Volume 30, Number 15 · October 13, 1983
Sumerian Feminism
By Harold Bloom
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer
by Diane Wolkstein, by Samuel Noah Kramer
Harper and Row, 227 pp., $16.95; $7.95 (paper)
Most of this book consists of a version of, and commentaries on, the ancient Sumerian poem that describes the descent into hell of the fertility goddess, Inanna. On the day I read this new version, my local newspaper (The New Haven Register, July 27) carried an Associated Press dispatch out of Chicago under the headline FIRES OF HELL HOLD LESS FEAR, NEW POLL FINDS. The contrast between the mythologies of hell of these just-polled American Catholics and the Sumerians helped me to begin to apprehend just what remained so disturbing in the Sumerian mythology.
Review, 2531 words
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