Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Eros the Bittersweet

4.43 of 5 stars 4.43 · rating details · 774 ratings · 67 reviews

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. Beginning with: "It was Sappho who first called eros 'bittersweet.' No one who has been in love disputes her. What does the word mean?", Carson examines her subject from numerous points of view and styles, transcending the const...more

Paperback, 189 pages

Published March 1st 1998 by Dalkey Archive Press (first published 1986)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best Books About Mythology

160th out of 409 books — 820 voters

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I Would If I Could

14th out of 94 books — 32 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,718)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Aug 21, 2007 Luisa rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Poets, Helenistic Studies

Shelves: helenisticstudies

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, denying it so you can eventually enjoy it, and where honesty t...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jan 08, 2013 Kate Wyer rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Infants begin to see by noticing the edges of things. How do they know an edge is an edge? By passionately wanting it not to be. The experience of eros as lack alerts a person to the boundaries of himself, of other people, of things in general..

If we follow the trajectory of eros we consistently find it tracing out this same route: it moves out from the lover toward the beloved, then ricochets back to the lover himself and the hole in him, unnoticed before. Who is the real subject of most love...more

3 likes · like · see review

Nov 05, 2011 Catherine O'Sullivan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bizarre-love-triangle, favourites, the-secret-of-style

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 truth be t...more

1 like · like · see review

Sep 06, 2011 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 devotes a great deal of thought to...more 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 devotes a great deal of thought to how the alphabet, particularly the Greek alphabet, played a role in literacy—in the very representation of speech. So, of course, she's going to pay close attention to the letters!

But how the greek alphabet figures into the idea of eros and is related to written language is quite intriguing and one of the main ideas of the book. It's probably obvious to other people, but it was a revelation to me to think of written language as giving shape and form to what normally passes as a stream of sound: speech. Carson takes the point further to consider how written language is dominated by the sense of vision and how one must learn to shut out the rest of the world when attempting to read. As she notes, shutting out the sounds and smells surrounding one in an oral communication society might prove dangerous to one's health, whereas reading and writing are difficult to accomplish with stimulus overload in sound and smell and touch. But Carson does not say this disparagingly of literacy. Quite the contrary, she sees literacy as being bound up in the formulation of desire. Just as letters have edges and and just as written language defines and sculpts sound into physical forms, so the acts of reading and writing give shape to our consciousness. In short, literacy gives us a sense of self, thereby paving the way for desire to take hold, for eros to enrapture, for us to desire those things just out of reach. In Carson's eloquent words, "Words do have edges. So do you." I'm inclined to believe that Carson would give shape to the edges of Heraklitus' words.

What makes this such a remarkable and pleasurable read is how deftly Carson moves through the logic of her argument and how wide-ranging she is in her ideas and interpretations. As she smoothly moves you the reader through the book, you pass such simple but remarkable thoughts— the "sweetbitter" aspect of eros as sung by Sappho; the lover wanting that which is out of reach; of the role that time plays in eros and in literature; of readers wanting books to go on and on, a writing without finality; of bad lovers wanting to control time; of cicadas being pure desire, singing their lives away; of gardeners tending feebly to their gardens to mark time; of Eros giving wings to a lover, giving a breath of life; and of eros being a weaver of fiction, a work of the imagination, an attempt to reach out beyond one's edges either to know or to understand or to simply love. In other words, Eros is the unmoved mover of fiction, poetry, epistemology, and philosophy. The book is brimming with ideas and overflowing with desire. And I didn't want it to end.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jan 09, 2011 Ruth rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 mat...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 18, 2012 Heather Fowler rated it 5 of 5 stars

There is something intoxicating about reading a scholar who brings erudition and poetic vision to a creative analysis of desire. This book, via a discussion of Sappho and other figures, proves a stunning, trans-textual analysis of variations on the constructions of amorous triangulation, whether that which is seen between three people entangled, viewers and lovers, or those triangulations created by either physical distance or prose via correspondence. It is an essay/adventure, which is deliriou...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 02, 2007 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lovers

Shelves: favorites, love-and-other-indoor-sports

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.

6 likes · like · see review

Dec 03, 2009 Rae rated it 4 of 5 stars

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...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 25, 2010 Dawn Kaczmar rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: eros

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 drawing out a geometrical configura...more 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 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. (less)

like · see review

Jul 31, 2011 Barce rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 demonstrates that there is something...more

like · see review

Dec 28, 2010 Nicola rated it 5 of 5 stars

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...more

like · see review

Jun 17, 2013 Matt Brady rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2013, favorites

The average reader isn't going to find this plotless, erudite book interesting (but then, the average reader isn't poking around comments reviewing books by avant-garde poets and classicist scholars in the first place).

When reading this book, you may find it a little chilly and distant: not an enticing way to talk about love. Although some people get flayed, this is fair -- you won't find Henry Miller here. That distance, though, offers a necessary and valuable height from which Carson's earnest...more

like · see review

Oct 28, 2012 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fictiony-essays-memoirs-etc, philosophic-reads, favorites

One of the most fascinating scholarly essays I have ever read.

I had to stop and think after every page; not only about her argument and myriad ideas (though that is enough to keep me up at night for some time), but about what else I need to read to catch up to her innumerable allusions and references. Her eight page bibliography is awe-inspiring to say the least!

As far as an investigation of Eros, this exceeded all expectation. Not only does she make her philosophical argument with a wealth of u...more

like · see review

Jul 22, 2012 Emm rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: theory, poetry, classics-greco-roman, favorites

What I truly enjoyed most about this book is how Carson ties together amorous feelings with the acts of reading of writing--love and learning both being acts of reaching out. I also was enthralled with her ideas of boundaries and edges--of love as a coming to understand the point at which things end, meet and the spaces between them. ‎ Carson observes,"It is the edge separating my tongue from the taste for which it longs that teaches me what an edge is" (30). She answers,"Words have edges. So do...more

like · see review

Aug 25, 2008 Kitty rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone interested in language

Recommended to Kitty by: JOE MILLAR/DORIANNE LAUX

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. The title comes from the...more

like · see review

May 28, 2013 Dena Guzman rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays

Never one to waste words, even when using a lot of them, Canadian Poet Anne Carson provides the world with a must-read for understanding human lust and heartbreak from a lyrical and historical point of consideration. Yes, this is a scholarly and intellectual essay, and a little familiarity with its basis is helpful, but it's also a primer and a diving board into measured thought processes about that ever-present but elusive force, eros. Sweetbitter is much more like it, indeed.

like · see review

Aug 07, 2012 Jim Coughenour rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, philosophy, re-read

A book on Eros that – for me – never takes wing. First read when it was published in 1986, just read it again as I'm rereading Sappho. Despite Carson's fine writing, there's more poetry in a few fragments of Sappho than in this entire book. There are some excellent observations along the way but the substance of the book is dry & thin — compared with (for example) the music of James Hillman on Eros, Roland Barthes on a lover's discourse, Roberto Calasso on Greek mythology.

like · see review

Mar 03, 2013 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars

"...an edge between two images that cannot merge in a single focus because they do not derive from the same level of reality--one is actual, one is possible. To know both, keeping the difference visible, is the subterfuge called eros."

To the side of philosophy, to the side of poetry, this book is a compiled web ethereal truisms and arcane textual enigmas, pointing fingers to the soft-spots of love, reading and the inextricable eruption of sentiment.

like · see review

Oct 03, 2007 rachelm rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, classics

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 in literature,...more

like · see review

Aug 28, 2008 Ashley rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 speaker a closeness with the words, beca...more

2 likes · like · see review

May 04, 2011 Satia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, literary-criticism, non-fiction, poetry, reread

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/201...

This book was recommended to me by Regie Gibson.

like · see review

Mar 13, 2012 Natalie Simpson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Eros is always a story in which lover, beloved and the difference between them interact. The interaction is a fiction arranged by the mind of the lover. It carries an emotional charge both hateful and delicious and emits a light like knowledge." p.169

like · see review

Jul 26, 2012 Alice Urchin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

This book is phenomenal. Carson has written a witty and insightful exploration of the pleasure and pain of desire rings true for anyone who has been in love.

like · see review

Nov 05, 2011 Chris Schaeffer rated it 5 of 5 stars

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.

like · see review

Mar 01, 2012 vani rated it 5 of 5 stars

Do not read this book in one stretch. Be patient with its unfolding, and be okay stepping away from it. I don't think it could be appreciated in haste.

like · see review

Jul 26, 2011 Eleanor added it

Yes!
Triangles, cicadas, ancient understandings of love, lust, jealousy... and what love might be, or might be stretched between...

like · see review

Jul 11, 2009 Melanie Faith rated it 4 of 5 stars

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.

like · see review

Jul 22, 2010 Rachel marked it as to-read

I read about her latest book Vox in the New Yorker; and her project to bring the pagan world into our own.

like · see review

Jun 11, 2011 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

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...more

like · see review

Aug 27, 2009 Denae Dietlein rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love Anne Carson. LOVE HER. She's crazy during readings and that makes me love her all the more.

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 57 58 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (3)

Genres

Poetry

54 users

Non Fiction

25 users

Philosophy

17 users

Criticism

8 users

Philosophy > Theory

8 users

Writing > Essays

8 users

Criticism > Literary Criticism

5 users

Classics

5 users

Fantasy > Mythology

4 users

Love

4 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
by Sappho
My Emily Dickinson
by Susan Howe
Grief Lessons: Four Plays
by Euripides
The Descent of Alette
by Alice Notley
Helen in Egypt
by H.D.

About Anne Carson

A professor of the classics, with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art, Carson blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published fifteen books as of 2010, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation...more

More about Anne Carson...

Books by Anne Carson

The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Eros the Bittersweet

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Eros the Bittersweet

“Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, 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.” — 21 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Eros the Bittersweet
avg rating	preview: Eros the Bittersweet Goodreads rating: 4.43 (774 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150255.Eros_the_Bittersweet?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1332954707l/150255.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150255.Eros_the_Bittersweet?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson[/url]

Eros the Bittersweet

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website