El ensayo de cristal

by Anne Carson, Soledad Marambio (Translator)

Yo

Puedo escuchar pequeños clics dentro de mi sueño.
La noche y sus gotas de plata
bajan por la espalda.
a las 4 a.m. despierto. Pienso.

en el hombre que
se marchó en septiembre.
Su nombre era Law.

Por mi cara en el espejo del baño
bajan surcos blancos.
Me lavo la cara y me vuelvo a acostar.
Mañana iré a visitar a mi madre.

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Memoir, School, Dark Academia, Nonfiction, Read For School

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

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

[Macarena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this again in Emily Brontë's 200th year since her birth, in the month she died.
This part has inspired me to revisit wuthering heights also:

"I find myself temped
to read Wuthering Heights as one thick stacked act of revenge
for all that life withheld from Emily."

[Delfina · Rating 4 out of 5]

«El ensayo de cristal», fiel a la naturaleza camaleónica de la prosa de Anne Carson se puede leer como poesía o ensayo. Además de aportar su mirada, siempre lúcida, sobre las relaciones románticas, la fragilidad del cuerpo, el sexo y la soledad, teje una biografía impecable e inesperada de Emily Brontë.

[bianca *‧.₊˚*੭*ˊᵕˋ੭.* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Algo de todo eso me recuerda la infancia—
es la luz del tiempo estancado después de almorzar
cuando los relojes hacen tictac

y los corazones se cierran
y los padres vuelven al trabajo
y las madres se quedan paradas frente a la pileta de la cocina pensando

en algo que nunca dicen.
Recordás demasiado,
me dijo mi mamá hace poco.

¿Para qué quedarse con todo eso? Yo le dije:
¿Dónde lo puedo dejar?
Y ella cambió de tema a algo sobre los aeropuertos.

[Nico · Rating 5 out of 5]

What DOES it accomplish, all that raking up the past? I DO prevail! It is NOT like taking an aspirin and grief IS a long process! We are all obsessed! It is exceedingly difficult not to be when one has experienced the wheel rolling down the hill! And I have, Anne! I too have experienced the wheel rolling down the hill! And now I too watch the year repeat its days, feeling that other day running underneath this one like an old videotape!

[Larsen Puch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primera obra que leo de Anne Carson (Toronto, 1950). El ensayo de cristal es un conjunto de 9 poemas que logran conjugar de forma atractiva e interesante elementos ensayísticos, narrativos y líricos. La voz que se expresa en estos escritos es una mujer recientemente separada que visita a su madre y se declara admiradora de Emily Brontë. Es una voz inteligente, culta y sensible. A partir de la fractura sentimental va urdiendo este tejido híbrido con el conocimiento que posee de la vida y obra de su escritora favorita, con las  emociones y reflexiones ante el abandono de su amado Law, y con la presencia de su madre, figura que convoca recuerdos, sentimientos y la relación matrimonial de sus padres, ahora enfrentados a la vejez y la enfermedad. Los poemas de Carson se leen como un relato breve, intenso, con imágenes deslumbrantes y un despliegue de inteligencia y potencia poética que sacude y seduce con intensidad. Tremenda obra, absolutamente recomendable.
Se agradece la iniciativa de @cuadrodetiza al publicar esta plaquette y difundir en español a esta gran escritora canadiense contemporánea. 7/7

[Axica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I read anything by Anne Carson, it scares me. Her intensity and relatibility scares me. The most astounding part of this essay for me is the appearance of the nudes. It's kind of like sudden bouts of depression and anxiety that tell you so convincingly that you don't deserve love, you deserve to die alone and in pain. You try to be happy, make the best of a situation but every evening, like clockwork, your anxiety catches up to you and says the meanest things one can imagine. Then you realize that you can't actually outrun her, you just have to accept her and she'll stop wielding so much power.

[kylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a crazy experience because 1) i love emily brontë and wuthering heights is one of my favourite books and 2) i found a series of videos of a woman reading this essay who i think might be related to my english professor from last semester (they have the same features, have similar speech patterns, and i am just crazy). anyway, i now want to reread wuthering heights now more than ever.

[Nenúfares ☽ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cómo empezar a describir este libro. Partiendo porque llegó a mí de manera inesperada. Estaba entre mis cosas que por fin me digné a ir a buscar a la casa del Nico. No lo reconocí, dije "debió haber creído que era mío y solo lo guardó entre mi ropa". Es hermoso de principio a fin, me encantó cómo la protagonista logró hilar su experiencia reciente con un duelo amoroso y la historia de Emily Brönte. "Y yo estaba abajo leyendo la parte de Wuthering Heights/ donde Heathcliff se aferra a las celosías durante la tormenta sollozando/ ¡Ven! ¡Ven! al fantasma de su amada,/ caí de rodillas sobre la alfombra y también sollocé./ Esa Emily sabe/ cómo ahorcar cachorros."

[Sebastian Uribe Díaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué maravilla esto.

[vale figueroa · Rating 4 out of 5]

los palimpsestos del duelo y la memoria

[fran · Rating 5 out of 5]

me gustó mucho, pero
empecé a leerlo para distraerme de la tristeza y ahora estoy aún más triste.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Available on the Poetry Foundation website. A wonderful long poem with thoughts about Emily Bronte and her ex relationship. And life…

Well there are many ways of being held prisoner,
I am thinking as I stride over the moor.
As a rule after lunch mother has a nap

and I go out to walk.
The bare blue trees and bleached wooden sky of April
carve into me with knives of light.

Something inside it reminds me of childhood—
it is the light of the stalled time after lunch
when clocks tick

So worth reading❤️

[fengyu · Rating 5 out of 5]

devastating and yet ultimately hopeful - i cannot understand how anne carson is able to pull non-stop descriptions that floor me out of the thin air. just casual turns of phrase, encapsulating everything i've ever tried to do.

[soph · Rating 5 out of 5]

completely brilliant

[Maddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

this poem is everything to me

"Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days.
It is as if I could dip my hand down

into time and scoop up
blue and green lozenges of April heat
a year ago in another country.

I can feel that other day running underneath this one
like an old videotape—"

[tess · Rating 5 out of 5]

bro. anne carson? phenomenal. the way this poem/essay brings up so many topics and feelings while also following the life of emily brontë is amazing. i’m floored

[sauris · Rating 5 out of 5]

whenever i see a mention of wuthering heights, i recoil in shame for not having finished it when i love the brontë sisters so much, and so does dear anne carson - she narrates the story of the aftermath of a breakup alongside the life of emily brontë, set against a desolate moor while meditating on grief, her relationship with her mother, and the brontës. i find myself completely swept away by her ability to articulate feelings that usually live beyond language, and by the striking connections she makes that are very unexpected. she has become my favourite poet this year, her work is deeply relatable while pushing the boundaries of language, and there's always underlying hope and wisdom when discussing themes that are heavy, visceral, and devastatingly sad. it's such a joy knowing i'll keep rereading her works, finding new things each time...

"Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days.
It is as if I could dip my hand down
into time and scoop up
blue and green lozenges of April heat
a year ago in another country.
I can feel that other day running underneath this one
like an old videotape"

"One way to put off loneliness is to interpose God...
it would be sweet to have a friend to tell things to at night,
without the terrible sex price to pay.
This is a childish idea, I know."

"You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? and I said,
Where can I put it down?"

"Cauterization of Heathcliff took longer.
More than thirty years in the time of the novel,
from the April evening when he runs out the back door of the kitchen
and vanishes over the moor
because he overheard half a sentence of Catherine’s
(“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff”)
until the wild morning
when the servant finds him stark dead and grinning
on his rainsoaked bed upstairs in Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliff is a pain devil.
If he had stayed in the kitchen
long enough to hear the other half of Catherine’s sentence
(“so he will never know how I love him”)
Heathcliff would have been set free."

[A Oyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first time actually reading any of Anne Carson’s work in entirety. It was beautiful; her language is incredibly intense, but also fluid, and the result is absolutely stunning.

_____
Quotes

What was this cage / invisible to us / which she felt herself to be confined in ?

The bare lie trees and bleached wooden sky of April / carve into me with knives of light

It is the light of the stalled time after lunch / when clicks tick / and hearts shut / and fathers leave to go back to work / and mothers stand at the kitchen sink pondering

Like someone carefully not looking at a scorpion / crouched in the arm of the sofa

Bluish dusk / fills the room like a sea slid back

She broke all his moments in half / with the kitchen door standing open

The stale cage of sheets

I heard his sentences filling up with fear

The shadowless light makes him look immortal

Yes I know that I have two hands / then one day i awakened on a planet of people whose hands occasionally disappear

I lived my life / which felt like a switched off tv

[Eugénie Lodier · Rating 5 out of 5]

it might be just a part of "glass, iron and god" but it felt so fulfilling to read, i had to include it in my readings. i hadn't found myself screenshotting entire passages of a book in quite a long time. truly a great essay.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

“But in between the neighbour who recalls her / coming in from a walk on the moors / with her face ‘lit up by a divine light’ // and the sister who tells us / Emily never made a friend in her life, / is a space where the little raw soul // slips through.”

[Verónica · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Cuándo la roca se endurece? ¿Qué necesidad es esa? // Mi madre levanta la vista. Muchas veces ella y yo pensamos las dos mitades de un mismo pensamiento // Pero la poesía da señales de una razón más profunda. Cómo si la rabia pudiera ser una especie de vocación para las mujeres.

Hermoso

[Gianna Conidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A professor assigned this essay for our class to read last year, and I blew it off because I had “no time”. I am so disappointed in myself, as I think reading this then, would have saved me a lot of thinking and dwelling.

[Pascal · Rating 5 out of 5]

hermoso

[Pentu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amado ✨

[charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

[ 4 stars ]

(review to come)

[Alex Acevedo L’Estrange · Rating 4 out of 5]

That psychotherapy's not doing you much good
is it?

You aren't getting over him.

[Bronwyn Garden-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is one of the best poems i've ever read, and the only poem i've ever wanted to attempt to memorize.....

[Sofia Klena · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75. Is that allowed?

[carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

realment fascinada

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thinking as an act of survival