Anne Carson - Blog Posts

II. "Each"

He lay very straight

in the fantastic temperatures

of the red pulse as it sank away and he thought about the difference

between outside and inside.

Inside is mine, he thought. The next day Geryon and his brother

went to the beach.

They swam and practiced belching and ate jam-and-sand sandwiches on a blanket.

Geryon's brother found an American dollar bill

and gave it to Geryon. Geryon found a piece of an old war helmet and hid it.

That was also the day

he began his autobiography. In this work Geryon set down all inside things

particularly his own heroism

and early death much to the despair of the community. He coolly omitted

all outside things.

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

XI. "Right"

“Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him Joyfully”

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

Digital Play #2: Sappho Awaits Her Goddess, Aphrodite: “… if only I, O goldencrowned Aphrodite, / could win this lot…” [Anne Carson, _If Not, Winter_; #33, Knopf, 2002]. 11/26/2017.

Sometimes when I am reading a Greek text I force myself to look up all the words in the dictionary, even the ones I think I know. It is surprising what you learn that way. Some of the words turn out to sound quite different than you thought. Sometimes the way they sound can make you ask questions you wouldn't otherwise ask. Lately I have begun to question the Greek word sophrosyne. I wonder about this concept of self-control and whether it really is, as the Greeks believed, an answer to most questions of human goodness and dilemmas of civility. I wonder if there might not be another idea of human order than repression, another notion of human virtue than self-control, another kind of human self than one based on dissociation of inside and outside. Or indeed, another human essence than self.

from "The Gender of Sound" by Anne Carson

— from Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

"[...] Revising the perceived sad ending of the entry, Geryon again borrows from “Red Meat,” this time its final fragment, writing, “All over the world the beautiful red breezes went on blowing hand/ in hand,” shifting away from self-centering and instead highlighting red’s continuance without him and its propensity for connection, despite Geryon’s own alienation. Redness is not exclusive to boys but can belong to breezes too."

— from Anne Carson: “Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros” by Kristi Maxwell

from Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson (1998)

Aeschylus (trans. Anne Carson), from An Oresteia; “Agamemnon”