Eros the Bittersweet

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Eros the Bittersweet
Eros the Bittersweet.jpg
Author Anne Carson
Country United States
Language English
Genre
  • Nonfiction
  • criticism
Publisher Princeton University Press
Publication date
1986
Awards Modern Library: 100 Best Nonfiction Books (Reader's List)
ISBN 9780608027401

Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay (1986) is the first book of criticism by the Canadian poet, essayist, translator, and classicist Anne Carson.

Contents

A reworking of her 1981 doctoral thesis Odi et Amo Ergo Sum ("I Hate and I Love, Therefore I Am"), [1] Eros the Bittersweet "laid the groundwork for her subsequent publications, […] formulating the ideas on desire that would come to dominate her poetic output", [2] and establishing her "style of patterning her writings after classical Greek literature". [3]

Summary

The book traces the concept of eros in ancient Greece through its representations in writings of the time. It examines eros as a simultaneous experience of pleasure and pain, as exemplified by a word of Sappho's creation: "glukupikron" (the "bittersweet" of the book's title). [4]

Carson considers how triangulations of desire appear in the writings of Sappho, ancient Greek novelists (Longus, Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, and Chariton), and Plato (in his Phaedrus ). [5] [6] Her analysis of Sappho's Fragment 31 sees "eros as deferred, defied, obstructed, hungry, organized around a radiant absence – […] eros as lack." [7]

Reception

Acclaim for Eros the Bittersweet grew in the fifteen years after it was published in 1986: in the words of John D'Agata, the book "first stunned the classics community as a work of Greek scholarship; then it stunned the nonfiction community as an inspired return to the lyrically based essays once produced by Seneca, Montaigne, and Emerson; and then, and only then, deep into the 1990s, reissued as 'literature' and redesigned for an entirely new audience, it finally stunned the poets." [8]

By the turn of the millennium, Eros the Bittersweet had also entered into the popular consciousness, voted onto the 1999 Modern Library Reader's List for the 100 Best Nonfiction books of the 20th century, [9] and mentioned (along with Autobiography of Red ) in a 2004 episode of the television series The L Word . [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sappho</span> Ancient Greek lyric poet (c. 630–c. 570 BC)

Sappho was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the Ode to Aphrodite is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams formerly attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eros (concept)</span> Ancient Greek philosophical concept of sensual or passionate love

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Sappho 31 is an archaic Greek lyric poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho of the island of Lesbos. The poem is also known as phainetai moi after the opening words of its first line. It is one of Sappho's most famous poems, describing her love for a young woman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode to Aphrodite</span> Greek lyric poem by Sappho

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References

  1. Carson, Anne (1981). Odi et Amo Ergo Sum. Toronto: University of Toronto. [Doctoral thesis; under the name Anne Carson Giacomelli]
  2. Rae, Ian (27 December 2001). "Anne Carson". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  3. "Anne Carson". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  4. Corless-Smith, Martin (2015). "Living on the Edge: The Bittersweet Place of Poetry". In Wilkinson, Joshua Marie (ed.). Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN   978-0-472-05253-0.
  5. Scranton, Roy (Spring 2014). "Estranged Pain: Anne Carson's Red Doc>". Contemporary Literature. 55 (1). University of Wisconsin Press: 202–214. doi:10.1353/cli.2014.0010 . Retrieved 18 September 2020.
  6. Rae, Ian (Autumn 2010). "Runaway Classicists: Anne Carson and Alice Munro's 'Juliet' Stories". Journal of the Short Story in English (55 – Special Issue: The Short Stories of Alice Munro). Presses universities d'Angers: 6. ISSN   1969-6108 . Retrieved 18 September 2020.
  7. Carson, Anne (1998). "Tactics". Eros the Bittersweet. Champaign and London: Dalkey Archive Press. p. 18. ISBN   978-1-56478-188-8.
  8. D'Agata, John (1 June 2000). "Review: Men in the Off Hours". Boston Review. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  9. "Modern Library: 100 Best Nonfiction". Modern Library. Archived from the original on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  10. O'Rourke, Meghan (11 February 2004). "Hermetic Hotties: What is Anne Carson doing on The L Word?". Slate. Retrieved 16 September 2020.