“On Poetry and Friendship: Linear and Tensional Elements in the Old Babylonian Episode of Gilgamesh and Enkidu,”
in Paola Negri Scafa and Paolo Gentili (eds.), DONUM NATALICIUM. Studi presentati a Claudio Saporetti in occasione del suo 60. Compleanno, Roma: Borgia Editore, pp. 63–76.
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“I have stressed that the devices described above are not to be seen in isolation: in and of themselves, they are fragmented views of a single organic whole, which is all the more successful the more the parts are, precisely, integrated with each other. Ultimately, it is for our sensitivity as readers to recreate their unity in our perception of the work. This is what has been called so aptly the ‘secret kinship’ of the parts within the whole of a living poetic text (Jakobson). As an aid in that direction we can only show bere how the various types of analysis suggested are interrelated in one and the same structural whole. The simplest way is to highlight possible relationships in diagrammatic form, as shown in the chart at the end. As promised, it was ‘almost’ a carmen that I could offer, not being myself a poet as Horace was (Carmina iv VIII 11 t). But our scholarly ‘almost’ can go a long way to recapture for our sensitivity the poetry itself, the carmen. If our keys are not mechanical tools; if they help, instead, to train our sensitivity, then I can at least offer Claudio a newly acquired sense for the inner life of a poetry that is indeed no longer dead” (author’s Summary on p. 76).