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Decreation by Anne Carson
Simone Weil described “decreation” as “undoing the creature in us”–an undoing of self. In her first collection in five years, Anne Carson explores this idea with characteristic brilliance and a tantalizing range of reference, moving from Aphrodite to Antonioni, Demosthenes to Annie Dillard, Telemachos to Trotsky, and writing in forms as varied as opera libretto, screenplay, poem, oratorio, essay, shot list, and rapture. As she makes her way through these forms she slowly dismantles them, and in doing so seeks to move through the self, to its undoing.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Anne Carson
103 books5,164 followersAnne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980 to 1987. She was a 1998 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2000 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has also won a Lannan Literary Award.
Carson (with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art) blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction. She is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her books include Antigonick, Nox, Decreation, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Economy of the Unlost; Autobiography of Red, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, and Glass, Irony and God, shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Carson is also a classics scholar, the translator of If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and the author of Eros the Bittersweet. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her latest book, Red Doc>, was shortlisted for the 2013 T.S. Elliot Prize.
Carson (with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art) blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction. She is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her books include Antigonick, Nox, Decreation, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Economy of the Unlost; Autobiography of Red, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, and Glass, Irony and God, shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Carson is also a classics scholar, the translator of If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and the author of Eros the Bittersweet. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her latest book, Red Doc>, was shortlisted for the 2013 T.S. Elliot Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 289 reviews
May 2, 2019
Carson has such a prodigious command of style and form that one is tempted to overlook the lack of passion. After initial enthusiasm I increasingly feel oppressed by this claustrophobic book, which evokes an apophatic language of transcendence to articulate what is ultimately a human failing -- her failure to make contact with her own animal nature.
The intellect is depicted again and again as a point of departure, but it leads only to alienation. Humans pass through this book like the shades of the Odyssey who generate speech but not warmth. Sexuality estranges, but never unites.
It's really a rather dismal view of life, and one that does not impress me. It strikes me as the rarefied ennui of an intellectual who spends far too much time in the company of books, and who would rather read of the rage of Achilles than stake her own heart in the bungled human comedy. I don't make this kind of statement lightly, but I do actually believe she should retire from teaching and go live a little.
Incidentally, Carson is the greatest translator of Sappho that one can imagine, and in matters of elegant expression she lacks nothing.
The intellect is depicted again and again as a point of departure, but it leads only to alienation. Humans pass through this book like the shades of the Odyssey who generate speech but not warmth. Sexuality estranges, but never unites.
It's really a rather dismal view of life, and one that does not impress me. It strikes me as the rarefied ennui of an intellectual who spends far too much time in the company of books, and who would rather read of the rage of Achilles than stake her own heart in the bungled human comedy. I don't make this kind of statement lightly, but I do actually believe she should retire from teaching and go live a little.
Incidentally, Carson is the greatest translator of Sappho that one can imagine, and in matters of elegant expression she lacks nothing.
April 18, 2012
I don't quite get all of this.
A mother's heavy love cripplingly cold wombed moon.
Selenian slices of operatic allure l i n e d volleys.
Probing Longinus' Dream for Weil's God
Who fell asleep whilst her passion S a p p h i c
feasted unto surcease. s t a r v i n g.
Don't fully understand every significance.
This aureately-adept, inwardly-tunneling wordplay
in all of its crystalline loveliness
and Penrosian falling away upward.
But I'll be damned if I don't find it f a s c i n a t i n g.
A slinky tonic for these
novocaine
nights.
January 7, 2025
i could passively read anne carson write about virginia woolf and vita sackville-west and sappho and antonioni and simone weil and marguerite porete and homer and ovid and socrates forever and i will
January 19, 2020
“For when the ecstatic is asked the question, What is that love dares the self to do? she will answer: Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty.”
Bold statement: Anne Carson is the most thrilling, innovative, and brilliant writer working today. This book is an absolute gem, breathlessly ranging from poetry to essays to criticism to opera to oratorio. I have read most of her books, and this is one of my favorites. Carson is curious and brave; she does whatever she likes. I admire her so deeply.
January 13, 2025
Anne Carson on Marguerite Pourete: "I have no idea what this sentence means but it gives me a thrill. It fills me with wonder" (177). And that is often precisely how I felt reading this book.
March 27, 2023
Decreation: a kind of undoing, something Carson does well. An undoing of our expectations, form, ways of being, ways of looking at things. A necessary precursor and companion to the act of creation, separate yet bound to it. Carson doesn't fit into neat categories and this book is a prime example of that--essays, poems (and the two forms often overlap), even opera.
Never a quick read, I found this book particularly dense: even with close reading over several months, I know I didn't grasp all (maybe not even much) of it and yet I rate reading it as a fulfilling experience that forced me to think--and feel--deeply.
I particularly liked (partly because it is an area of particular interest to me) the title essay "Decreation" ("in 3 parts"--which becomes 4, a kind of high level joke) about three women: Sappho, Marguerite Porete (a medieval woman who wrote about God and ecstatic experience and was burned at the stake for it when she would not withdraw her book or her views) and Simone Weil (the 20th century brilliant philosopher and, although she did not become Catholic, a mystic attached to Catholic experience and heritage. Carson explicates and releases from the lives and writings of these women both the attempts at articulating spiritual experience along with the impossibility of doing so.
I do not have the skill or clarity of understanding to discuss these essays and poems (a wonderful one about the director Antonioni "visiting the asylum") or how the open up, bring more light to who we are as women and writers and spiritual beings. Despite that, and as always for me with Carson, the tantalizing tastes of meaning, the beauty of the language and imagery, the scraps I can access, are enough to sustain me through (what is for me) the hard work of reading her. And her work continues to resonate in me long after I've closed the book.
Never a quick read, I found this book particularly dense: even with close reading over several months, I know I didn't grasp all (maybe not even much) of it and yet I rate reading it as a fulfilling experience that forced me to think--and feel--deeply.
I particularly liked (partly because it is an area of particular interest to me) the title essay "Decreation" ("in 3 parts"--which becomes 4, a kind of high level joke) about three women: Sappho, Marguerite Porete (a medieval woman who wrote about God and ecstatic experience and was burned at the stake for it when she would not withdraw her book or her views) and Simone Weil (the 20th century brilliant philosopher and, although she did not become Catholic, a mystic attached to Catholic experience and heritage. Carson explicates and releases from the lives and writings of these women both the attempts at articulating spiritual experience along with the impossibility of doing so.
I do not have the skill or clarity of understanding to discuss these essays and poems (a wonderful one about the director Antonioni "visiting the asylum") or how the open up, bring more light to who we are as women and writers and spiritual beings. Despite that, and as always for me with Carson, the tantalizing tastes of meaning, the beauty of the language and imagery, the scraps I can access, are enough to sustain me through (what is for me) the hard work of reading her. And her work continues to resonate in me long after I've closed the book.
August 30, 2024
say what you will, and many do, but anne carson fucks!!!!
February 27, 2025
zrobię reread, żeby więcej zrozumieć, ale uwielbiam się taplać wewnątrz jej głowy
July 4, 2016
Este libro, mezcla de poesía y ensayo es una absoluta maravilla. Complejo, poético, clarificador por momentos. Decreación sería la respuesta femenina a la deconstrucción si tuviera que definirlo de alguna manera. Dejarse sumergir en la poética de Carson es entrar en un universo literario donde tu cabeza solo puede explotar. Derruir las formas de los géneros para encontrar a otra persona, la persona decreada
August 22, 2018
To be a writer is to construct a big, loud, shiny centre of self from which the writing is given voice and any claim to be intent on annihilating this self while still continuing to write and give voice to writing must involve the writer in some important acts of subterfuge or contradiction.
Decreation is another eclectic collection of poetry, essay, and music from the ever idiosyncratic Anne Carson. As per usual, she constructs a fantasia of historical reference, etymology, literary criticism, and artistic expression. Of particular note is the namesake essay, "Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil Tell God." It contains much of what makes her such an interesting writer. "Sublimes" inspired me to watch every Antonioni film starring Monica Vitti, so there's an added bonus to picking this book up.
Decreation is another eclectic collection of poetry, essay, and music from the ever idiosyncratic Anne Carson. As per usual, she constructs a fantasia of historical reference, etymology, literary criticism, and artistic expression. Of particular note is the namesake essay, "Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil Tell God." It contains much of what makes her such an interesting writer. "Sublimes" inspired me to watch every Antonioni film starring Monica Vitti, so there's an added bonus to picking this book up.
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November 15, 2023Poezija i proza Anne Carson je dosta hermetična te zahtjeva potpunu angažiranost čitatelja. Bez poznavanja klasične književnosti teško je pojmiti svijet o kojem govori autorica. Nisam erudit poput Carson stoga je meni ova knjiga prilično teška za čitanje i razumijevanje.
Čitajući njezine riječi osjećam se poput djeteta koje se prvi put susreće s nekim književnim tekstom. U isto vrijeme osjećam strahopoštovanje, ali sam i zbunjena. Mislim da je Carson namijenjena čitateljima koji izvrsno poznaju klasičnu književnost odnosno onima koji je žive poput autorice.
Čitajući njezine riječi osjećam se poput djeteta koje se prvi put susreće s nekim književnim tekstom. U isto vrijeme osjećam strahopoštovanje, ali sam i zbunjena. Mislim da je Carson namijenjena čitateljima koji izvrsno poznaju klasičnu književnost odnosno onima koji je žive poput autorice.
February 28, 2024
Another author who just can't be rated by the star system! Maybe this book isn't quite as engaging as some of her other books, but it is important for the whole picture that becomes Anne Carson. She is engaging Simone Weil and writing movingly about her ill mother. All of these things add up to the intellectual and emotional and, yes, spiritual journey of the author, one of the central ones of our time. Here's a little thing I wrote back in the day:
Anne Carson defies categories. She has been called “the most interesting poet writing in English” by more than one peer, yet her books are usually a mixture of things that look like poems, that look like essays (footnotes and all), and that look like things you’ve never quite seen before.
Sometimes Carson writes frankly and emotionally about entirely personal matters like the breakup of a relationship or the death of her mother. Other times she will go on for pages in passionate dialogue with authors who have been dead for millennia. Because she has chosen the whole range of the Western intellectual tradition as her territory, she wins prestigious awards, including a recent appointment to the Order of Canada. Because she has written beautifully about the intersection of longing and the erotic, she gets quoted in a cable TV series that unsympathetic souls might label soft-core porn. She was trained as a classicist, and her translation of Sappho — perhaps the first lyric poet — has become the definitive one of our time. When the U-M made the successful effort to hire her a few years ago, it had to create a position that spanned its departments of classics, comparative literature, and English. Probably because of this range and her unwillingness to fit anyone’s prescriptions, she has become one of the few serious poets who are read even by those who never read poetry.
Her new book, Decreation, labels itself as “Poetry, Essays, Opera,” continuing Carson’s restless search through the usual categories. The title comes from one of Carson’s heroes, the French mystic and philosopher Simone Weil, who essentially starved herself to death during World War II. Carson writes, “Simone Weil was . . . a person who wanted to get herself out of the way so as to arrive at God. ‘The self,’ she says in one of her notebooks, ‘is only a shadow projected by sin and error which blocks God’s light, and which I take for a Being.’ Weil had a program for getting the self out of the way which she called ‘decreation.’ . . . ‘To undo the creature in us’ is one of the ways she describes its aim.”
That passage might make you think that Anne Carson’s path through her work has been essentially a spiritual journey, but that category, too, fails to fit. It does nothing to explain her work’s rigorous intellectual engagement. And it doesn’t help us understand the moving personal voice of the poem “Lines,” which appears earlier in Decreation. “Lines” begins:
While talking to my mother I neaten things. Spines of books by the phone.
Paperclips
in a china dish. Fragments of eraser that dot the desk. She speaks
longingly
of death. I begin tilting all the paperclips in the other direction.
Out
the window snow is falling straight down in lines. To my mother,
love
of my life, I describe what I had for brunch. The lines are falling
faster
now.
This combination of elements, and a dozen more I haven’t mentioned, makes reading Anne Carson one of the most invigorating intellectual, aesthetic, and possibly spiritual experiences contemporary writing offers.
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
Anne Carson defies categories. She has been called “the most interesting poet writing in English” by more than one peer, yet her books are usually a mixture of things that look like poems, that look like essays (footnotes and all), and that look like things you’ve never quite seen before.
Sometimes Carson writes frankly and emotionally about entirely personal matters like the breakup of a relationship or the death of her mother. Other times she will go on for pages in passionate dialogue with authors who have been dead for millennia. Because she has chosen the whole range of the Western intellectual tradition as her territory, she wins prestigious awards, including a recent appointment to the Order of Canada. Because she has written beautifully about the intersection of longing and the erotic, she gets quoted in a cable TV series that unsympathetic souls might label soft-core porn. She was trained as a classicist, and her translation of Sappho — perhaps the first lyric poet — has become the definitive one of our time. When the U-M made the successful effort to hire her a few years ago, it had to create a position that spanned its departments of classics, comparative literature, and English. Probably because of this range and her unwillingness to fit anyone’s prescriptions, she has become one of the few serious poets who are read even by those who never read poetry.
Her new book, Decreation, labels itself as “Poetry, Essays, Opera,” continuing Carson’s restless search through the usual categories. The title comes from one of Carson’s heroes, the French mystic and philosopher Simone Weil, who essentially starved herself to death during World War II. Carson writes, “Simone Weil was . . . a person who wanted to get herself out of the way so as to arrive at God. ‘The self,’ she says in one of her notebooks, ‘is only a shadow projected by sin and error which blocks God’s light, and which I take for a Being.’ Weil had a program for getting the self out of the way which she called ‘decreation.’ . . . ‘To undo the creature in us’ is one of the ways she describes its aim.”
That passage might make you think that Anne Carson’s path through her work has been essentially a spiritual journey, but that category, too, fails to fit. It does nothing to explain her work’s rigorous intellectual engagement. And it doesn’t help us understand the moving personal voice of the poem “Lines,” which appears earlier in Decreation. “Lines” begins:
While talking to my mother I neaten things. Spines of books by the phone.
Paperclips
in a china dish. Fragments of eraser that dot the desk. She speaks
longingly
of death. I begin tilting all the paperclips in the other direction.
Out
the window snow is falling straight down in lines. To my mother,
love
of my life, I describe what I had for brunch. The lines are falling
faster
now.
This combination of elements, and a dozen more I haven’t mentioned, makes reading Anne Carson one of the most invigorating intellectual, aesthetic, and possibly spiritual experiences contemporary writing offers.
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
May 7, 2023
"Decreation is an undoing of the creature in us--that creature enclosed in self and defined by self. But to undo self one must move through self, to the very inside of it's definition. We have nowhere else to start."
I came to accept a long time ago that I will never fully grasp the language that is Anne Carson. Her work takes time, some ideas I can hold onto, some I have to sit with, some I have to let pass. But I am still always thoroughly affected by the way her mind works, and the way she translates her thoughts into words. It is so wholly unique and otherworldly, the way she constructs sentences, her word choice, a pause, the space left on the page. Even when her writing is like nothing I've ever read before, even when the emotion it evokes is indescribable, it still creates something familiar, like a foggy childhood memory that lingers.
Particularly enjoyed the essay on Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil, the idea of decreation, of undoing the self and trying to articulate this spiritual experience with God, the impossibility of doing so, and the paradox created when attempting to do so. Also really enjoyed the Opera in Three Parts, especially Love's Forgery. Felt very tongue in cheek.
I came to accept a long time ago that I will never fully grasp the language that is Anne Carson. Her work takes time, some ideas I can hold onto, some I have to sit with, some I have to let pass. But I am still always thoroughly affected by the way her mind works, and the way she translates her thoughts into words. It is so wholly unique and otherworldly, the way she constructs sentences, her word choice, a pause, the space left on the page. Even when her writing is like nothing I've ever read before, even when the emotion it evokes is indescribable, it still creates something familiar, like a foggy childhood memory that lingers.
Particularly enjoyed the essay on Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil, the idea of decreation, of undoing the self and trying to articulate this spiritual experience with God, the impossibility of doing so, and the paradox created when attempting to do so. Also really enjoyed the Opera in Three Parts, especially Love's Forgery. Felt very tongue in cheek.
August 17, 2014
I have never read anything remotely like this before.
For example:
"DECREATION
An Opera in Three Parts
PART ONE
Love's Forgery
Cast: Hephaistos: lame god of the forge and husband of Aphrodite
Aphrodite: goddess of love and wife of Hephaistos
Ares: god of war and lover of Aphrodite
Volcano Chorus: 7 female robots built by Hephaistos to help him at the forge"
This collection melds beauty, mystery, philosophy, psychology, ridiculousness, wit, hilarity, the sublime, love, and more in darkness and almost random-seeming structure. Make no mistake, this is no light reading -- unless of course you want it to be, because it will bend for you like that. But if you want food for thought, it's "FarNear".
For example:
"DECREATION
An Opera in Three Parts
PART ONE
Love's Forgery
Cast: Hephaistos: lame god of the forge and husband of Aphrodite
Aphrodite: goddess of love and wife of Hephaistos
Ares: god of war and lover of Aphrodite
Volcano Chorus: 7 female robots built by Hephaistos to help him at the forge"
This collection melds beauty, mystery, philosophy, psychology, ridiculousness, wit, hilarity, the sublime, love, and more in darkness and almost random-seeming structure. Make no mistake, this is no light reading -- unless of course you want it to be, because it will bend for you like that. But if you want food for thought, it's "FarNear".
October 2, 2024
con este libro empezó todo jajsjsjdjdjd lo digo en serio lo leí en 2019 y luego vino todo lo demás. lo leeré doscientas veces mas
July 24, 2023
guys I'm beginning to think Anne Carson likes the colour red
January 24, 2024
yes i want to undo this creature in me but i have work tomorrow :/
February 4, 2025
deciding one month into 2025 that my new years resolution is to have more visions
April 9, 2025
With Carson there is always so much I don't understand while simultaneously understanding absolutely everything.
December 9, 2024
Leggere Anne Carson è sempre un'esperienza...
Questo libro è tante cose insieme: alcune (come i saggi), mi sono piaciute molto; il resto, non credo di averlo capito fino in fondo, anche perché non sono una grande lettrice di poesia onestamente.
Ho preferito altro della sua produzione.
Questo libro è tante cose insieme: alcune (come i saggi), mi sono piaciute molto; il resto, non credo di averlo capito fino in fondo, anche perché non sono una grande lettrice di poesia onestamente.
Ho preferito altro della sua produzione.
February 9, 2022
i feel like this collection makes the most sense after reading the final essay in it. if anything, maybe it should have been placed near the beginning? although, i feel that *coming into* the process of understanding is something she wanted to set up here. in general, i always feel equally awed and challenged by the things she writes; frankly i loved this collection, but i do feel that some of its contents were out of place, included because they weren’t initially intended for another publication/written release. i also know that, partially, that is the reason for their inclusion—that the defiance of their intended form means their “meaning” becomes deconstructed, all of it going back to the concept of decreation, how it is active and intentional, not accidental.
nonetheless—who else could combine essays, poetry, and opera together to write about subjects such as antonioni, monica vitti, sappho, simone weil, odysseus, the sublime, totality, and spirituality, all with such assuming ease? who else could see all these strands as part of the same fabric? anne carson can be most understood when you realize that in her writing, she is also on the journey towards understanding. she knows that if she claimed to fully understand what simone weil meant when she described “decreation,” it would only be from her eyes, her heart. “So in the end, it is important not to be fooled by fake women. If you mistake the dance of jealous for the love of God, or a heretic’s mirror for the true story, you are likely to spend the rest of your days in terrible hunger. No matter how many pages you eat.”
on an (unorganized) final thought, it was really interesting to see her ascribe the concept of decreation to the films of antonioni, as well as monica vitti’s corresponding performances (as she addresses the actress directly, not naming her for her characters). i really liked how she borrowed lines from ‘Red Desert’ and reformulated them, but those unfamiliar with any of these subjects/people would obviously find it a bit too far-reaching. (but, she understands the silence inside these images; that too is something that can only be interpreted, not explained.) “I want everything. Everything is a naked thought that strikes.” “Everything might spill.” “...[at] the deepest part of the sea everything goes transparent.” “Everything requires attention... ‘Everything,’ Kant says, exists only in our mind.” “If I had to go away I would take with me everything I see.” “To this [he] says nothing which is not I think the opposite of everything.” “In the clinic she met a girl whose problem was she wanted everything.” “...a clinic for people who want everything, everything I see everything I taste everything I touch everyday even the ashtrays...”
nonetheless—who else could combine essays, poetry, and opera together to write about subjects such as antonioni, monica vitti, sappho, simone weil, odysseus, the sublime, totality, and spirituality, all with such assuming ease? who else could see all these strands as part of the same fabric? anne carson can be most understood when you realize that in her writing, she is also on the journey towards understanding. she knows that if she claimed to fully understand what simone weil meant when she described “decreation,” it would only be from her eyes, her heart. “So in the end, it is important not to be fooled by fake women. If you mistake the dance of jealous for the love of God, or a heretic’s mirror for the true story, you are likely to spend the rest of your days in terrible hunger. No matter how many pages you eat.”
on an (unorganized) final thought, it was really interesting to see her ascribe the concept of decreation to the films of antonioni, as well as monica vitti’s corresponding performances (as she addresses the actress directly, not naming her for her characters). i really liked how she borrowed lines from ‘Red Desert’ and reformulated them, but those unfamiliar with any of these subjects/people would obviously find it a bit too far-reaching. (but, she understands the silence inside these images; that too is something that can only be interpreted, not explained.) “I want everything. Everything is a naked thought that strikes.” “Everything might spill.” “...[at] the deepest part of the sea everything goes transparent.” “Everything requires attention... ‘Everything,’ Kant says, exists only in our mind.” “If I had to go away I would take with me everything I see.” “To this [he] says nothing which is not I think the opposite of everything.” “In the clinic she met a girl whose problem was she wanted everything.” “...a clinic for people who want everything, everything I see everything I taste everything I touch everyday even the ashtrays...”
December 24, 2018
"Mi poesía personal es un fracaso.
No quiero ser una persona.
Quiero ser insoportable.
De amante en amante, el verdor del amor.
Fresco, refrescante.
La tierra no engendra una planta semejante.
¿Quién no termina siendo una impostora?
Bebe todo el sexo que hay.
Aún así, muere."
Anne Carson es una de mis escritoras favoritas. Este libro es una obra de arte comenzando por la edición y el encuadernado hasta cada última palabra que hay en su interior.
Un libro que se mueve en la línea del blanco, negro y rojo; antes de disponerme a leerlo, el tacto de sus hojas y el uso de estos tres colores ya me tiene enamorada. "Decreación" es un concepto que Simone Weil describió como "deshacer a la criatura que hay en nosotros", Carson pretende llevar a cabo la decreación del ser a través de poemas, ensayos, guiones, listas... Para Anne no hay límites cuando se trata de escribir. Hace tiempo que no encuentro una escritora tan culta y rebuscada capaz de llegarme al corazón. Anne es profesora de griego antiguo y su pasión por la literatura clásica griega forma parte de sus escritos, llenos de menciones y alusiones a clásicos como la Odisea. Se encuentran también referencias a Kant, Nietzsche , Antonioni, Virginia Woolf y muchas otras importantes figuras del mundo literario, el cine y la filosofía.
Una oda al sueño y el análisis de lo sublime son algunas de las temáticas que encontramos en el libro.
La mente de Carson es prodigiosamente diferente, su manera de hacer poesía nos replantea los cánones métricos y estilísticos llevándonos por un camino completamente distinto. Mentiría sino dijera que he repasado sus poemas y ensayos más de dos veces para ser capaz de percibir cada detalle y la cantidad de referencias que contienen. Este libro hay que saborearlo, la literatura de Carson hay que saborearla y no es para todos los gustos. Pero para mí, sin duda, una de las mejores autoras contemporáneas y además muy poco valorada en nuestro país. Una mujer inteligente y una mente brillante unidas junto a una base cultural muy potente.
No quiero ser una persona.
Quiero ser insoportable.
De amante en amante, el verdor del amor.
Fresco, refrescante.
La tierra no engendra una planta semejante.
¿Quién no termina siendo una impostora?
Bebe todo el sexo que hay.
Aún así, muere."
Anne Carson es una de mis escritoras favoritas. Este libro es una obra de arte comenzando por la edición y el encuadernado hasta cada última palabra que hay en su interior.
Un libro que se mueve en la línea del blanco, negro y rojo; antes de disponerme a leerlo, el tacto de sus hojas y el uso de estos tres colores ya me tiene enamorada. "Decreación" es un concepto que Simone Weil describió como "deshacer a la criatura que hay en nosotros", Carson pretende llevar a cabo la decreación del ser a través de poemas, ensayos, guiones, listas... Para Anne no hay límites cuando se trata de escribir. Hace tiempo que no encuentro una escritora tan culta y rebuscada capaz de llegarme al corazón. Anne es profesora de griego antiguo y su pasión por la literatura clásica griega forma parte de sus escritos, llenos de menciones y alusiones a clásicos como la Odisea. Se encuentran también referencias a Kant, Nietzsche , Antonioni, Virginia Woolf y muchas otras importantes figuras del mundo literario, el cine y la filosofía.
Una oda al sueño y el análisis de lo sublime son algunas de las temáticas que encontramos en el libro.
La mente de Carson es prodigiosamente diferente, su manera de hacer poesía nos replantea los cánones métricos y estilísticos llevándonos por un camino completamente distinto. Mentiría sino dijera que he repasado sus poemas y ensayos más de dos veces para ser capaz de percibir cada detalle y la cantidad de referencias que contienen. Este libro hay que saborearlo, la literatura de Carson hay que saborearla y no es para todos los gustos. Pero para mí, sin duda, una de las mejores autoras contemporáneas y además muy poco valorada en nuestro país. Una mujer inteligente y una mente brillante unidas junto a una base cultural muy potente.
October 27, 2013
Whatever Anne Carson touches she makes entirely new---you feel like your reading something space aged (if space age wasn't a throwback term in itself).
However, how succesful this book is depends explicitly on which section you're reading at the time. It's a segmented creature, with each section loosely related to the others---for me Carson's confessional pieces are not as interesting as her academic excursions, however I know many people who only know how to read confessionally, so I can't blame her for putting it in as a doorway to her work.
She plays with not just intertextuality but intermediality, from movies to poetry to music and back again. Intertext does not really impress me in itself, it's really more of my roomate's digs---I don't know that knowing every other book referred to gives one an innate understanding of the text at hand--but anyway--that's just my private opinion.
However, how succesful this book is depends explicitly on which section you're reading at the time. It's a segmented creature, with each section loosely related to the others---for me Carson's confessional pieces are not as interesting as her academic excursions, however I know many people who only know how to read confessionally, so I can't blame her for putting it in as a doorway to her work.
She plays with not just intertextuality but intermediality, from movies to poetry to music and back again. Intertext does not really impress me in itself, it's really more of my roomate's digs---I don't know that knowing every other book referred to gives one an innate understanding of the text at hand--but anyway--that's just my private opinion.
October 29, 2019
Este fue un gran libro.
consiste en una antología, pero dada la versatilidad de Carson en su escritura, eso apenas se nota.
hay poesía, ensayo, fotografía (qué) con un poema a modo de epígrafe, y teatro.
los temas son variados, aunque siempre trata autores canónicos.
Safo, Homero, Beckett, Simone Weil.
La libertad de Carson es tal que no termina los ensayos con una conclusión, sino con un poema. El poema es la conclusión, así como el poema es el punto más álgido de una novela.
La edición es de Vaso Roto, probablemente una de las editoriales más comprometidas actualmente, con un vasto y selecto catálogo de poesía, en ediciones siempre bilingues, siempre cuidadas.
La traducción es de Jeannette Clariond, que tiene publicado otros textos en la editorial y ha hecho así mismo otras traducciones. Su traducción aquí no es menos que impecable.
consiste en una antología, pero dada la versatilidad de Carson en su escritura, eso apenas se nota.
hay poesía, ensayo, fotografía (qué) con un poema a modo de epígrafe, y teatro.
los temas son variados, aunque siempre trata autores canónicos.
Safo, Homero, Beckett, Simone Weil.
La libertad de Carson es tal que no termina los ensayos con una conclusión, sino con un poema. El poema es la conclusión, así como el poema es el punto más álgido de una novela.
La edición es de Vaso Roto, probablemente una de las editoriales más comprometidas actualmente, con un vasto y selecto catálogo de poesía, en ediciones siempre bilingues, siempre cuidadas.
La traducción es de Jeannette Clariond, que tiene publicado otros textos en la editorial y ha hecho así mismo otras traducciones. Su traducción aquí no es menos que impecable.
November 14, 2014
It's all so good, but some lyric poems just really sing. The essay on sleep and the title essay kill it. The genres are all wild n great
February 14, 2022
bara svo þið vitið þá myndi ég alltaf gefa Anne Carson 6/5 stjörnum ef ég gæti
January 14, 2024
didn’t hit like her other stuff. the play with weil and her parents was way more comical than serious to me
December 19, 2019
Perhaps it is a matter of reader phase, perhaps it is a matter of Carson's authorial phase, but this book did not sit well with me.
I have so far read four books by Carson that have placed her in the echelon of my most-loved authors: 'Autobiography of Red' (1998), its sequel 'Red Doc>' (2013), and 'The Beauty of the Husband' (2001), all three of which have redefined, or indeed straight up defined, my notion of a verse novel; and the essay 'Eros the Bittersweet' (1986), which introduced me to the important triangle: lover, beloved, and eros.
'Plain water' (1995) and 'Decreation' (2005), with a few exceptions (essays in the latter), both feel much weaker, more random, and way too loose. I was most likely lacking sympathy for a seemingly, but somehow rough feminist drive in 'Plain Water', as I was lacking the literary references to appreciate some of the more esoteric frameworks Carson employs in 'Decreation'. A shame, really. I'll keep searching for (hoping for) a Carson book to match the other four.
I have so far read four books by Carson that have placed her in the echelon of my most-loved authors: 'Autobiography of Red' (1998), its sequel 'Red Doc>' (2013), and 'The Beauty of the Husband' (2001), all three of which have redefined, or indeed straight up defined, my notion of a verse novel; and the essay 'Eros the Bittersweet' (1986), which introduced me to the important triangle: lover, beloved, and eros.
'Plain water' (1995) and 'Decreation' (2005), with a few exceptions (essays in the latter), both feel much weaker, more random, and way too loose. I was most likely lacking sympathy for a seemingly, but somehow rough feminist drive in 'Plain Water', as I was lacking the literary references to appreciate some of the more esoteric frameworks Carson employs in 'Decreation'. A shame, really. I'll keep searching for (hoping for) a Carson book to match the other four.
January 5, 2020
this part right at the end -- “When Sappho tells us that she is “all but dead,” when Marguerite Porete tells us she wants to become an “annihilated soul,” when Simone Weil tells us that “we participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves,” how are we to square these dark ideas with the brilliant self-assertiveness of the writerly project shared by all three of them, the project of telling the world the truth about God, love and reality? The answer is we can’t. It is no accident that Marguerite Porete calls her book a Mirror. To be a writer is to construct a big, loud, shiny centre of self from which the writing is given voice and any claim to be intent on annihilating this self while still continuing to write and give voice to writing must involve the writer in some important acts of subterfuge or contradiction.” (Carson, 171)
July 21, 2024
Whether it be meditations on sleep in the Greek classics, essays on the FarNear and annihilating the self, a smattering of chaotically shaped poetry, or an opera that spans Aphrodite to the papacy to Simone Weil, Anne Carson remains the master of form and language. This was a stunning collection of work by one of the most impressive and special writers of our time.
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