La belleza del marido: Un ensayo narrativo en 29 tangos

by Anne Carson, Andreu Jaume (Translator)

Premio T.S. Eliot de poesía

«El deseo al cuadrado es amor y el amor al cuadrado es locura.
La locura al cuadrado es matrimonio.» La belleza del marido, el primer libro que se publica en España de la canadiense Anne Carson, es una de las más originales y turbadoras manifestaciones de la poesía de nuestros días. Subtitulado «un ensayo narrativo en 29 tangos», este libro inclasificable cuenta la historia de un matrimonio en torno a la idea de Keats «beauty is truth», belleza es verdad. A lo largo de estos 29 tangos -un tango, como el matrimonio, es algo que uno tiene que bailar hasta el final-, Anne Carson, considerada ya un clásico vivo de las letras anglosajonas, nos introduce en la historia íntima de un matrimonio que se desmorona. Iluminador, a menudo brutal, conmovedor y oscuramente divertido, este libro nos deslumbra con escenas, diálogos y reflexiones que ahondan en la más vieja de las preocupaciones poéticas -el amor- como si fuera la primera vez que se expresa.

Reseñas:
«La poesía más interesante que se escribe hoy en día en inglés.» Michael Ondaatje
«Leería cualquier cosa que Anne Carson escribiera.» Susan Sontag
«La lectura de Anne Carson ocasiona un placer que sacude. [...] La belleza del marido es desgarrador, cercano, irónico y, por momentos, cruel. Lo veo como un examen ejemplar de la intimidad.» Matías Rivas, La Tercera

«Páginas de gran vitalismo introspectivo de las que surge una tensión entre la idealización de un ídolo y su derrumbe. [...] Ninguna clase de feminismo simplón o ramplón reluce en estas páginas. Más bien al contrario: sí hay -creo- algo parecido a un conocimiento femenino del mundo en el que se incluyen sutilezas inaccesibles a los hombres pero no abominación de estos.» Ángel Rupérez, El País



Though Anne Carson's poetry is shot through with the myths and images of the classical world, that ancient light helps illuminate contemporary situations and concerns. A classics professor at McGill University in Montreal, Carson has arrived in a surprisingly short time as one of Canada's finest poets. More than that, her exquisite, intelligent, highly original poems put her in the first rank of world poets. In The Beauty of the Husband, subtitled A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, she explores her ambiguous feelings toward a difficult but intriguing marriage. Each poem begins with a short quote from John Keats, whose idea that "beauty is truth" is the thread holding together a relationship with a man addicted to lying and philandering. A scoundrel ("He lied when it wasn't even convenient"), the husband is redeemed and forgiven almost everything because of beauty.

For Carson, the truth is "layered and elusive," hidden under the conversations of a thousand nights, nights when the lights were still on at dawn. There is a daring quality to Carson's work, a startling vision and perspective that will not be judged by normal standards. By penetrating to the core of a relationship, Carson stands convention on its head and finds "the light that pain brings." These poems bespeak the brilliance and shade of shape-shifting truth and conjure a freshness of language that shimmers. Somehow it seems fitting that the book itself, as an object to hold and behold, is also beautiful. --Mark Frutkin

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Essays, Canada, Classics, Contemporary, Canadian Literature

239 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 6, 2001

About the author

Anne 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.

Reviews

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is it that binds one person to another?
Why does beauty have such sway?

How is it that one is bound to someone who is
destructive, or
faithless, or
fickle, or
deceitful, or
who constantly disappears, or
who can never love you the way you want or need? Or
all of the above, and
yet the bond persists:

Why?
How is it that you can not escape?
What cruel trick of fate or nature can give you over to such a creature?

"Don't call it my choice,
I was ventured:
by some pure gravity of existence itself,
conspiracy of being!"

"and I do not apologize because as I say I was not to blame, I was unshielded in the face of existence
and existence depends on beauty.
In the end.
Existence will not stop
until it gets to beauty and then there follow all the consequences that lead to the end.
Useless to interpose analysis
or make contrafactual suggestions."

Is this convincing? Not as such, but the book is convincing, but also, like the beautiful husband, seductive and intoxicating. The protagonist, she loved him so. Despite everything, and we understand why she can't move on. Sure, the husband, he's an asshole. Deceitful, destructive, disappearing, faithless, fickle, and unable to love her as she needed. But his appeal wasn't his physical beauty, but in the way he created worlds, wove words into stories (or lies), and how those worlds and words spun dependence and love, and how with those worlds and words he pushed her boundaries, but all in a way that was tied to her; that tied her; that ties us: we and she, enthralled, entwined, enraptured.

What is it that binds one person to another?
Why does beauty have such sway?
How do people get power over one another?

This book is a stab; an attempt to understand how love works its spell. The book stabs at the phenomenon of obsession and love from different directions; using different rhythms, styles, meters, techniques. It's a painful book that draws blood from old wounds. Your old wounds. And yet, when the wounds recur, does that help illuminate the invisible ties? Does the new blood glow? Or do we just remain wounded; simply reliving the pain of broken love? And those old wounds, they just throb. And hurt. But at least in this book they hurt beautifully. A whole world of pain, but a whole world that is created in lies and love; that tie us, we and she: enthrall, entwine, enrapture.

In the end, Carson gives no real answers, and maybe it's useless to interpose analysis or make contrafactual suggestions. In the end love binds; beauty has sway; and there is no escape, just wounds after bloodletting.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book in the middle of the night. I was reading it because I was looking for inspiration for something I am writing, looking for an approach to form that is inventive and challenging, and Carson is the person to do that, and she also does other things amazingly well, clearly, so I was inspired, and how. She never seems to just accept a form and fill it. She plays with form for a purpose, and often deeply human ones, as here. So what does she do with form?

1) She says she is writing something "fictional" which is perhaps in part to deflect the usual questions about whether this is autobiographical or not, but probably more so to help us reflect on the slippery relationship between fiction and non-fiction;

2) She is writing a "fictional essay," which makes you stop and think what THAT sort of hybrid looks like. Narrative as a form of inquiry, essaying narratively/fictionally about love/marriage/relationships we choose that are sometimes or at some points just so wrong for us, as this one clearly is for her narrator, the "wife" telling the tale. Her essay also is a reflection, an exploration, not a mere argument, about the romantic poet Keats, whom brilliant GR reviewer Ceridwen reminds us was consumptive and not consummated in his own loving, which may have made him even more intensively desiring. The essay focuses on a famous quote from Keats, "beauty is truth, truth's beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," which is an assertion that may just be in contention, based on this story;

3) She is writing this fictional essay in the form of 29 "narratively linked tangos," and the blurb for the book says you have to dance a tango all the way to the end. I don't know much about dance, but compared to, say, the twist, a tango is a narrative dance, one rooted in romantic fantasy and desire, it has a beginning, middle and end, like some romantic relationships. All the tangos here are linked to each other;

4) Carson has chosen to have her narrator and main character be pretty unsympathetic, though that doesn't bug me: I understand her struggle, let's just say that much;

5) She enacts her exploration of the uses and abuses of beauty through many perspectives; mainly through the "wife," but the husband also has his say, his buddy puts in his two cents, and even an urn gets to say something about it!

6) There are many references to classical and other texts throughout, which I guess also makes this essay-like, but the references are allusive, not argumentative.

Is this too difficult, with all these levels and forms and assumptions? Does it require a graduate degree in literature? I don't know. But it was satisfying for me on lots of levels, and there are moments in it of passion and emotional devastation that have nothing to do with obscure references, though trust me, a lot of those references do pay off, for me, at least, and take me deeper. I thought it was awesome; I learned a lot about form, language, beauty, love, and the end of love.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Good thing I don't have Keats on hand, else there I go.

A lie, for I have a form of it in nightingale, third from the top of a section labeled 'Poetry' in some chimera thing brewed for the last six years if the transcribed origin date does not lie. Six hundred pages passed just this week, the cut and paste accumulating in smallish fur, micro soft for the consumer, so pardon my crankiness whenever the adulation for paper and pen and etc grow a bit much. I chomped the bit in typing school on the digital plane, pitter pattered in trepidation of tendonitis across the backs of books wedged to the height of the keyboard, and when the time came to write my thought has never been on good terms with my penmanship, so why shouldn't I make use of the time I was born in? If not for that, I would never have my Keats, and what a pity that would be.

Carson frightens me. She's a single focus to an extraordinary extent, run run run after a solitary author till she can write a work even I can recognize as totally immersed, something I have spent year and page in six and six hundred outrunning in an effort to find my 'self'. Whereas Carson is those respectives reversed, reminding me too much of that dread of being on the cusp of graduating to engineer to a single celled slice of idea pitted and potted to pieces with all the money in the world riding on a single bloodying calculation and not a blessing of literature and/or diversity to be found. I'd sacrifice the span of my attention in a heartbeat to forgo being stuck, and that's a line on which I've stood both sides.

How does she compose, I wonder? I do so in fluid stutters never looking back, so the fact she feels the same is suspect. Then I think on the more obvious references and the even more damning bibliography and I wonder just how much of an academic is she? I'm a fair hand at the journal article myself, judging by the published results, but my current train of composition is different, no matter how long I must go. Try as I might, I can't imagine careful checking beyond the interspersed quote (instinct, now) without a full throated cringe, although I do so admire the sheer density of allusion woven with play. For, despite all the Greek and French and English, she is playing; a trickster tonguing our supposed truth, beauteous as the shine and twice as likely to slit our throats for that's the only way to talk of love.

She looks up from her work, deep/ in the pleasure of it as he can see, something about her/ blinds him.

Excuse this digressive brevity as inadvertent incentive to try your own hand.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite Anne Carson. It hits me on a far deeper level than Autobiography of Red. Jealousy, beauty, sex... Every line something to take in, they come up for me at odd moments...

"... So why did I love him from early girlhood to late middle age
and the divorce decree came in the mail?
Beauty. No great secret. Not ashamed to say I loved him for his beauty.
As I would again
if he came near. Beauty convinces. You know beauty makes sex possible.
Beauty makes sex sex."

Beauty does not rest.

"A wound gives off its own light
surgeons say.
If all the lamps in the house were turned out
you could dress this wound
by what shines from it."

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ay, büyülendim resmen. Nasıl anlatmalı bu kitabı hiç bilmiyorum, okuduğum hiçbir şeye benzemiyor çünkü, türünü tanımlamak bile güç.

Öncelikle şu dizeler şurada bir dursun: "İnsan kalmak bir sınırı aşmaktır / Beğen beğenebilirsen / Beğen cüret edebilirsen."

Kanadalı şair Anne Carson ile tanışma kitabım oldu Kocanın Güzelliği ve kendisiyle ilişkimizin burada kalmayacağını çok net söyleyebilirim. Ben ki çeviri şiirle sıkıntısı büyük bir insanım, içine girmekte hep çok zorlanırım, bu kez bırakın içine girebilmeyi, Carson'ın kelimelerinden müteşekkil bir nehirde yüzdüm, sürüklendim, yıkandım, yundum resmen.

Kitap, "29 Tangoda Kurgusal Bir Deneme" alt başlığını taşıyor. Ne şiir, ne düz yazı aslında bu metinler, dolayısıyla "kurgusal deneme" sanırım en doğru ifade sahiden. Arka kapakta "manzum roman" ve "anlatısal şiir" diye tanımlanmış kitap, bunlar da olur, zira öyküyü şiire benzeyen bir formda, poetik bir üslupla takip ediyoruz.

Öykü insanın kalbini çok kırıyor: aşık olmayı bırakamadığı, ancak kendisini sürekli aldatan kocasını yazıyor anlatıcımız. Güzelliği için aşık olduğu kocası. Adını bilmediğimiz, sadece "koca" olarak anılan bir adam. Bir evliliğin bitişini izliyoruz, kelimelerine sinmiş hüzünle bana Duras'nın "Bir Yaz Akşamı On Buçukta"sını hatırlattı, benzer bir yürek ağrısı.

İngiliz yazar John Keats'in "güzellik hakikattir" cümlesinden yola çıkıyor Carson ve 29 bölümde (yahut tangoda) anlatıyor öyküsünü. Her bölüm yine Keats'ten bir alıntıyla başlıyor; ancak Homeros, Kenzabure Oe, Kafka ve Proust'a da uzanıyor, onların sözcükleri kadının zihninde uçuşup yaralarını kanattıkça daha çok yazıyor, acısını yazarak kusuyor resmen, bir yandan güzelliyor, bir yandan ağıt yakıyor.

Çok, çok, çok sevdim. Aslı Biçen'in çevirisi bence müthiş ama bu kitabı bir gün orijinalinden de okuyacağım muhakkak zira oradaki lezzeti kim bilir nasıldır?

Çok cümlenin altını çizdim ama şunu da şuraya iliştirip susayım: "Tereddütü muhafaza etmeyi seviyorum derdi."

[Alberto Villarreal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gracias Anne por

[June García · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinario y hermoso. A pesar de que me cuesta ponerme en la posición de “esposa pasando por un divorcio con un esposo infiel”, las emociones que retrata Anne Carson en este ensayo narrativo en tangos, son universales y poderosas. El amor, la desilusión, el dolor, la incertidumbre, el deseo, la fantasía. La versión de Lumen que leí, tenía el texto original en inglés y es muy bacán poder leerlo en ambos idiomas, aunque la traducción me parece muy acertada. Los títulos de cada tango son pequeños poemas. Simplemente alucinante!
“Leal a nada
mi marido. ¿Entonces por qué le amé desde la temprana adolescencia hasta entrada la madurez
y la sentencia de divorcio llegó por correo?
La belleza. No tiene mucho secreto. No me da vergüenza decir que le amé por su belleza”
“Su seriedad la destroza.
Las personas que pueden estar serias juntas; eso es algo profundo.
Tienen una botella de agua mineral en la mesa entre ellos
y dos vasos.
¡No les hace falta alcohol!
¿Cuándo ha desarrollado él
este nuevo gusto puritano?”

Edit: ahora que leí ambas versiones simultáneamente (Lumen y Bisturi 10), me parece que la de Bisturí 10 realizada por Soledad Marambio es notablemente mejor. Solo en una parte me pareció más acertada la de Lumen. No deja de impresionarme este libro.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This entire book is one progressive poem, told from the point of view of the wife. She is a totally unsympathetic figure, except for maybe when she is remembering how she first met her husband, how she was first ensnared. Carson has written a complex and melancholy tale of the pitfalls of beauty, presented in 29 Tangos, or interconnected poems. The poems build upon eachother, grow from eachother, and I would gladly be rating this 5 stars if the final poem had not felt so limp when compared to the previous entries. I had a similar problem with Carson's Autobiography of Red. Both books blew me away and both endings were lacking.

This is a very brave book. Carson has taken the famous Keats quote of Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know and questioned it, furrowed around inside, and, in my opinion, proven it in the context of the relationship between the husband and the wife. The husband is beautiful to the wife and continued to be so no matter what hell he put her through, the letters (oh, the letters were perfect), the separations, the cheating, the brutal honesty. That last bit is what really convinced me. I feel that the husband was incapable of lying. He was so beautiful that his honesty was off the charts.

No matter what, this book deserves a reread. Maybe my feelings or opinions will change. I will be reading more by Carson. Really, anything I can get my hands on will do.

Edit: changed to 5 stars. How can I not?

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me bek valt open 😲😵‍💫

[Paula Mota · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5*

“A Beleza do Marido” é a dissecação de uma relação desde a fase da sedução até ao divórcio, um cadáver que não é enterrado nem sequer depois da separação.

E ajoelhando-me na margem do mar transparente farei para mim um novo coração de sal e lama

Sendo um exercício bastante erudito e estilizado, não deixa muito espaço para a emoção pura, causando-me acima de tudo irritação este marido tão bonito que se permite tudo e a quem tudo é permitido.

Mas ela
tinha cicatrizes
de tanto olhar e olhar cada pedra e cada passeio da cidade,
cada janela de cada autocarro que passava, cada montra de cada loja
ou quarteirão de escritórios ou cabine telefónica
para daí espremer
um vislumbre do marido com outra pessoa se tal vislumbre era para ser visto,
se tal facto era para ser encarado
era preciso terminar.

O livro parte do pressuposto de John Keats que “beleza é verdade, verdade é beleza”, mas com estes 30 tangos de traição e desilusão, Anne Carson tornou-o um oximoro.


Mas palavras

são um estranho e dócil trigo não são, inclinam-se
sobre o chão.

[Muito obrigada, Celeste!]

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her lady shadow mounted the stairs ahead of her experimentally.
Fiction forms what streams in us.
Naturally it is suspect.
What does not wanting to desire mean?

[prashant · Rating 5 out of 5]

If i could kill you i would then have to make another exactly like you.
why.
to tell it to.

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reader, I Divorced Him

Identify the source of the following passage:

Coward.
I know.
Betrayer.
Yes.
Opportunist.
I can see why you would think that.
Slave.
Go on.
Faithless lecherous child.
Okay.
Liar.
What can I say.
Liar.
But.
Liar.
But please.
Destroyer liar sadist fake.
Please.
Please what.
Save me.
Who else do you say that to.
No one.

Is it from:
A) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
B) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
C) The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
or
D) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding?

The correct answer is C, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos by Anne Carson. A tango here—most of which are written from the wife's point of view—seems to be a clipped entry in a random ledger, an entry stripped of pronouns and commas wherever possible a la Bridget Jones. Much in The Beauty of the Husband is a la Bridget Jones: Imagine that Bridget loses her sense of humor; ends up with her dishonest, two-timing, two-bit boss instead of the upright, faithful Mark Darcy; reads Greek and Latin instead of self-help books; and starts her entries with a few enigmatic words from the poet John Keats instead of a rundown of calories consumed and cigarettes smoked: You now have a text where the husband in question says of his deceptions to his wife, "please I never lied to her. When need arose I may have used words that lied," a statement so baldly shiftless and banal that even Bridget would cringe to hear it (v. bad).

The Beauty of the Husband is inspired by the final lines of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Critics disagree about the meaning of Keats' declaration that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty": whether it functions as a profound statement of a metaphysical reality, or an ironic overstatement uttered at the dramatic and fevered pitch poetry brings one to, or is simply inane nonsense. Inanity is as much a part of The Beauty of the Husband as truth or beauty: In an interview in the March/April 2001 Poets and Writers, Carson states that she liked "the absolute inanity of calling anything a fictional essay." It is that inanity—the cheatings and errors in this work, as opposed to its interest in truth and untruth—that makes it second-rate.

Bridget Jones's Diary is based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which begins with a famous first sentence: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen is not the author of Jane Eyre, though the notes to The Beauty of the Husband identify her as such: someone bothered to check the publication date of Jane Eyre (1847), but no one at Knopf bothered to check (or simply knew) the author—? [note: A longtime Carson fan, I bought the first edition almost as soon as it was available and read it right away. I was so bothered by this that I wrote a letter to the publisher. I hope they fixed it in reprints.] Jane Eyre is cited by Carson because she wants to make use of Mr. Rochester's jealousy; jealousy is a common enough topic in Austen's novels. Austen was an ironist; Bronte wrote in deadly earnest. Austen explored the ways that particular lies could reveal particular truths, and the works of both Austen and Bronte underscore the ugliness of certain realities. In this work, Carson doesn't get at truth or irony or beauty or ugliness nearly as well as Austen, Bronte, Fielding or Keats.

The Beauty of the Husband is poorly conceived and hastily written. We are informed on the fly-leaf that "A tango (like a marriage) is something you have to dance to the end." Why? Why must a tango or a marriage be danced to the end, any more than, say, the hustle, the hokey pokey or the Lobster Quadrille? The assertion should come with a caveat: Tangos and marriages must be danced to the end if they are to be successful, just as successful books must be written to the end. This is a hurriedly written book of failed tangos and a failed marriage. It's as if Carson got tired: we're reading along at a fair pace, listening to the wife's complaints, meeting the husband's friend Ray the painter, hearing Ray try to comfort the raging wife—we even spend time with the husband's ancient grandfather—when suddenly things fast-forward to the husband saying of the wife, "She fought me. She lost. I am married again now."

The wife loses, as does the reader. The few moments of eloquence and insight in this work cannot compensate for its inanity, triteness and tired conventionality. Sit these tangos out, and spend your time reading any of the works mentioned earlier, or, for a work by Carson that does deliver the goods, try her tour-de-force Plainwater instead.

[Yes, this is an old review. I wrote it in the spring of 2001. I added it here because I like it about as much as I loathe the book.]

[el · Rating 3 out of 5]

i did not need a 145-page book—fraught with high-flown referential material—to tell me that men aren't shit. sorry, anne 💔

[Kenya Stéphanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tenemos esta profunda tristeza entre nosotros y se expresa
con tanta frecuencia que ya no
la distingo del amor.

Este ensayo narrativopoético me ha desmontado entera. He caído a la vez que caía su matrimonio y solo yo me he salvado. Era cierto lo que decían las malas lenguas, que este libro es un antes y un después.

Aquí tenéis mi consejo,
aguantad.
Aguantad la belleza.

[Anastasia Hobbet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New York Times magazine recently ran a profile of Anne Carson. Despite having read much of her work over the last decade, I hadn't read much about her as a person, and the piece made me start grabbing her books off the shelves again. I had forgotten just how intense an experience this is. The Beauty of the Husband in particular makes me grope for words other than, You have to read it. It's painful and stark, the story of a woman's obsession with a man she should never have married but would love again if he came close. We readers talk sometimes about an author who manages to capture a whole character in a few words. Carson does it in a few syllables, and those few syllables bloom out in your mind as you read them: you see the whole world of that marriage, its delights and all its tortures. Is it autobiography? Despite hating this question, I ask it myself--because this piece draws so much blood, and it still flows. How can it not be true? Stupid question. "A true lie," she says. "It is no longer the event," she says. And I understand all over again, until I don't--because the doomed couple in this book stand out in such stark, living light in my mind. To me, it's not only real, it's happening now.

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me consta que la poesía es un género superior a la novela, requiere más sensibilidad y más exquisitez por parte del lector. Pero debo reconocer que no es mi terreno, no sé sacarle todo el provecho. Llego a la conclusión de que lo que me ocurre es que lamentablemente nunca he tenido una virtud que se requiere necesariamente para leer poesía: la paciencia.
 
Sin embargo con este libro me he sentido mejor que con otras aventuras poéticas que he intentado a lo largo de mi vida. No se trata de una poesía demasiado críptica y condensada. Esos 29 tangos que componen el libro me han parecido de una lucidez y sinceridad tremendos. Tiene auténticos golpes de lucidez, p.ej:
             
“El deseo al cuadrado es el amor y el amor al cuadrado es locura. La locura al cuadrado es matrimonio”
 
Como decía al comienzo, a pesar de no apreciar todos los matices que tiene el libro, esta vez he ido más despacito y lo he saboreado, y descubro que se trata de una gran obra. En especial desarrolla un concepto muy interesante que es el siguiente: ¿Qué hay detrás de esa dependencia subyugante de determinados amantes dominantes y tóxicos, aun a pesar de saber que es horrible y totalmente contraproducente para el amante subyugado? Ahí aparece el concepto de la BELLEZA que yo nunca había tenido lo suficientemente en cuenta, la belleza en el sentido amplio, hermosura por fuera que pesa lo suyo, y belleza en el sentido de seducción. Mucho peligro tiene la belleza, los y bellos y bellas. Allá van dos respuestas de Carson:
 
“(…) y no pido disculpas porque como he dicho no fue culpa mía, estaba desprotegida
frente a la existencia
y la existencia depende de la belleza.
Al final
La existencia no parará
Hasta conseguir la belleza y entonces se sucederán todas las consecuencias que conducen al final
Es inútil interponer análisis”
 
O mucho más sintético:
 
“la belleza hace el sexo sexo”
 
Y que se descubre al fondo de este prolongado lamento de la autora: una relación desigual con un marido casi perverso, conocedor de su poder dentro de la pareja: esas personas, hombres o mujeres, tiranos, he descubierto con los años que son los peores, los chantajistas, manipuladores y egoístas. Es mejor una persona que hace mal pero no es consciente por ignorancia o falta perspicacia, a una persona que lo hace a sabiendas, aprovechando su posición de superioridad en la pareja y sin escrúpulos o empatía hacia el/la otro/a, ni hacia el mal que está causando. Hay una contraparte, la parte débil, la sufridora, que es la que paga las consecuencias de estos amores fatales; que se ve arrastrada a ese fango, aun a pesar de saber lo que hay: siempre atiende la llamada, o acude a la cita, o renuncia a sus principios o a su dignidad. Algo así cuenta esta obra.

[Sorgens Dag · Rating 5 out of 5]

La belleza es la verdad.
Si tienes valor para amar, ama.
La belleza es un todo.
La belleza en su fealdad sigue siendo verdadera.
El erotismo es un misterio que no podemos abandonar.
Para poder bailar un tango necesitas a alguien más, hasta el final.

[Vartika · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never felt any particular enjoyment in Lana Del Rey’s music, but that, strangely, is what this book reminded me of – no, not really, that’s all just the work of a freely associating mind, just another product of a time that’s raining cats and culture. And especially when it comes to Anne Carson, cultural artefacts such as this book are much less classifiable, much more genre-defying, than ever – which is all to say: it shouldn’t be surprising that I finished reading this, and then immediately read it again.

The Beauty of The Husband is a self-proclaimed ‘Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos,’ presenting a deliciously bold take on Keats’ idea of beauty as truth (and truth as beauty) through the story of a deceitful, difficult marriage. With a full-bodied and brutal lucidity, Carson writes here of the dilemma of love and desire brewed together with analogies from classical mythology, linguistics, poetry – and, ofcourse, the epigrammatic appearances of Keatsean thought.

There is immense beauty in these tangos that flow into and shape each other – in the white and red roses of Tango VI and the soft winegrapes of Tango IX, amongst the vividness of many others. There is, too, beauty in the way characters have been fleshed out in verse – of the mother, for instance, and Ray, a diner cook by night and painter by day. Beauty is not merely the trap this book lays for the reader, it is also the entrapment laid out within it. Indeed, it is his beauty that tethers the wife-narrator to the husband, a beauty both physical as well as creative, poetic – beauty, rather than choice:

Why did nature give me over to this creature—don't call it my choice,
I was ventured :
by some pure gravity of existence itself,
conspiracy of being!

I was not to blame, I was unshielded
in the face of existence
and existence depends on beauty.
In the end.
Existence will not stop
until it gets to beauty and then there follow all the consequences
that lead to the end.
Useless to interpose analysis
or make contrafactual suggestions.

Is the explanation and exploration of love here enough? Certainly not, but it is an essay, layered and beautiful, and masterfully written with the same blind force of battle as Epipolai, where people on the same side hurt each other. And in that it is true and unsympathetic, it is certainly better than Lana Del Rey – unless I've taken interpretation too far.

[Caro Mouat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it ✨

[Alejandra Arévalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow


Some tangos pretend to be about women but look at this
Who is it you see
reflected small
in each of her tears

Watch me fold this page now so you think is you.



Wow

[Zeynep T.]

DNF (didnotfinish). 50 sayfa okudum. Siyasal ve toplumsal arka planı olmayan kendine dönük anlatıları sevemiyorum artık. Bu kadar evliliğe, kocaya takıntılı olmak itici benim için. Yazar içini dökmüş biten bir ilişkiden/evlilikten sonra fakat bana kalan hiçbir şey yok metinden. Okuduğum kadarıyla düşüncelerim böyle. Aslı Biçen çok iyi çevirmiş, emeğine sağlık kendisinin. Şiir ritmini hissediyorsunuz.

[Lee Kofman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I missed a lot in this book, I'm sure - allusions, subtleties - because Carson is too smart and erudite for me. But this doesn’t mean I didn’t love the book. The rawness of it, the 'politically incorrect' praise of beauty and admission of the power of Eros, the stunning language, the delicious rhythm. A lot of it went over my head, but then went straight into my viscera. Carson is a woman I’d have loved to have a Campari with in some dark bar that plays tangos.

[Hayden Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just divine. Transformative. Will reread ad infinitum.

[actuallymynamesssantiago · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entre que estoy retorciéndome por un estúpido y mi cabeza me pide leer para no pensar en él, jesus christ give me a rest. Di muchísimas vueltas para entender qué siento con esta relectura. Ahora que estoy apagado: Carson tiene algunas cosas formales cool, pero el texto es demasiado poco interesante. Detesto decir que algo no es interesante porque pareciera ser subjetc. Como poesía no excita y como ensayo no explica. Formalmente no es tan fuerte (como sí lo es la escritura de la heartless queen de Bishop) como para bancarse la poca curiosidad con que mira el amor. Lo cita a Keats de adorno; que se escuche bury me at makeout creek a ver si se le despierta el corazón. Por momentos narra con tanta literalidad que imposibilita que uno se emocione de forma estética, y por otros es como ver a alguien que no sabe lo que hace pero lo que escribe exige sí (lo que no se le puede pedir, por ejemplo, a Lispector). En la primera página ya sabés que se separaron, bueno, otra cosa, o contámela distinto, stop dragging my heart around! One last time, para ser directo: se apropia del lenguaje pero se pone egoísta y uno no sabe dónde pararse, dicho de otra manera, no termina haciendo un uso estético lo suficientemente exitoso como para cristalizar el acontecimiento. Demuestra que sabe y puede escribir pero hay mucha comodidad relativa contemporánea etc y poca autocrítica. Lo bueno es que tengo como tres libros más de ella, y ganas de leerla.

[Milly Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

No está fácil. Lo intenté en inglés y no pude, pero en español tampoco me fue tan simple seguirlo.
Lo voy a releer y estoy segura que me gustará aun más. Necesito entenderlo mejor.
El lenguaje es hermoso y el dolor de la esposa, desgarra.
La belleza, la belleza es verdad.
La belleza convence.
La belleza es peligrosa, creo yo.

[Raquel Casas · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Una herida despide su propia luz/ dicen los cirujanos.»
Así comienza este peculiar poemario que nos reta a soportar la belleza con estoicismo.
🥀
«La belleza es verdad y la verdad es belleza», proclama Keats. ¡Eso no es cierto!, parece gritarle Carson, o al menos no del todo, habrá que matizarlo.
Porque ese marido «leal a nada», miente, es infiel y roba los cuadernos de la esposa. Ese marido ve en el amor el arte de la guerra y presenta a sus conquistas como trofeos. Quiere imitar a Napoleón pero acaba dando bandazos confundiendo aliados con enemigos como en la batalla de Epipolai.
🥀
Leer a Carson es cegarnos con sus referencias históricas, literarias y artísticas que aportan un hilo conductor de una belleza apabullante a este relato mirad poético mirad narrativo. ¿Cómo resistirse a esa belleza del marido a la que la esposa parecía predestinada desde que le conoció con quince años? Porque
«la belleza convence. Ya sabes que la belleza hace posible el sexo/ La belleza hace al sexo sexo».
Esa es la única respuesta posible a la pregunta que la esposa parece plantearse años después: ¿Por qué aguanté tantos años al lado de un hombre así?
🥀
Y termino el poemario y me queda anclada a ese último verso del que no me quiero separar:
«Ahora mira cómo doblo esta página para que creas que eres tú»
🥀
La belleza del marido es, sin duda, deslumbrante, pero me quedo por encima de todo con la belleza fascinante, honesta y vibrante de Carson.
#LaBellezaDeCarson #AnneCarson #LaBellezaDelMarido #NiUnDíaSinPoesía #PoesíaCanadiense #AutorasReferentes #LibrosBellosBellísimos

[anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

xxiv. and kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea i shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mud

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

From my third time reading...

I find myself drawn to re-reading this, and I’m not sure for how long this spell will continue over me. The world of the speaker behind these poems is one which I need to revisit. What is that world? It’s of confusion for most of the time. The speaker can’t let go of her love for her husband, while she is acutely aware of how much he is hurting her. This confusion, however, has a trajectory. Its finale is in her realization of her love of beauty. This love is what keeps her bound to her husband. And while she may continue to be bound in some ways, she is now freed in other ways, through this realization. She is in touch now with her place in the world as someone who yearns, seeks, and makes material what she finds in brilliant ways.

I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to this, given that my own life is very different from this. Perhaps it’s just because the language is so damn good. It is incredible to be taken up by the particular expressions Carson uses. Carson’s language is concrete at many points, as a constant anchor to a particular psyche and their life, while also it brings together unexpected images whose juxtapositions enable a depth of understanding and imaginative-virtual experience which is unlike anything to be found in real life.
______________________
From my second time reading...

Upon this second visitation, my love for Carson's writing, and this book-length poem in particular, on deepens. This is an amazing artifact, a testament to how emotional suffering of the most painful, despairing kind can be renewed by our creativity, here particularly the literary art of poetry. The speaker was obsessed with her husband who chronically cheated on her and constantly lied to her; but she couldn't break it off, for she was in so much pain, and couldn't help but believe in his beautiful lies, even though she knew at the same time how these were lies.

The story speaks to how our intentions can be amorphous and complicated; we may care for another while being utterly selfish at the same time. We may trust and be paranoid at the same time. This is why truthfulness in life can be so relative and open-ended; but nevertheless has a hard limit. The speaker of the poem sees that at the end.

As a classicist and philosopher, Carson's brilliance as a poet comes out in finding new foundations for suffering which, in real life, would otherwise be responded to by "oh that's too bad," or "I'm sorry." These foundations she discovers are based in Greek mythology and astonishing insights into the human condition. Put on these foundations, through her creativity writing, this suffering is imbued with meaning, legitimacy, weightiness, and most of all, beauty.

This time around, I was more sensitive to the value or "speech act" that each chapter/sub-poem carried. The poems are nonlinear in time over the course of the relationship between the speaker and her (ex) husband. This is done masterfully; one is put in suspense, and is amazed or shocked when hit with new details of what had happened. The poems also vary regarding how much "plot" they reveal, as opposed to their serving other purposes, like being an expression of the speaker's pain through seemingly involuntary or sometimes repressed/obtuse means; or, like being a self-reflection, or a philosophical musing upon our human condition as at the mercy of beauty. Such variation between the poems were spaced perfectly and leads to much depth, color, and texture to the world of this book.

This time around, I've also lingered in the places of being sparked off by the particular word choice and rhythm of the lines. It is mesmerizing and intoxicating. Just by reading slowly, and sometimes staying with one expression or stanza for some time, Carson's writing can spark off, like fireworks or flashbulb memories, strong feelings and thoughts and yearnings.

A musing about why I've been obsessed with Carson's work, and this book in particular: Reading her work serves as a therapy for deepening my understanding of how desire and the imagination conspire to make for the euphoria of a certain kind of love—but which turns out to be founded on so little, and even fear or self-hatred. And yet Carson's work do not leave off there, as the truth revealed of the human condition. Along the journey, she redeems such experience for how it epitomizes a force key to the good life: the activity of the imagination to make present beauty and the possibility of happiness in what is otherwise an ambiguous, uncertain reality. Without this activity of the imagination, this reality would remain invisible or dull. Reading Carson has been part of my own learning how to tell when my imagination has a hand behind seeming reality and what to do in light of discovering this. Sometimes it is crucial to learn in, and other times we should intervene; and sometimes we should let the delusion and suffering happen, for it may bring us to unforeseeable changes.

Do I have any critical thoughts on this poem? Perhaps there were a few places where metaphors used were cliched or flat-footed. But this happens rarely. Moreover, the fact that it does happen follows from something I appreciate about Carson's writing: it is accessible. It's extraordinary how readable this poem is, while still doing all of the things to you which only good poetry does, like being unsettling, surprising, and thought-provoking.
______________________
From my first time reading...

I want to read all of Carson's work now (picked this up after reading her Autobiography of Red). I haven't read anything quite like hers; she writes in poetry, but it conveys a narrative as concrete, complex, and elaborate as that of a novel. Because it's in poetry, the emotional forcefulness and psychological realism of the narrative is of a category beyond what could ever be achieved by a novel in prose form.

A particularly interesting feature of this work which gives the appearance of autobiography or memoir is that throughout most of it, we feel that the protagonist is tragically, woefully, obsessed with and in effect controlled by her husband. He chronically cheats on her and causes deep suffering, and yet she cannot leave him. She loves and hates him in equal intensities. But by the end, we realize that it's not her husband as an absolutely unique individual person whom she's obsessed with, in love with. Rather, it is beauty that obsesses and controls her. He just happens to embody beauty to her. In this way, the protagonist is more complicated and free than we realize. The love and pursuit of beauty is creative and freeing; it's not the case that this man is controlling her, or that she's slavish to him. It's nevertheless tragic that this particular man who hurts her constantly is so beautiful, and she can't help staying with him.

[María Sánchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

" mírame doblar ahora esta página para que pienses que eres tú"