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A review by cryo_guy
Glass, Irony and God by Anne Carson
4.0
"Well there are many ways of being held prisoner"
~
"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."
~
Bought this one after reading Eros the Bittersweet, which is such a fantastic book. I greatly admire Anne Carson's ability to be both a poet and a scholar and as a scholar, to not descend (or rather ascend) to unreachable heights following the rigorous strictures of whatever is considered legitimate scholarship. A line from the essay of the collection (the rest are poems) hits at what I'm saying: "I have cast my net rather wide and have mingled evidence from different periods of time and different forms of cultural expression--in a way that reviewers of my work like to dismiss as ethnographic naïveté. I think that there is a place for naïveté in ethnography, at the very least as an irritant." *moons* Oh how Socratic! I love Anne Carson! haha.
I have to say towards the end I was getting a little bored because I didn't really get "The Book of Isaiah" but the last "The Gender of Sound" really brought me back. So in lieu of organizing some paragraphs about everything I'm just gonna go through each poem and say some stuff and that'll be that.
The introduction is pretty laudatory; Guy Davenport really likes her (as he should!).
The Glass Essay:
Excellent. An existential meditation after Wuthering Heights and Emily Brontë from a spurned lover. Reminded me a lot of Autobiography of Red. I had missed Carson's staccato style. It also made me realize I need to read Wuthering Heights, again. I was worried I wouldn't get into it because I hadn't read the novel, but I didn't find that to be that much of an impediment.
The Truth About God:
Poems that deliberate on the reach of our beloved Judeo-Christian God. Interesting, I like the Greco-Roman stuff better.
TV Men:
This one was a neat one that imagined various characters as tv actors in shows. Hektor's was excellent (the longest)-
"TV is inherently cynical. It speaks to the eye, but the mind has no eye."
"TV is dull, like the block of self in each of us."
I have learned to be brave
War has always interested me
Socrates' was also quite excellent had made me reflect that those who have most clearly understood Socrates and Plato are often the ones who say little to illuminate their positions and beliefs. On the one hand this helpfully prevents the reader from making mistaken inferences and supposing they've grasped the character (ethos) and virtue (arete) of the man/men or their ideas. On the other, perhaps it speaks to the author's ability to take Socrates' lesson well, that the absence of knowledge is at times the most prized form of it.
"Those who make pledges in their sleep shall in their sleep keep them."
There's one called The Sleeper and it is quite nice and poetic. Definitely worth a read:
"Endlessness runs in you like leaves on the tree of night.
To live here one must forget much."
The Fall of Rome: A Traveller's Guide-
So this one melded ancient Roman norms very subtly in with modern Italian Roman life. I got a little lost in it to be honest.
Book of Isaiah:
This one was also a little impenetrable for me. I don't know much about Isaiah other than that he's a prophet of the old testament and I picked up on some of the themes, but maybe if I had read the book I would have gotten more out of this one.
The Gender of Sound:
This is classic "scholarly" Carson at her best. A short, concise ethnographic examination of sound and how it plays out over the millennia along the lines of gender. Definitely worth a read for you fellow classicists out there. And it also brings in several more modern examples. Patriarchy is something that has been around for so long we tend to lose track of how its continued existence has morphed over centuries of cultural development. While it is undoubtedly wrong to dismiss the male gender and masculinity as irredeemable (which I don't think this essay particularly does), it is just as wrong to silently let certain patriarchal norms pass by without thought or examination. To that point, I found this essay to promote Socrates' crucial advice "the unexamined life is not worth living." Anyway, it's a pretty good essay from an ethnographic standpoint as well rife with details. I miss Ancient Greece.
All the best,
Anders Megas Ptoliporthos Pantheekilos
~
"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."
~
Bought this one after reading Eros the Bittersweet, which is such a fantastic book. I greatly admire Anne Carson's ability to be both a poet and a scholar and as a scholar, to not descend (or rather ascend) to unreachable heights following the rigorous strictures of whatever is considered legitimate scholarship. A line from the essay of the collection (the rest are poems) hits at what I'm saying: "I have cast my net rather wide and have mingled evidence from different periods of time and different forms of cultural expression--in a way that reviewers of my work like to dismiss as ethnographic naïveté. I think that there is a place for naïveté in ethnography, at the very least as an irritant." *moons* Oh how Socratic! I love Anne Carson! haha.
I have to say towards the end I was getting a little bored because I didn't really get "The Book of Isaiah" but the last "The Gender of Sound" really brought me back. So in lieu of organizing some paragraphs about everything I'm just gonna go through each poem and say some stuff and that'll be that.
The introduction is pretty laudatory; Guy Davenport really likes her (as he should!).
The Glass Essay:
Excellent. An existential meditation after Wuthering Heights and Emily Brontë from a spurned lover. Reminded me a lot of Autobiography of Red. I had missed Carson's staccato style. It also made me realize I need to read Wuthering Heights, again. I was worried I wouldn't get into it because I hadn't read the novel, but I didn't find that to be that much of an impediment.
The Truth About God:
Poems that deliberate on the reach of our beloved Judeo-Christian God. Interesting, I like the Greco-Roman stuff better.
TV Men:
This one was a neat one that imagined various characters as tv actors in shows. Hektor's was excellent (the longest)-
"TV is inherently cynical. It speaks to the eye, but the mind has no eye."
"TV is dull, like the block of self in each of us."
I have learned to be brave
War has always interested me
Socrates' was also quite excellent had made me reflect that those who have most clearly understood Socrates and Plato are often the ones who say little to illuminate their positions and beliefs. On the one hand this helpfully prevents the reader from making mistaken inferences and supposing they've grasped the character (ethos) and virtue (arete) of the man/men or their ideas. On the other, perhaps it speaks to the author's ability to take Socrates' lesson well, that the absence of knowledge is at times the most prized form of it.
"Those who make pledges in their sleep shall in their sleep keep them."
There's one called The Sleeper and it is quite nice and poetic. Definitely worth a read:
"Endlessness runs in you like leaves on the tree of night.
To live here one must forget much."
The Fall of Rome: A Traveller's Guide-
So this one melded ancient Roman norms very subtly in with modern Italian Roman life. I got a little lost in it to be honest.
Book of Isaiah:
This one was also a little impenetrable for me. I don't know much about Isaiah other than that he's a prophet of the old testament and I picked up on some of the themes, but maybe if I had read the book I would have gotten more out of this one.
The Gender of Sound:
This is classic "scholarly" Carson at her best. A short, concise ethnographic examination of sound and how it plays out over the millennia along the lines of gender. Definitely worth a read for you fellow classicists out there. And it also brings in several more modern examples. Patriarchy is something that has been around for so long we tend to lose track of how its continued existence has morphed over centuries of cultural development. While it is undoubtedly wrong to dismiss the male gender and masculinity as irredeemable (which I don't think this essay particularly does), it is just as wrong to silently let certain patriarchal norms pass by without thought or examination. To that point, I found this essay to promote Socrates' crucial advice "the unexamined life is not worth living." Anyway, it's a pretty good essay from an ethnographic standpoint as well rife with details. I miss Ancient Greece.
All the best,
Anders Megas Ptoliporthos Pantheekilos