December 21, 2004
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu

UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Stephen Mitchell, acclaimed translator whose latest work is a version of the ancient epic Gilgamesh, in an on stage conversation with writer Pico Iyer at Victoria Hall Theater

Summary Facts:

• Stephen Mitchell
• In a Conversation with Pico Iyer
• Mitchell is considered one of the best translators of classic works into English
• Mitchell’s latest work is a version of the ancient epic Gilgamesh
• Sunday, January 23
• 3 pm / Victoria Hall Theater, 33 W. Victoria St., Santa Barbara
• General public $10 / UCSB students $8
• Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535

Stephen Mitchell, a gifted translator widely known for his ability to make literary masterpieces thrillingly new, will take part in a fascinating on stage conversation with writer Pico Iyer on Sunday, January 23 at 3 pm at Victoria Hall Theater, 33 W. Victoria St., Santa Barbara.

Acclaimed by critics and readers alike, Mitchell has written brilliant translations of works as diverse and powerful as the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and the Book of Job. Most recently Mitchell brought his skills and insight to the oldest piece of world literature, the epic of Gilgamesh. More than a thousand years older than the Iliad or the Bible, Gilgamesh is the timeless story of literature’s first hero—the king of Uruk in what is now present-day Iraq—and his journey of self-discovery. calls Mitchell’s interpretation of Gilgamesh “one of humanity’s most satisfying narratives...beautifully retold and a page turner in the bargain. Like Seamus Heaney’s recent retelling of Beowulf, this book proves that in the right hands, no great story ever grows stale.”

Mitchell explains the impetus for his latest project: “I began this version of Gilgamesh, because I had never been convinced by the language of any translation of it that I’d ever read. I wanted to find a genuine voice for the poem: words that were lithe and muscular enough to match the power of the story. If I have succeeded, readers will discover that, rather than standing before an antiquity in a glass case, they have entered a literary masterpiece that is as startlingly alive today as it was three and a half millennia ago.”

Gilgamesh is a historically documented king who lived circa 2750 BC in Mesopotamia. The epic that bears his name relates the tale of his friendship with Enkidu (Mitchell claims this might be the first gay marriage in literature), and their battles to rid the world of evil. The epic gives voice to grief, the power of death and the ego’s hopeless striving for immortality with a poignancy that still connects with modern readers.

All of Mitchell’s translations have been praised as vivid, dramatic and deeply moving. The Library Journal asserts, “Mitchell must by now be accounted one of our generation’s heroic translators,” while his work has been called “enthralling” (George Steiner, The New Yorker), “an extraordinary poetic achievement” (Oliver Sacks), “magnificent” (The Bloomsbury Review), and “the best that has been made” (New York Review of Books).

Stephen Mitchell was born in Brooklyn in 1943 and attended Amherst College, the University of Paris and Yale University. His website is www.stephenmitchellbooks.com.

Pico Iyer, a part-time Santa Barbara resident, is the author of eight books including Abandon, Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home, Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk. Salon.com has insisted “with extraordinary empathy and insight, Iyer shows how cultures collide...how a dance of dreams and desires and preconceptions ensues every time a visitor and a local meet.” In 1995 the Utne Reader named Pico Iyer one of the 100 “writers who could change your life.”

Pico Iyer describes himself as a “global village on two legs.” He was born in England to Indian parents, migrated to California as a boy, studied at Eton and Oxford, and currently splits his time between Japan and Santa Barbara. He also ventures throughout the world, and has made travel writing a philosophical adventure. His most recent book Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign is an insightful exploration of not only why we travel but also how travel affords us the opportunity to journey into ourselves. Iyer writes that Sun After Dark is “a journey around some of the poorest countries in the world—Yemen, Haiti, Cambodia, Tibet, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Easter Island—and, more deeply, into the altered states of mind, the different states of consciousness that being in those places, often culture-shocked, jetlagged and 12,000 feet above sea level, brings on. The first two main chapters, however, are about spending some time in a Zen temple in L.A. with Leonard Cohen and spending an autumn in Dharamsala with the Dalai Lama—as ways to sound a kind of temple bell at the outset, and to suggest how people can move while sitting still, and how travel (in the Dalai Lama’s case) can be an instrument of conscience and transformation.”

Courtesy of Borders, books by Stephen Mitchell and Pico Iyer will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.