took place in the late Palaeolithic period. Although Id left behind the Heroic fantasy
version of this ancient male pathology I still had to confront aspects of my own Hero Complex
as acted out through sportparticularly cricket.
Whilst living in Adelaide in the mid-70s Id been inspired to bowl quickly through
watching two great Australian fast-bowlersJeff Thompson and Dennis Lilleerepeatedly
destroy the Englands test-match batting line up. Later, I came to admire West Indian quicks like
Michael Holding and Andy Roberts, as well as the Indian fast-bowler, Kapil Dev and New
Zealand great, Richard Hadlee (who I got to train with in 1983). Quick bowlers have to be very
physically fit since in a typical days play they might have to walk, jog or sprint a distance of up
to 16 kilometres. Most fast-bowlers are also expected to be fairly macho personalitiestheyre
expected to appear threatening, aggressive, even ruthless, as they bowl at opposition batsmen.
Watching footage of Jeff Thompson and Dennis Lillee intimidating English top order batsmen in
the mid-70s reveals just how frightening quick bowlers in full flight can be. Batsmen have only a
fraction of a second to respond to deliveries sometimes travelling close to 150km per hour. Some
deliveries are aimed deliberately at their bodies.
By the time I turned 20 I could bowl a cricket ball 130-135 km per hour (a speed
appropriate to first class cricketers) and the youthful dream of playing high level cricket was
coming true. Only problem was, did I really want to live this heroic version of Ian?
It was a cold April afternoon as the bus turned onto the motorway on the outskirts of London on
the way to South Wales. Andy and I had touched down in Paris only a few hours earlierwed
intended to stay there a few days before heading to Calais to board a channel ferry to London.
The extreme cold in Paris, however, had changed our minds and wed decided instead to book
seats on the next available jet to London. I hadnt been to back to Britain since 1977when Id
been 14and during the two hour trip aboard that heated bus I began to feel felt strangely at
home as the English countryside flashed by. After 15 years of school and then university I was
elated to be out in the real world. Given my cricket career was going from strength to strength I
couldnt, at that point, admit to any doubts about my future in sportafter all cricket had been
the justification for postponing my university studies.
A group of Birkenhead City players were spending the New Zealand off-season in
England. Theyd organised to play club cricket in the Worcester area with the help of our clubs

English professional, Dipak Patela Worcestershire County player, and, as it turned out, a
future Auckland representative and New Zealand test player. Id expressed an interest in having
trials with the County side with a view to playing a season over there. At that point Id had four
seasons of high level crickettwo trips to Australia with New Zealands U19 side had seen me
playing against future Australian test players like Craig McDermott, Ian Healy and Steve and
Mark Waugh. Id also been selected for two Auckland Second 11 tournaments and for years had
represented Auckland at various provincial levelsU22, U18, 16 etc.
Birkenhead City, the Auckland Cricket Association and the NZ Cricket Council all threw
in money at short notice to help out with the airline ticket. By early March Id deferred my
university studies and was booked on a flight to Europe. My parents also paid for my brother,
Andy, to accompany me.
The plan was simple; wed meet up with our two older half-brothers (Pat and Phil) in
South Wales before I would head across to Worcester for the trials. When I arrived in Wales I
had 500 English pounds, a trial date with Worcester and a general plan to secure either paid
employment or a contract with the county. As a NZ U19 representative two years running and a
British citizen it was (under) stated that provided I was up to scratch (i.e. up to Patels
recommendations) it was likely that the county would put me on the books for the Seconds and
the youth team at minimum. If successful I would also need to secure accommodation in
Worcester. However, I was 20, had never lived away from home and was pretty in-experienced
in money matters.
Id been told by Dipak that I would be paid to play County Second 11 matches if selectedthis
seemed a fantastic proposition to me at the time, to be paid to play sport! I remember the first net
sessionmy older brother Pat had driven me to Worcester from South Wales. I was introduced
to a number of first and second team players by Dipak as well as other Worcester legends
among them 60s and 70s English test great Basil DOliveiraand was then asked to warm up
and bowl. I did a few stretching exercises, marked out my run up then delivered my first ball.
After about ten minutes I was at full pace and enjoying the physical activity after weeks of
travelling and catching up with family. Despite the macho air associated with fast-bowling it is in
truth a profoundly graceful activitythe rhythm of a sprinter needs to be combined with the
balance and precision of a dancer.
At one point I bowled a particularly well-placed yorker before turning to walk back to my
mark. Standing there was a tall, dark-skinned man dressed in tracksuit pants and a
Worcestershire cricket pulloverI recognised him instantly as the great Indian test fast-bowler
Kapil Dev and immediately felt nervous.
He didnt say anything at first, just watched me for an over or two, occasionally
exchanging pleasantries with passing players and staff. Finally, he called me over to where he
was standing and asked me where I was from. Youve got genuine pace and very accurate
consistent line and length he said, then paused obviously thinking something through, But
Im not so sure about that hop in your delivery stride
A small, balding man joined the conversationhe seemed like a club official. He
doesnt bowl off the wrong foot like Max Walker or Lance Cairns the man said also thinking
about my action, its in the stride before deliverya hop. Is that what youre looking at?
Yes, Kapil said, then looked at me, And if the hop works, theres no need to change
but you may get an extra yard of pace if you can get rid of it He then stepped toward me
and demonstrated several times a complex way of removing the offending hop. In those

moments, as he sped up and slowed down his own majestic bowling action to show me exactly
what his feet were doing he seemed like a manifestation of one of those many-armed Hindu
Gods. When hed finished he smiled at me and said to the balding man, Maybe you could work
with him if he decides to change that part of his action?
Lets see if he can take wickets with the action hes got first, shall we! said the man
laughing.
I was selected for my first Seconds match a week later. Also in the team was a quietly
spoken Rhodesian guy called Graeme Hick, a future England test batsman. He was in England
on a Zimbabwe Cricket Union scholarship and Ill never forget the way he destroyed bowling
attacks that summer with his powerful batting. Another future England representative plying his
trade in the Worcester Seconds that year was Phil Newport, an impressive opening bowler. In
matches we appeared in together I enjoyed sharing the fast-bowling load with him.
For my first Championship game they put me up in a local hotel. Unfortunately, however,
occasional free hotels and intermittent match payments couldnt help secure me rental
accommodation in Worcester or pay my day-to-day living and travel expenses. Each fortnight I
was forced to drive back and forth between Worcester and Cwmbran in South Wales just to eat
properly and take a breather from sleeping in a different room every night.
I recall being billeted for a time by my older Birkenhead City mates, but their landlord
eventually put the hard word on them, or perhaps they got sick of a broke twenty year old
hanging about the house. Before I left the flat, however, they managed to turn me on to the TV
show The Young Ones, with its anarchistic and nihilistic uni-punk humour. Interestingly, Id
disliked the show as a Commerce student living in Auckland. I remember watching the show
drunk one night in Worcester alongside my older Birkenhead City team mates and suddenly,
out of the blue, I got what it was about. In retrospect being on the receiving end of Margaret
Thatchers neo-liberal government probably assisted.
I recall wed had something like a typical uni student afternoon before sitting down to
watch the show drunkwe were vaguely planning a trip to a Worcester nightclub afterwards.
My brain somehow slowed down and I remember being aware of a huge gap between an inner
desire to laugh hysterically and an apparent incapacity in my body to actually respond. It was a
disconcerting sensation, a kind of psychophysical moment of estrangement, made worse by the
sudden appearance of a beautiful, serene looking doveplain as dayon the television screen
right in the middle of a punky-slapstick scene in the show. I gestured slowly with my right hand
to one of my mates (I couldnt seem to speak) and sporting a big, rugged smirk he said simply:
Yus, (New Zealanders say Yes like that) spot the subliminal, eh! (New Zealanders also say
eh after just about everything). Theyre in just about every episode, he said then went quiet.
In the end I was sleeping in the battered blue Minivan given me by my brother Pat, and
showering at the ground after training or matches. On the food front it was take-away (greasy
fish and chips) every night.
Though they kept selecting me for Worcesters second eleven (as the Wisden Cricketers
Almanac 1985 testifies) and U23 side I was desperately in need of more permanent
accommodation and a regular income capable of supporting the cool sportsman lifestyle
everybody else seemed to be enjoying. A job, however, was difficult to secure given I was often
playing cricket 4 or 5 days a week. I suspected many of the other young guys looking to secure a
contract had wealthy parents capable of under-writing the trial period. Many, of course, were

Englisha big advantage over a British-Kiwi running out of money fast. Oddly, I didnt think to
ask my parents or older brothers for money (I was incapable of articulating my needs at that time
in my life). In retrospect I had no hope what-so-ever of setting up house
in WorcesterI simply wasnt mature enough.
Something had to give. I felt forced to make a break in May
after a club game in Birmingham in which Id been invited to billet with
an Aussie guy about three years older than me who was struggling to
get a game for Worcester Seconds. I went there thinking I might be paid
in some way as a club professional/coach (I had a NZ coaching
certificate, for example) but soon realised that nothing like that was on
offer. After playing one game for the Aussie guys clubI remember
making forty or so runs under polluted, overcast skies then bowling
with a slippery-as-soap ball as drizzle gradually turned into heavy rain.
I learnt later that what Id considered to be filling in for a friends team
had actually made me ineligible to play for any other club in the region
for the rest of the season. Given it had taken a fair proportion of my savings just to travel to
Birmingham I felt let down and dispirited. The Aussie guy also turned out to be gay and was
sharing the flat with an older male lover. Not a problem in itself, but given my inexperience in
such matters the penny took a while to drop. The morning after my arrival for the club game the
Aussie guy showed me photographs of his estranged best friend back in Sydney. The shots had
all the hallmarks of romantic photographya young guy in flowery meadow with flowing
blonde hair. The edges of the picture had been artistically blurred. He then began talking about
how much he enjoyed his morning woody. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable, I tried to
change the topic with a lame joke, I quite enjoy my morning bowl of Shredded Wheat! (a UK
cereal). He seemed disappointed as he eventually directed me to a cupboard full of cereal in his
kitchen.
Broke, a bit peeved at not having been told about competition regulations and tired of
having no place to call my own I returned to my three brothers in South Wales on the Sunday
night. After Id heard nothing from the County for a week Andy and I hatched a plan to hit the
road. I felt genuine excitement at the prospectthere seemed so much cultural stuff to see.
One night, with a UK map and a copy of the National Trust Sites of Great Britain in front
of me I began to circle on the road map the dozens of castles, cathedrals, abbeys, old battlefields,
henges, etc. that I most wanted to see. My brother did something similar with maps of major
football stadiums and famous pubswe were heading off on an adventure together, like wed
done dozens of times as kids. Though we scrapped as often as any brothers we were very close
throughout our childhoods. Being reunited with family after 7 years was also high on the agenda.
I knew I wanted to spend time in Yorkshire with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, as
well as the clan living near Glasgow in Scotland. I guess I was taking the first faltering steps on
the road to a life expressive of my whole personality, not just a part of it.
At the time I was also missing Alison, the girl Id fallen in love with a year or so earlier.
Although it had been complicated for much of that period (she was in her last year of high school
and I was spending a lot of time at Uni in central Auckland, working or travelling due to cricket),
the evening wed shared (magical to me) wandering around downtown Auckland just prior to my
flight to Europe had given me hope that we might still somehow get togetherperhaps on my
return to New Zealand.

On the cricket front my performances were good despite the homelessness, bad eating and
relative poverty. The Wisden Cricket Almanac for that season records my bowling average in
Championship matches as 17.11. By early May, however, I found myself vomiting occasionally
during games and practice sessionsat the time I put it down to the unsettled lifestyle.
Dipak later told me by that Worcestershire had been within weeks of offering me a full
contract. Had I have heard this from a County official somewhere during the summer of 1984 my
life may have followed a completely different pathon the other hand being paid as a cricketer
may simply have delayed the inevitable.

Author Bio (as at April 2013)

Dr. Ian Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based poet/lyricist,
writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in
publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA), The Antigonish
Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence (UK), Linq (Australia)
and Takahe (NZ), as well as in a number of Australian
national poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005
(Black Ink Books) and Agenda: Australian Edition, 2005.
He is the author of three books and co-editor of three
journals and currently teaches in the Professional Writing
and Editing program at BRIT (Bendigo, Australia) as well as
the same program at Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history and
social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo, Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative,
normative and dysfunctional forms of alienation and morbid ennui.