A book about love as seen by the ancients, Eros is Anne Carson's exploration of the concept of "eros" in both classical philosophy and literature. ...
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Dec 17, 2009
Luisa
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Do you know how what we call "love," came to be? Anne Carson does. She examines the nuances of love, through the lens of Greek fragments and culture. Her chapter titles: "Ruse," "Tactics," "The Reach," pars out the subtleties of desire with all its paradoxical underpinnings. If you've ever wondered if your lover was playing a "game," read this book to understand the impossibility and awesome responsibility for wanting what you want, denyin
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Nov 05, 2011
Catherine
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I began reading this book on a rickety-rackety bus, hemmed in on either side by burly American football players chowing on stinky meatball subs, with our bus driver blaring tinny Bruce Springsteen from a boombox, and methodically working my way through a bag of sour Skittles. An inauspicious start, but even now when I see the title of the book my memory sends a squirt of saliva into my mouth and I can taste those sweets.
My interest in the book survived that beginning, thankfully, and More...
My interest in the book survived that beginning, thankfully, and More...
Sep 06, 2011
Mike
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Ruth read this earlier and I decided to give it a go. And Ruth is right—it's a great book. I would add that if anyone is actually going to write about Heraclitus, as I would like to have happen, Anne Carson is the person to do it. For one thing, she spells the greek names with "k's" instead of "c's." This might seem pedantic, but when I thought about it, it made sense for two reasons. First, the ancient Greeks didn't have the letter "c." And second, Anne Carson devo
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Jan 09, 2011
Ruth
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What can we learn about romantic love by looking at ancient greek poetry? I would have said I don't particularly care but Anne Carson's writing, ever poetic in itself even when it's in the form of essays, drew me in. And there's actually a lot to connect to- like, when I go to the movies, why is it that the best moments in an eros-related story are the ones before they hook up, from the moment you realize it's a possibility until when it actually happens (or doesn't happen- it almost doesn't m
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Oct 02, 2007
Jessica
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If something terrible happens to me one day, and all that's left is my body, and if, around the same time, something terrible should happen to Anne Carson and all that's left is her brain, I would hope that somehow medical science and luck would combine, and allow these terrible accidents to be resolved through a relatively happy solution, by which one of us (not Ms. Carson) would be greatly improved.
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Dec 03, 2009
Rae
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Relatively recently, I realized I didn't have a working definition for eros anymore - that it had expired. Of course that meant it was time to review my Anne Carson: I haven't read this book in almost a decade. Surprisingly, I didn't find myself connecting with this one as much as I used to. She's so elegant in her respect for scholarship and original, lyric travel - and I so enjoy being at her intellectual command - but on this reading I really saw how much of her definition of eros is about th
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Jan 25, 2010
Dawn
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From Semper Augustus
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 drawi More...
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 drawi More...
Jul 31, 2011
Barce
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I never read a book so beautiful with such a long and sustained focus on Sappho's poem where she describes love as bittersweet. This is a phenomenologist's delight for the author stays true to its motto, "To the things themselves."
Most books that try to link the structure of erotic desire to poetics often seem clinical and dry. I am thinking of Freud's work, here.
Instead, Anne Carson plays close attention to words, the spacings between them, punctuation. She demonst More...
Most books that try to link the structure of erotic desire to poetics often seem clinical and dry. I am thinking of Freud's work, here.
Instead, Anne Carson plays close attention to words, the spacings between them, punctuation. She demonst More...
Dec 28, 2010
Nicola
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I am currently on an Anne Carson binge. Like all great artists, she teaches you how to read her work. This 1986 essay is an essential read not only in light of her own work, but also in light of our own experiences with love. It goes far beyond the cliches on love and gets at their true, profound sources--that critical time when Greek writers and thinkers transitioned from oral to written language, and the result on that elusive, paradoxical creature called Eros. Reading this book is the equival
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Aug 25, 2008
Kitty
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Published in 1986, but timeless, probing. 14 chapters which spin from the opening call on Kafka's story, "The Top" and our delight in metaphor, and why we fall in love with love. "To be running, breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope." (xi) Anne Carson has an amazing knowledge and calls on original Greek language and thought, psychology, and multiple sources of literature: Sappho, Plato, Rilke, Tolstoy, Auden, Kundera.
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Oct 03, 2007
rachelm
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I was alternately enthralled and bored by this book, and remain baffled as to how to categorize it.
It contains lovely, ephemeral passages that made me think in new ways about both the nature of eros and the classical poetry and philosophy Carson references -- how Eros exists in the moment of desire short of attainment, in the futile grasping of hands for the apple in Sappho's poem, in the pain and pleasure of holding ice described by Sophocles. Carson demonstrates beautifully that i More...
It contains lovely, ephemeral passages that made me think in new ways about both the nature of eros and the classical poetry and philosophy Carson references -- how Eros exists in the moment of desire short of attainment, in the futile grasping of hands for the apple in Sappho's poem, in the pain and pleasure of holding ice described by Sophocles. Carson demonstrates beautifully that i More...
Aug 28, 2008
Ashley
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I have to admit, I read this book because oh-so-literary characters on "The L Word" dropped the name while flirting. And again, I admit, I have also tried to talk about this book while hitting on women.
Why? Because this book, so thick with Carson's immense knowledge of classical literature, is also incredibly romantic.
To the Greeks, the idea of writing itself was relatively new. Instead of telling stories orally - a setting that allowed the listener and speake More...
Why? Because this book, so thick with Carson's immense knowledge of classical literature, is also incredibly romantic.
To the Greeks, the idea of writing itself was relatively new. Instead of telling stories orally - a setting that allowed the listener and speake More...
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May 04, 2011
Satia
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An intellectual and interesting look at how eros is explored in ancient poetry and philosophy from a scholar who obviously loves language. For more:
http://satiasreviews.blogspot.com/2011/0...
This book was recommended to me by Regie Gibson.
http://satiasreviews.blogspot.com/2011/0...
This book was recommended to me by Regie Gibson.
Nov 05, 2011
Chris
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A masterpiece of poetic scholarship. I'm in love with this book. I would date it if I could. I would run off with this book and marry it in a cathedral.
Jul 26, 2011
Yes!
Triangles, cicadas, ancient understandings of love, lust, jealousy... and what love might be, or might be stretched between...
Triangles, cicadas, ancient understandings of love, lust, jealousy... and what love might be, or might be stretched between...
Jul 11, 2009
Melanie
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What I could understand of it, I liked. I enjoy the fact that reading through her work feels like an uphill challenge--to a lyric reward.
Jul 22, 2010
I read about her latest book Vox in the New Yorker; and her project to bring the pagan world into our own.
Jun 11, 2011
Sara
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This was my second time through this book, and it's well worth multiple reads. It depicts and explores a triangular relationship between self, the desired, and eros, as interpreted from Sappho, and extends analogously to the act of reading and writing, to aspiration for knowledge. Citing the original Greek all the way, Carson engages in conversation with Sappho's poems and Plato's Phaedrus, along with other texts from various periods of time in a luminous examination of eros and its expansive re
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Aug 27, 2009
Denae
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I love Anne Carson. LOVE HER. She's crazy during readings and that makes me love her all the more.
Dec 30, 2009
Kate
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No other book about romantic love has made such a profound and lasting impact on me.
Nov 30, 2008
Kind of, sort of read. I have it on the shelf so will check it out again.
Feb 03, 2012
Daphne
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A good read, not without its flaws in logic but well thought out nonetheless.
I could do with less incursions into the linguistics of ancient Greek but yeah well.
I could do with less incursions into the linguistics of ancient Greek but yeah well.
Apr 06, 2010
Claire
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Absolutely beautiful. I expected nothing less than brilliant after reading her _Autobiography of Red_. A must read.
Jun 28, 2008
Molly
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I didn't really like this book, I'm sorry to say. It's too academic and reminded me of everything I hated about college--interesting ideas that *seem* like they should be relevant to real life, but only some of which actually fit into my schema of the world, and even then only if angled in precisely the right way. They glint and glimmer and tease, but ultimately don't map onto any sort of reality that I know. The book has its moments, but it's very, very dense.
Apr 26, 2010
J.
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That anything Carson writes is absolute genius goes without saying. That said, this book being all essay with no poetry makes it a bit harder to read than the later works. Not in any way less powerful, but certainly harder to get into. Great essay on sexual desire.
Oct 26, 2009
David
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I've always been intrigued by the concepts of Carson's books but this is the first I've read. Her close reading of the Greek classics regarding the nature of eros yields countless achingly true observations; I don't know Greek (original texts are included), but her translations seem to add new levels to familiar sources and introduce a lot of unfamiliar ones.
Oct 10, 2011
Stef
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Breathtaking, and intensely thought-provoking. This book demands attention; it's best to stay one step ahead of Carson, lest she leave you behind as she trudges on through the vast tradition she's exploring.
A beautifully written essay and a wonderfully enlightening read. For anyone who's ever loved, lost, or vowed to never love again.
A beautifully written essay and a wonderfully enlightening read. For anyone who's ever loved, lost, or vowed to never love again.
