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Eros the Bittersweet

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Eros contains a series of short essays on the ancient Greek notion of desire. Using Sappho's poetry as a touchstone, Carson explores Sappho's term "glukupikron"(literally, "sweetbitter"). She touches upon a myriad of ancient texts; the second half of the book draws largely from Plato's Phaedrus. Most exciting for me was her explanation of the similarities between the edges of erotic desire and the edges of the alphabet. This culminates in a wonderful series of chapters in which she relates erotic desire with the desire for knowledge. It was exhilarating!! What's more, I found the book extremely accessible. A must read!

Carson is an inspired guide through the tangled and fragmentary corpus of Greek lyric love poetry. She has a whirlwind mind and a gift for pithy expression, though once in a while she slips into a kind of gauzy equivocating that weakens her arguments. Still, this idiosyncratic take on ancient eros has moments of great insight and deserves the attention of classical scholars and non-specialists who are interested in the topic.

The Greeks did not cover everything but they made a pretty good start. Anne Carson has always been the queen of fitting classical allusions to the evident. The book could be described as an extended exploration of `Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortase requiris/ nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.'- Catullus. (I hate and I love/ Why do I, you ask ?/ I don't know, but it's happening/ and it hurts.)A splendid place to mine for obscure quotes: `We aren't shutting you out of the revel, but we aren't inviting you either/ For you're a pain when you're present, and beloved when you are away'- Theognis

Anna Carson is brilliant, the arguments set forth in her book are incredibly valid and reinforced with brilliant examples from ancient Greek poets one of which is Sappho. Very enlightening read, will change the way you view love, desire and want, it will change the way you view Eros forever. If you havent read it yet i suggest you do NOW.

This is a delightful book that analyzes love [desire] through classical literature. It is an academic treatise, poetical prose, and philosophy all at the same time. Carson's close reading and her wit make Eros the Bittersweet a must read.

From [...].

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, and a professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. While reading Eros the Bittersweet, her background in classical literature and ancient philosophy was clear and heavy: most of her argument centers on ancient writers. And, indeed, it is her goal to make a connection between eros, language, and the first poets to ever put words to the page.

She begins by drawing out a geometrical configuration that exemplifies the properties of eros: a triangle. The eros exists between two lovers who are then suspended by a third point-- an obstruction. She writes:

"For, where eros is lack, its activation calls for three structural components- lover, beloved and that which comes between them. They are three points of transformation on a circuit of possible relationship, electrified by desire so that they touch not touching. Conjoined they are held apart. The third component plays a paradoxical role for it both connects and separates, marking that two are not one, irradiating the absence whose presence is demanded by eros. When the circuit-points connect, perception leaps. And something becomes visible, on the triangular path where volts are moving, that would not be visible without the three-part structure. The difference between what is and what could be is visible. The ideal is projected on a screen of the actual, in a kind of stereoscopy. The man sits like a god, the poet almost dies: two poles of response within the same desiring mind. Triangulation makes both present at once by a shift of distance, replacing erotic action with a ruse of heart and language. For in this dance the people do not move. Desire moves. Eros is a verb."

The lovers, then, are suspended by this third point, without which they would threaten to collapse into each other, dissolving into a single point. The triangulation both separates them and binds them together, as if caught in the erotic buoyancy of each other's presence, performing a gravitational orbit. The obstruction can take many forms: time (waiting for one's lover), space (being physically separated from one's lover through both short and long distances), or other obstacles, such as a marriage, or a lack of confidence to even approach the beloved, or any other possible factor that separates us from the one we desire. This obstruction is defined by that which creates a space between the lover and the beloved and prevents them from possessing each other completely. Carson continues, "Not all look triangular in action, yet they share a common concern: to represent eros as deferred, defied, obstructed, hungry, organized around a radiant absence-- to represent eros as lack."

Because of this obstruction, the lovers are inspired to reach for each other across this boundary. The separation between lovers inspires the eros, but also the reach: the two lovers ache for one another, they try to cross the space that divides them. Carson writes that the reach of desire "is defined in action: beautiful (in its objects), foiled (in its attempt), endless (in time)." Even if this space is crossed, it is reconstituted the moment they separate, or else by the mere boundaries of flesh and through painful, vain attempts at complete unity. Considering this, I look back upon my own instances of eros, the distance which was necessary to cross in order to kiss my lover, and how time seemed to slow in that drawn-out pause between reach and grasp.

"Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counter glance, between 'I love you' and 'I love you too,' the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can."

Eros, then, defined in boundaries and edges, Carson begins to draw a connection between eros and language, specifically in written language, where edges are more clearly visible. She writes, "Is it a matter of coincidence that the poets who invented Eros, making of him a divinity and a literary obsession, were also the first authors in our tradition to leave us their poems in written form? To put the question more pungently, what is erotic about alphabetization? This may seem not so much an unanswerable as a foolish question, at first, but let us look closer into the selves of the first writers. Selves are crucial to writers."

In both desire and words, one must perceive the edge between one entity and another, between self and other, in order for either to occur. In perceiving the beloved, we discover a specific lack that, until this point, the lover was unaware existed at all. This "lack" does not imply a lack of wholeness of personality or being, necessarily, but simply a desire for something that the lover does not currently possess. Since complete possession of this lack can never occur, we imagine it and give it shape. Eros spark's the lover's imagination. Carson writes that "imagination is the core of desire. It acts at the core of metaphor," quoting Rilke when he says, "space reaches out from us and translates the world." Our lover transform under a necessary imaginative perception that both allows us to simultaneously discover some comprehension of this lack and reach out for it, within the lover, in the phenomenal world.

As I continue to academically research desire, love and eros, I keep coming back to the same principle: imagination. The process of imagining the beloved, but also the process of the two lovers imagining the world and re-creating reality, bound only to the limits of their fantasy and passion.

This book applied to life. No only did the book put into words what can only be thought but it speaks to you. It starts out over most heads but then comes down to relate to all those in love.

This brief account of eros is beautifully poetic distillation of the multiple instantiations of the logic of eros in ancient Greek philosophy and myth. Carson is a first rate classicist and her powers as an interpreter of ancient Greek texts is abundant here. More importantly, her poetic sensibility illuminates the lightness and complexity of the movement of eros; through readings of Plato, Sappho, and others, a vibrant picture of eros and its place within Greek thought emerges. I was particularly struck with her writing on the temporality of eros, which does so much to encapsulate its paradoxical essence. A supremely beautiful and enlightening text.

this is perhaps my favorite of carson's works. it is a thoughtful, endlessly critical look at the greek idea of eros. carson, ancient goddess that she is, blends just the perfect amount mysticism and a serious academic's curiosity in this book. it's a foundational piece to understanding her other more poetic projects and a great introduction to carson.