Anne Carson - Tumblr Posts
Anne Carson, in the preface to Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
“CHORUS: And the grace of the gods (I’m pretty sure) is a grace that comes by violence.”
— Aeschylus, Agamemnon (tr. Anne Carson)
“How I did waste and exhaust my heart.”
— Anne Carson, The Anthropology of Water
“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”
— Anne Carson, in the preface to Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
Euripides, from Hekabe; translated by Anne Carson in Grief Lessons: Four Plays
Text ID: I weep / for your endless tears. / Not for my life, not for my pain, not for my outrage / do I weep. / No. / For you.
Sophokles, Antigonick (translated by Anne Carson)
I am talking about evil. It blooms. It eats. It grins.
Glass, Irony and God, ‘The Fall of Rome: A Traveller’s Guide’ by Anne Carson (via decreation)
“When I desire you a part of me is gone: my want of you partakes of me.”
— Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
when sylvia plath wrote “the silence depressed me. it wasn’t the silence of silence. it was my own silence.” and when anne carson wrote “why does tragedy exist? because you are full of rage. why are you full of rage? because you are full of grief.” and when jenny slate wrote “and i am getting older but i am not growing up and my heart is getting soft dark spots on it like a fruit that has gone bad.” and when virginia woolf wrote “to want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain.” and when susanna kaysen wrote “when you’re sad, you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.” and when margaret atwood wrote “already my childhood seemed far away – a remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers. did i regret its loss, did i want it back? i didn’t think so…” and when gillian flynn wrote “i was not a lovable child, and i’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult.”
averno, louise glück // elektra, sophokles (translated by anne carson)
“Now I think it is true to say of the road, and also of God, that it does not move. At the same time, it is everywhere. It has a language, but not one I know. It has a story, but I am in it. So are you. And to realize this is a moment of some sadness.”
— Anne Carson, “The Anthropology of Water”
“My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.”
— Anne Carson, “On Walking Backwards”, in Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
“Smell I will never forget. Out behind the vineyard. Stone place maybe a shed or an icehouse no longer in use. October, a little cold. Hay on the floor. We had gone to his grandfather’s farm to help crush the grapes for wine. You cannot imagine the feeling if you have never done it— like hard bulbs of wet red satin exploding under your feet, between your toes and up your legs arms face splashing everywhere— It goes right through your clothes you know he said as we slogged up and down in the vat. When you take them off you’ll have juice all over. His eyes moved onto me then he said Let’s check. Naked in the stone place it was true, sticky stains, skin, I lay on the hay and he licked. Licked it off. Ran out and got more dregs in his hands and smeared it on my knees neck belly licking. Plucking. Diving. Tongue is the smell of October to me.”
— Anne Carson, excerpt of “VI. To Clean Your Hooves Here Is A Dance In Honor Of The Grape Which Throughout History Has Been A Symbol of Revelry And Joy No To Say Analogy For The Bride As Uncut Blossom”, in The Beauty of the Husband
“POSEIDON: They need a lesson! Why? Because they broke something of ours. Because they squeak when they die. Because we CAN.”
— Anne Carson, Euripides’ The Trojan Women: A Comic, illustrated by Rosanna Bruno
Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public, in ancient as well as modern contexts. Consider how many female celebrities of classical mythology, literature and cult make themselves objectionable by the way they use their voice. […] Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death.
Anne Carson, The Gender of Sound