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in the word GIGAwatts), but here the magnitude of
evil
in a technological civilization.
Geegh
is Old Celtic for “avaunt” or “scram.” From the Italian
giga
through the French
gigue
we arrive at
geigen,
a slang expression in German for copulation. For lack of space we must forgo any further etymological exposition. A different partitioning of the name, in the form of Gi-GAME-sh, foreshadows other aspects of the work: GAME is a game played, but also the quarry of a hunt (in Maesch’s case, we have a manhunt). This is not all. In his youth Maesch was a GIGolo; AME suggests the Old German
Amme,
a wet nurse; and MESH, in turn, is a net—for instance, the one in which Mars caught his goddess wife with her lover—and therefore a gin, a snare, a
trap
(under the scaffold), and, moreover, the engagement of gear teeth (e.g., “synchroMESH”).
    A separate section is devoted to the title read backward, because during the ride to the place of execution Maesch in his thoughts reaches
back,
seeking the memory of a crime so monstrous that it will
redeem
the hanging. In his mind, then, he plays a game(!) for the highest stakes: if he can recall an act infinitely vile, this will match the infinite Sacrifice of the Redemption; that is, he will become the Antisaviour. This—on the metaphysical level; obviously Maesch does not consciously undertake any such antitheodicy; rather—psychologically—he seeks some heinousness that will render him impassive in the face of the hangman. GI J. Maesch is therefore a Gilgamesh who in defeat attains perfection
—negative
perfection. We have here a high symmetry of asymmetry with regard to the Babylonian hero.
    So, then, when read in reverse, “Gigamesh” becomes “Shemagig.”
Shema
is the ancient Hebraic injunction taken from the Pentateuch
(“Shema Yisrael
!"—“Hear 0 Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!”). Because it is in reverse, we are dealing here with the Antigod, that is, the personification of evil. “Gig” is of course now seen to be “Gog” (Gog and Magog). From
Shema
derives the name “Simeon” (Hebrew Shimeon), and immediately we think of Simeon Stylites; but if the Saint sits atop the pillar, the halter hangs down from it; therefore Maesch, dangling beneath, will become a stylite
a rebours.
This is a further step in the antisymmetry. Enumerating in this fashion, in his exegesis, 2,912 expressions from the Old Sumerian, Babylonian, Chaldean, Greek, Church Slavonic, Hottentot, Bantu, South Kurile, Sephardic, the dialect of the Apaches (the Apaches, as everyone knows, commonly exclaim “Igh” or “Ugh”), along with their Sanskrit roots and references to underworld argot, Hannahan stresses that this is no haphazard rummage, but a precise semantic wind rose, a multidimensional compass card and map of the work, its cartography—for the object is the plotting of all those ties and links which the novel will realize polyphonically.
    In order to go beyond what Joyce did—to go Joyce one better—Hannahan decides to make the book an intersecting point (nexus—node—
nodus
—knot—noose!) not only of all cultures,
ethoi
and
ethnoi,
but also of all languages. Such analysis is necessary (the letter M in “GigaMesh,” for instance, directs us to the history of the Mayans, to the god Vitzi-Putzli, to the entire Aztec cosmogony, and also their irrigation system), but it is by no means sufficient! For the book is woven out of the
sum total
of human knowledge. And again, involved here is not only current knowledge, but also the history of science, and therefore the cuneiform arithmetics of the Babylonians, the models of the world—now extinct, reduced to ashes—of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians, and those from the Ptolemaic to the Einsteinian, and the abacus and the calculus, algebras of groups and of tensors, the methods of firing Ming