What do you think?
Rate this book
Economia dell'imperduto
Le leggi del mondo, rigide e inoppugnabili, ma sempre in equilibrio sulla precarietà della vita. L’oltre, incerto e indescrivibile, che in fondo legittima l’uomo e lo sostanzia. Con la sua lingua preziosa e misurata, Anne Carson traccia un parallelismo tra le vite di due poeti europei, il greco Simonide di Ceo, vissuto tra il VI e il V secolo a.C., e il romeno di origine ebraica Paul Celan, uno tra gli autori più acclamati del XX secolo. «Forse sono poeti quelli che sperperano ciò che i loro padri avrebbero risparmiato», scrive l’autrice. Eppure Simonide è stato uno dei primi intellettuali a scrivere versi in cambio di denaro, a piegare le regole del mondo all’imperscrutabilità dell’arte, conciliando il visibile e l’invisibile. E così Paul Celan, sopravvissuto all’Olocausto e cultore della memoria, che trascorre gli ultimi anni della vita in un regime capitalista di reificazione, in cui tutto ha il valore del proprio corrispettivo economico. Ma se è vero che a «dispetto d’ogni altra cosa, questo soltanto, sì, il linguaggio, rimane imperduto», come Celan stesso scrive, se è vero che la poesia è l’unica testimonianza del passaggio fugace di un uomo nel mondo, cosa va perduto quando si spreca una parola?
192 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1999
61 people are currently reading
1480 people want to read
About the author
Anne Carson
97 books5,102 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
Read
April 9, 2024An extended and learned essay from the poet Anne Carson, Economy of the Unlost is a welterweight at 134 pp. It came to me compliments of Terrance Hayes, who recommended it in a book I finished over a trip south, Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry (he also enthusiastically recommended Wanderlust: A History of Walking, which will be my next read).
I can't say a lot of readers will love this book as it is a niche among niche books, comparing as it does the ancient Greek poet Simonides of Keos with the Romanian poet who lost his parents to the Holocaust, Paul Celan. In short, they share an affinity for the negative, for words like nothing, never, not, no. That and an economy of words. And disappearance. And ends. Meaning you get paragraphs like so:
"This simple striking notion, that money makes our daily life strange in the same way translation makes ordinary language strange, seems a helpful one for exploring the Fremdheit of Paul Celan. We have already seen how Simonides' alienation began with his historical situation--on a cusp between two economic systems, gazing at both and all too aware of their difference: like someone listening to simultaneous translation of a text that lies before him in the original. He is analogous to Paul Celan, after the model suggested by Marx, insofar as Celan is a poet who uses language as if he were always translating."
If you go here, just keep your brow furrowed and proceed cautiously. You're sure to pick up some gems along the way and realize that, in the end, there's something to nothing, too. If that idea is paradoxically reassuring to you, this might be your cup of erudition.
I can't say a lot of readers will love this book as it is a niche among niche books, comparing as it does the ancient Greek poet Simonides of Keos with the Romanian poet who lost his parents to the Holocaust, Paul Celan. In short, they share an affinity for the negative, for words like nothing, never, not, no. That and an economy of words. And disappearance. And ends. Meaning you get paragraphs like so:
"This simple striking notion, that money makes our daily life strange in the same way translation makes ordinary language strange, seems a helpful one for exploring the Fremdheit of Paul Celan. We have already seen how Simonides' alienation began with his historical situation--on a cusp between two economic systems, gazing at both and all too aware of their difference: like someone listening to simultaneous translation of a text that lies before him in the original. He is analogous to Paul Celan, after the model suggested by Marx, insofar as Celan is a poet who uses language as if he were always translating."
If you go here, just keep your brow furrowed and proceed cautiously. You're sure to pick up some gems along the way and realize that, in the end, there's something to nothing, too. If that idea is paradoxically reassuring to you, this might be your cup of erudition.
January 4, 2026
Il mio primo approccio con “Economia dell’imperduto” è stato un fallimento. Finita l’introduzione, con quel suo arzigogolato passare da Simonide a Celan, per tramite di citazioni e riferimenti dotti e variegati, posai il volumetto di Carson con un certo sconforto. Non ho accettato, però, che quella fosse la mia sconfitta. Mi sono rimboccato le maniche e ho cominciato a leggere altro e a informarmi, diciamo pure a studiacchiare. Ho cercato di individuare chi fosse Simonide di Ceo, riconoscendo presto che il poeta greco andava un po’ troppo al di là dei miei interessi e del mio retroterra da non classicista, ho letto il più possibile di e su Paul Celan, passando dalle liriche alle missive senza tralasciare la saggistica e almeno una biografia sulla sua persona, e ho approcciato Carson a partire da un’altra opera per acclimatarmi con il suo stile. L’opera scelta è stata l’unica al momento in commercio nel mercato editoriale italiano, L’autobiografia del rosso.
Anche a causa dell’entusiasmo provato per questo componimento, mi sono finalmente deciso a ritornare a Economia dell’imperduto, pronto a dar battaglia.
Beh, è stata un po’ una delusione.
Il saggio parte da una premessa: confrontare Simonide e Celan per indagare il senso (e il valore) della poesia. O meglio, questo è quello con cui vorrebbe essere etichettata, quando invece la trattazione si apre a una serie di parentesi sui due autori, slegate tra di loro o, peggio, accorpate solo per opportunismo, con una netta sproporzione a favore del lirico greco che è di certo più familiare a Carson.
Per quel che mi riguarda, il paragone non funziona. A partire proprio dalle fondamenta: da un lato vi è una persona di cui non possediamo testi autobiografici, raccontato da altri autori spesso molto più tardi, inscatolato in una macchietta e in un prototipo; dall’altro, un grafomane del Novecento, dedito alla propria arte fino a esserne completamente assorbito, avido conservatore delle missive ricevute, ritratto da contemporanei notissimi e altrettanto generosi con le parole.
In Economia dell’imperduto si spinge sul loro essere uomini simili, quasi specchiabili, separati da una distanza secolare che rende ancora più mirabile la loro condizione di identica “estraneità”. Mi si conceda, intanto, che estraneo, in questo millennio, si sente chiunque abbia accesso a un social network. La condizione dei due autori, poi, è quanto di più dissimile si possa immaginare: da un lato, quello di Simonide, un uomo a cavallo di due diversi sistemi economici, da lui padroneggiati in modo ammirevole; dall’altro un uomo strappato dalle proprie radici familiari, dalla propria terra e dalla maternità della sua lingua. Simonide spadroneggiò la sua epoca – o almeno così ci raccontano – dettando mode destinate a durare per secoli; Celan fu spesso sbeffeggiato da autori suoi contemporanei più anziani e distrutto, come è noto, dalle accuse di plagio della vedova di Yvan Goll.
Insomma, un saggio pretestuoso. Sì, ci sono pagine molto interessanti, con approfondimenti intriganti (per me, tutti i paragrafi sulle epigrafi di cui Simonide fu “maestro” sono stati strabilianti), ma il saggio non funziona per come è stato strutturato. Se Carson ne avesse tratto due approfondimenti divisi sui singoli autori ritengo che il risultato sarebbe stato migliore: un’ottima ricostruzione dell’ambiente in cui visse Simonide di Ceo e un’interpretazione forzata e sommaria su alcune liriche di Paul Celan perfettamente evitabile. Unire questi due personaggi, con quest’argomentazione debole, è stata una decisione infelice.
Mi è parso uno di quei saggi superflui che i professori universitari compongono e poi obbligano i propri studenti a comprare e studiare per sostenere il loro esame. Un caso di “sovra-interpretazione” non necessaria, con un filo di pensiero spesso totalmente illogico. I collegamenti tra le porzioni sui due autori sono volubili, approssimative e umorali.
E a gravare su tutto ciò, un crimine – e non uso questa parola con leggerezza – che negli ultimi tempi mi è diventato intollerabile: l’inutile complicazione stilistica. C’è una differenza, tutt’altro che sottile ma spesso invisibile agli accademici, tra lo scrivere in modo ricercato e lo scrivere in modo chiaro. Ci sono autori capaci di fare le due cose contemporaneamente e altri a cui questa capacità sfugge. La saggistica non dovrebbe essere la patria degli abbellimenti superflui, ma anche nel caso in cui questo avvenisse, ciò non dovrebbe mai – MAI – compromettere la comprensibilità del testo.
Ci sono tanti altri settori in cui è possibile spingere sul proprio estro e comporre proposizioni complesse che si aprono a mille interpretazioni. Ma dire “quella creatura quadrupede, che gli islandesi chiamano hundur, latrava svociandosi sul farsi della notte plumbea che prometteva all’uomo un avvenire nefasto”, per esprimere il concetto “il cane abbaia la sera” è un crimine. E credo che spesso Carson ricada in questo problema. Che sì, è classismo. È vanteria superflua, è bisogno di affermare il proprio status. E quindi anche vaffanculo.
Questo saggio finge d’essere migliore di quello che è, e lo fa nascondendosi sotto un manto di spocchia. Tutti, giunti alla fine, si dicono una frase del tipo “non ho capito tutto, ma è scritto così bene che evidentemente il problema è mio che non ne so abbastanza”. Quello che chiedo io, invece, è: perché, qui, nessuno ha capito questo saggio fino in fondo? Sarà mai che ci è stata venduta un po’ di fuffa ben truccata?
A margine, grazie Carson. Perché nel mio sentirmi inadeguato nei tuoi riguardi, ho scoperto Paul Celan. E quella sì, è stata una bella esperienza.
Continuerò comunque ad indagarti, ma senza altri patimenti d'animo.
Anche a causa dell’entusiasmo provato per questo componimento, mi sono finalmente deciso a ritornare a Economia dell’imperduto, pronto a dar battaglia.
Beh, è stata un po’ una delusione.
Il saggio parte da una premessa: confrontare Simonide e Celan per indagare il senso (e il valore) della poesia. O meglio, questo è quello con cui vorrebbe essere etichettata, quando invece la trattazione si apre a una serie di parentesi sui due autori, slegate tra di loro o, peggio, accorpate solo per opportunismo, con una netta sproporzione a favore del lirico greco che è di certo più familiare a Carson.
Per quel che mi riguarda, il paragone non funziona. A partire proprio dalle fondamenta: da un lato vi è una persona di cui non possediamo testi autobiografici, raccontato da altri autori spesso molto più tardi, inscatolato in una macchietta e in un prototipo; dall’altro, un grafomane del Novecento, dedito alla propria arte fino a esserne completamente assorbito, avido conservatore delle missive ricevute, ritratto da contemporanei notissimi e altrettanto generosi con le parole.
In Economia dell’imperduto si spinge sul loro essere uomini simili, quasi specchiabili, separati da una distanza secolare che rende ancora più mirabile la loro condizione di identica “estraneità”. Mi si conceda, intanto, che estraneo, in questo millennio, si sente chiunque abbia accesso a un social network. La condizione dei due autori, poi, è quanto di più dissimile si possa immaginare: da un lato, quello di Simonide, un uomo a cavallo di due diversi sistemi economici, da lui padroneggiati in modo ammirevole; dall’altro un uomo strappato dalle proprie radici familiari, dalla propria terra e dalla maternità della sua lingua. Simonide spadroneggiò la sua epoca – o almeno così ci raccontano – dettando mode destinate a durare per secoli; Celan fu spesso sbeffeggiato da autori suoi contemporanei più anziani e distrutto, come è noto, dalle accuse di plagio della vedova di Yvan Goll.
Insomma, un saggio pretestuoso. Sì, ci sono pagine molto interessanti, con approfondimenti intriganti (per me, tutti i paragrafi sulle epigrafi di cui Simonide fu “maestro” sono stati strabilianti), ma il saggio non funziona per come è stato strutturato. Se Carson ne avesse tratto due approfondimenti divisi sui singoli autori ritengo che il risultato sarebbe stato migliore: un’ottima ricostruzione dell’ambiente in cui visse Simonide di Ceo e un’interpretazione forzata e sommaria su alcune liriche di Paul Celan perfettamente evitabile. Unire questi due personaggi, con quest’argomentazione debole, è stata una decisione infelice.
Mi è parso uno di quei saggi superflui che i professori universitari compongono e poi obbligano i propri studenti a comprare e studiare per sostenere il loro esame. Un caso di “sovra-interpretazione” non necessaria, con un filo di pensiero spesso totalmente illogico. I collegamenti tra le porzioni sui due autori sono volubili, approssimative e umorali.
E a gravare su tutto ciò, un crimine – e non uso questa parola con leggerezza – che negli ultimi tempi mi è diventato intollerabile: l’inutile complicazione stilistica. C’è una differenza, tutt’altro che sottile ma spesso invisibile agli accademici, tra lo scrivere in modo ricercato e lo scrivere in modo chiaro. Ci sono autori capaci di fare le due cose contemporaneamente e altri a cui questa capacità sfugge. La saggistica non dovrebbe essere la patria degli abbellimenti superflui, ma anche nel caso in cui questo avvenisse, ciò non dovrebbe mai – MAI – compromettere la comprensibilità del testo.
Ci sono tanti altri settori in cui è possibile spingere sul proprio estro e comporre proposizioni complesse che si aprono a mille interpretazioni. Ma dire “quella creatura quadrupede, che gli islandesi chiamano hundur, latrava svociandosi sul farsi della notte plumbea che prometteva all’uomo un avvenire nefasto”, per esprimere il concetto “il cane abbaia la sera” è un crimine. E credo che spesso Carson ricada in questo problema. Che sì, è classismo. È vanteria superflua, è bisogno di affermare il proprio status. E quindi anche vaffanculo.
Questo saggio finge d’essere migliore di quello che è, e lo fa nascondendosi sotto un manto di spocchia. Tutti, giunti alla fine, si dicono una frase del tipo “non ho capito tutto, ma è scritto così bene che evidentemente il problema è mio che non ne so abbastanza”. Quello che chiedo io, invece, è: perché, qui, nessuno ha capito questo saggio fino in fondo? Sarà mai che ci è stata venduta un po’ di fuffa ben truccata?
A margine, grazie Carson. Perché nel mio sentirmi inadeguato nei tuoi riguardi, ho scoperto Paul Celan. E quella sì, è stata una bella esperienza.
Continuerò comunque ad indagarti, ma senza altri patimenti d'animo.
September 25, 2010
I don't know what more you could want, really. Paul Celan, Simonides, and Marx. I suppose if you are study for your qualifying exams or whatever this book won't help you much. But if you are a poet, you will find just what you are looking for here.
October 7, 2007
These lectures mesh Celan, Simonides, and Karl Marx with a grace that makes their union seem inevitable. The way Carson folds together money, language, and memory reminds me of Ezra Pound without the shouting. Her insights have a math-like clarity that bring two extreme ends of our history--pre-Socratic and post-Holocaust--into the same economy. You'll never mistake negation and loss for modern inventions after reading this book.
April 5, 2007
simonides made money as a poet.
...
imagine that. that's fucking crazy. shame you can't do that anymore.
...
imagine that. that's fucking crazy. shame you can't do that anymore.
December 30, 2025
The Simonides sections were brilliant. The ones on Celan sometimes felt a bit forced in connection with Simonides but in itself they were plausible and insightful interpretations. But maybe this only applies to me primarily interested in Carson speaking about greek poetry.
Highly recommend!
Highly recommend!
June 11, 2025
Dense and delightfully so. I feel like a whole new reality was unveiled before me, but isn’t it always the case with Carson?
May 7, 2022
"To be 100% serious about nothing, about absence, about the void which is fullness, is the destiny and task of the poet. The poet is someone who feasts at the same table as other people. But at a certain point he feels a lack. He is provoked by a perception of absence within what others regard as a full and satisfactory present. His response to this discrepancy is an act of poetic creation…" (108)In Economy of the Unlost, Anne Carson has Paul Celan meet Simonides of Keos through, somewhat awkwardly, Karl Marx. The question that ties the book together is: What exactly is lost to us when words are wasted? If the question is vague (though interesting!), the answers that Carson gives are vaguer. The book is uncharacteristically lax. The discussion often feels dawdling and arbitrary—like when Carson discusses gift exchange and money as the two systems of valuation in between which Simonides of Keos was caught, but inexplicably ignores the extant barter system. The analysis of some of the poems—especially Celan's—struck me as far-fetched. While I had high expectations for Economy of the Unlost, it is the weakest work by Carson that I have read so far. It is well-written—Carson never disappoints there—and some parts of it are definitely interesting—mostly the sections about Simonides—but that is not quite enough to carry the book.
April 25, 2024
This is a stellar exploration of these two poets, what they wrote and why. Why its all so important in the first (and last) place. This essay is humbling, exciting, inspiring. It defies summarization. What is it Anne Carson says in her opening on method? "Attention is a task we share, you and I. To keep attention strong means to keep it from settling." So, I find that "unsettled" is an apt way of describing this slim piece of academic literature. A frenzy, an explosion. An ever-widening gyre. Focused and obtuse at the same time. She selected two poets, a bifocal view. Dualities. When thinking about writing my small review, I jotted down a few of these binaries, along with some other recurrent themes:
alienation & estrangement
strangeness & difference
memory & loss
absence & presence
truth & appearances
negative spaces
excision
Yes and No
I and Thou
relation to time
mesh of language
differentiation
transcribing reality
lost and unlost....
alienation & estrangement
strangeness & difference
memory & loss
absence & presence
truth & appearances
negative spaces
excision
Yes and No
I and Thou
relation to time
mesh of language
differentiation
transcribing reality
lost and unlost....
February 28, 2019
Me pregunto si se acaba con Anne Carson la sorpresa, digo, cuando crees que leíste lo mejor, lees algo nuevo que te hace dudar. Creí que después de la traducción de Safo, el trabajo de traducir y escribir un ensayo sobre Simonides y Celan estaría bien, pero solo eso. Equivocadísima.
Me encantaría saber qué vio y como ató tantas relaciones sutiles entre ambos. Saber, también, cuál es la metodología o línea de pensamiento para crear un ensayo sobre la economía (citando a Marx, que por cierto, se me hizo más claro de lo que nunca se me había hecho), las palabras, la pérdida, la negación y la muerte.
El ensayo intercala comentarios sobre Simonides y Celan. Comienza con la referencia al color de las velas para dar noticias, en cómo un error o una mala voluntad cambia la recepción, y en ese breve desplazamiento la muerte se augura.
Todo en el libro es bello, por la expertise de Carson en los idiomas que traduce, y su conocimiento infinito y abismante del griego. Pero en especial son las referencias a Paul Celan, que no conocía y que una presentación a través de ella lo hizo perfecto, las que concentran la belleza.
Uno de Celan traducido por Carson:
“(Were I like you. Were you like me
Stand we not
under one tradewind?
We are strangers.)”
Me encantaría saber qué vio y como ató tantas relaciones sutiles entre ambos. Saber, también, cuál es la metodología o línea de pensamiento para crear un ensayo sobre la economía (citando a Marx, que por cierto, se me hizo más claro de lo que nunca se me había hecho), las palabras, la pérdida, la negación y la muerte.
El ensayo intercala comentarios sobre Simonides y Celan. Comienza con la referencia al color de las velas para dar noticias, en cómo un error o una mala voluntad cambia la recepción, y en ese breve desplazamiento la muerte se augura.
Todo en el libro es bello, por la expertise de Carson en los idiomas que traduce, y su conocimiento infinito y abismante del griego. Pero en especial son las referencias a Paul Celan, que no conocía y que una presentación a través de ella lo hizo perfecto, las que concentran la belleza.
Uno de Celan traducido por Carson:
“(Were I like you. Were you like me
Stand we not
under one tradewind?
We are strangers.)”
February 22, 2023
eyed this book every time i went into the local bookshop for months and months
but it was like fifty bucks so i never bought it
and for some reason the library had a copy only available for on-site consultation,
but then low and behold,
one day i go into the bookshop and it's gone.
i think ah man someones snatched her,
i try to be happy for them,
i keep perusing with a heavy heart.
then take a look at the sales section and
BAM.
anne motherfucking carson.
economy of the unlost.
20$.
cashier said he had been wondering who would be the one to buy it.
(it was always going to be me,
he would know this if he was a lowbrow prophet such as myself)
anyway, i think i built it up too much in my head and it didn't deliver as much as the fable of my acquiring it. that being said, it's still an incredibly solid 3 stars because anne carson is a god.
but it was like fifty bucks so i never bought it
and for some reason the library had a copy only available for on-site consultation,
but then low and behold,
one day i go into the bookshop and it's gone.
i think ah man someones snatched her,
i try to be happy for them,
i keep perusing with a heavy heart.
then take a look at the sales section and
BAM.
anne motherfucking carson.
economy of the unlost.
20$.
cashier said he had been wondering who would be the one to buy it.
(it was always going to be me,
he would know this if he was a lowbrow prophet such as myself)
anyway, i think i built it up too much in my head and it didn't deliver as much as the fable of my acquiring it. that being said, it's still an incredibly solid 3 stars because anne carson is a god.
December 19, 2024
It is delightful to encounter literary criticism which is straightforward and clear, and also dense in interesting ideas. All nonfiction I’ve read of Carson so far is like this, which stands in contrast to other literary criticism I’ve read (which isn’t much, but which is already quite depressing, in how few points are made, and in obtuse language).
Here are some of the interesting ideas. The overall picture is that Carson juxtaposes Ancient Greek poet Simonides with WWII German-Jewish poet Paul Celan. Both of them occupied strangely dual, almost contradictory situations. Simonides was born at a time when the first kind of money, coinage, was introduced, breaking from the previous form of transaction of gift-giving. So he lived under the aegises of two strikingly different modes of understanding human relationships and the nature of value. Under a gift-giving society, there is bartering with the works that one is capable of producing, and the value of a gift is largely determined by the social relationship that already hold between the giver and receiver. Giving a gift has a practical purpose, but it just as much serves the role of solidifying certain relationships (e.g., business partnerships; political allyship; etc). There is no value, in other words, which holds context-free or independent of the extant social order.
In contrast, under a money-using society, suddenly a new kind of value arises, one which is context-free. No matter who you’re dealing with, whether you’re an inferior or superior, a coin is going to have the same worth and will be able to obtain for you goods of a fixed worth. This opens opportunities for climbing the social hierarchy and accumulating wealth. Simonides was obsessed with this. His was manifest in his invention of a new genre of poetry: the poem of praise or the panegyric. Wealthy patrons would commission Simonides to write poems which praise these patrons. As a great artist, Simonides’s poems had the power of changing the social status of these patrons and elevating them in the eye and memory of society at large. These patrons would pay a lot of money for this; Simonides would earn more than famous doctors or lawyers at his time.
Carson gives an interesting analysis of the relationship between praise, poetry, and money. Both money and poetry/praise are “groundless” in a way. When you acquire money, you haven’t acquired any goods, but rather the possibility of many and various goods. When you write poetry about someone or something, likewise no material changes, such as changes in goods, has occurred; there is only a transformation in one’s sense of possibilities. A man praised in a great poem has been transformed in the eyes of society without his doing anything new.
Carson identifies Simonides’s obsession for acquiring more money with a certain obsession distinctive of the pursuit of literature and art. The writer is obsessed with transforming possibilities. This obsession can be particularly frantic because the writer/artist knows that there are no material goods grounding or founding their pursuit; it could all just be hot air. It will be just hot air if the artist turns out to be a bad one; society would not respect or be able to be moved by their art, and then the possibilities presented in their art will fall flat, vanishing under the tide of time.
Paul Celan’s situation is dual and contradictory like Simonides’s, and the comparison goes further than that. When Celan was a teenager, he urged his parents to flee Germany. They refused. When he was sixteen, one morning he left home, and when he returned, his parents had been taken by the Nazis and deported to death camps. Celan fled Germany, parentless, and lived in France for the rest of his life.
He wrote his poetry in German. This was a choice. He was fluent in French and married to a French woman. Carson remarks on this choice. German was the language of the peoples who had killed his parents and destroyed his life. Celan identified German, moreover, as a dangerous language; as a very old language, its words have core meanings which made sense only in Medieval and ancient times, and which may be misleading or limiting in modernity.
But French was forever alien to Celan, while he could not alter the fact that German was his mother tongue. Celan was caught up in a contradictory situation. The language which was his home was also his destroyer. He responded to this situation by writing poetry. In writing, Celan used German in idiosyncratic ways, often which would be ungrammatical or nonsensical to a traditional speaker. He thereby refused to give in to the rules of his destroyer. But this is a hazardous pursuit. Like Simonides’s situation, where this Greek poet needed to be great in order for his poems to deliver the goods for which his patrons paid him, Celan likewise needed to be great in order to refrain from collapsing into the tongue and world of his destroyer and to make a new home for himself and others.
Another way to frame the comparison between Simonides and Celan is that money is akin to translated language. Both make alien the world around us. We are given something which is contextless, which is independent of familiar social order. Celan writes in German as if he were always translating into this language from something else, that which does not yet exist and which he strives to bring into existence; he never sticks to idiomatic German.
I haven’t read Simonides or Celan before. Now, I’d like to get my hands on works of both. Regardless of whether one has read them or not, I think Carson’s book would be wonderful to read. A way of describing it: one gets the richness and depth of good philosophy, but under the absorption, urgency, and vividness of artwork. I’d love to find more writers like Carson who can pull this off.
Here are some of the interesting ideas. The overall picture is that Carson juxtaposes Ancient Greek poet Simonides with WWII German-Jewish poet Paul Celan. Both of them occupied strangely dual, almost contradictory situations. Simonides was born at a time when the first kind of money, coinage, was introduced, breaking from the previous form of transaction of gift-giving. So he lived under the aegises of two strikingly different modes of understanding human relationships and the nature of value. Under a gift-giving society, there is bartering with the works that one is capable of producing, and the value of a gift is largely determined by the social relationship that already hold between the giver and receiver. Giving a gift has a practical purpose, but it just as much serves the role of solidifying certain relationships (e.g., business partnerships; political allyship; etc). There is no value, in other words, which holds context-free or independent of the extant social order.
In contrast, under a money-using society, suddenly a new kind of value arises, one which is context-free. No matter who you’re dealing with, whether you’re an inferior or superior, a coin is going to have the same worth and will be able to obtain for you goods of a fixed worth. This opens opportunities for climbing the social hierarchy and accumulating wealth. Simonides was obsessed with this. His was manifest in his invention of a new genre of poetry: the poem of praise or the panegyric. Wealthy patrons would commission Simonides to write poems which praise these patrons. As a great artist, Simonides’s poems had the power of changing the social status of these patrons and elevating them in the eye and memory of society at large. These patrons would pay a lot of money for this; Simonides would earn more than famous doctors or lawyers at his time.
Carson gives an interesting analysis of the relationship between praise, poetry, and money. Both money and poetry/praise are “groundless” in a way. When you acquire money, you haven’t acquired any goods, but rather the possibility of many and various goods. When you write poetry about someone or something, likewise no material changes, such as changes in goods, has occurred; there is only a transformation in one’s sense of possibilities. A man praised in a great poem has been transformed in the eyes of society without his doing anything new.
Carson identifies Simonides’s obsession for acquiring more money with a certain obsession distinctive of the pursuit of literature and art. The writer is obsessed with transforming possibilities. This obsession can be particularly frantic because the writer/artist knows that there are no material goods grounding or founding their pursuit; it could all just be hot air. It will be just hot air if the artist turns out to be a bad one; society would not respect or be able to be moved by their art, and then the possibilities presented in their art will fall flat, vanishing under the tide of time.
Paul Celan’s situation is dual and contradictory like Simonides’s, and the comparison goes further than that. When Celan was a teenager, he urged his parents to flee Germany. They refused. When he was sixteen, one morning he left home, and when he returned, his parents had been taken by the Nazis and deported to death camps. Celan fled Germany, parentless, and lived in France for the rest of his life.
He wrote his poetry in German. This was a choice. He was fluent in French and married to a French woman. Carson remarks on this choice. German was the language of the peoples who had killed his parents and destroyed his life. Celan identified German, moreover, as a dangerous language; as a very old language, its words have core meanings which made sense only in Medieval and ancient times, and which may be misleading or limiting in modernity.
But French was forever alien to Celan, while he could not alter the fact that German was his mother tongue. Celan was caught up in a contradictory situation. The language which was his home was also his destroyer. He responded to this situation by writing poetry. In writing, Celan used German in idiosyncratic ways, often which would be ungrammatical or nonsensical to a traditional speaker. He thereby refused to give in to the rules of his destroyer. But this is a hazardous pursuit. Like Simonides’s situation, where this Greek poet needed to be great in order for his poems to deliver the goods for which his patrons paid him, Celan likewise needed to be great in order to refrain from collapsing into the tongue and world of his destroyer and to make a new home for himself and others.
Another way to frame the comparison between Simonides and Celan is that money is akin to translated language. Both make alien the world around us. We are given something which is contextless, which is independent of familiar social order. Celan writes in German as if he were always translating into this language from something else, that which does not yet exist and which he strives to bring into existence; he never sticks to idiomatic German.
I haven’t read Simonides or Celan before. Now, I’d like to get my hands on works of both. Regardless of whether one has read them or not, I think Carson’s book would be wonderful to read. A way of describing it: one gets the richness and depth of good philosophy, but under the absorption, urgency, and vividness of artwork. I’d love to find more writers like Carson who can pull this off.
May 5, 2025
Really enjoy Carson's voice when she's in academic mode. A book about nothing, basically, not in the Seinfeld way, but in the "this is about absence and epitaphs" kind of way. The line "Whether you call it a waste of words or an act of grace depends on you." (129) has become a kind of north star guiding my reading since I first read this book (back in like, 2017, 2018 maybe?).
April 28, 2021
ja, den gosiga kombinationen Celan, Simonides, och Marx. OCH Carson. Kanske har jag läst för lite Celan? Men det fångade mig inte riktigt, även om Carson, förstås, är mästerlig.
September 8, 2022
Yo a Anne Carson le celebro todos los peos, ah. Pero algo tuvo este libro que no me terminó de convencer del todo. A diferencia de Eros, me pareció un libro ensayístico mucho más errático. Siento que pudo desarrollarse mucho más la tesis de la economía en Simónides y Celan. De todos modos, dentro de ese aparente desorden, cada palabra, cada análisis y cada tema están situados y discutidos precisamente donde debiesen estarlo. En ese sentido, el libro opera como "ensayo" en la línea de la tradición europea de mayor abolengo, es decir, como una obra en la que se tantean, sin agotarse, los temas, lo que evita que este libro devenga una argumentación unviersitaria. Pero no sé, como que eché de menos un conservadurismo mayor en el momento de la exposición, que permitiera retener y elaborar mejor las ideas. Mañas mías.
March 30, 2025
Anne Carson une a Simónides, Celan y, en menor medida, parte de la teoría de Marx, con una calidad narrativa y una precisión matemática que hace obvias las similitudes entre dos extremos de un mismo hilo: la literatura presocrática y la poesía post-holocausto. Describir acerca de la negación, la ausencia y la memoria son algunas de las cualidades que analiza como fundamentales a la hora de entender el valor del lenguaje y la plusvalía que puede dar la literatura al mundo. Este libro me dejó una idea bellísima de que escribir es un acto de generosidad inmensurable que ofrece al mundo (a los humanos) un don imposible de cuantificar o pagar.
June 14, 2024
anne carson im ur biggest fan
May 14, 2009
'Economy of the Unlost' is a daring and rare book, a close reading of the ancient poet Simonides juxtaposed with a close reading of the 20th-century poet Paul Celan. This is the sort of idea that comes to you in the shower. Most Celan scholars don't read Simonides, and I bet you all the endowments of every classics department that most classicists don't get around to Celan very often.
Shame. But maybe it's better all the same that they don't, for who knows how many of them could yoke these difficult and seemingly very different poets as harmoniously as Carson frequently does.
Based around a series of lectures Carson gave at Oberlin for their annual series in classics, the book quizzes the Simonidean corpus with a series of fairly basic questions--how does he talk about exchange, money, virtue, death, nothingness?--that yield not very basic answers. She elucidates the persistent yes-and-no of Simonides' poetry--yes: life flees as quickly as a fly moves its wing, no: life does not, thanks be to poetry, lack recourse to immortality. But along the way she challenges us to think carefully about some other things classicists don't generally talk about with such readable acumen: money, friendship, war, even the physics of getting words etched onto stone.
Paul Celan spent most of his life trying to figure out whether language, specifically his own German, could hold any value. He famously claimed* that German had both gone through the "thousand darknesses of death-bringing talk" but, while passing through, had been unable to comment. Language had survived. It was also incapable of describing the things that nearly killed it.
Carson’s svelte sentences handle weighty themes like these with legible dexterity. Given the vast cultural differences apparent between the 5th-century Greek Simonides and the 20th-century Romanian Celan, who was Jewish, lived in Paris after losing his family to the Holocaust, was married to a Christian, and wrote in German, the marvel of this book is the consistent magic Carson puts before us in relating these poets through their poetic technique, their biographies, and their attempt to figure out whether poetry had any value for answering questions about day-to-day living.
But I use the word magic mindfully, for Carson is on several occasions guilty of crafty legerdemain. The primary flaw of this study is the biographical treatment of Simonides. Biographical criticism works well for Celan but not for Simonides. There’s too much we don’t know, and the attempt make him fit the argument leads often to carelessness (see Steven J. Willet’s review in the archived Bryn Mawr Classical Review online). Carson’s argument would be stronger and possibly more interesting if she conceded the shakiness of the scholiastic attributions to the Simonides biography. What she could then compare would be the actual life of Celan with the traditional “life” of Simonides, for so much of what Simonides might have been is likely to be what tradition wants “Simonides” to have been.
All the same, this is a book to celebrate, if not necessarily for the success of its product then for the ingenuity and originality of its mode of inquiry. In the moments where she does get the ingredients right, Carson unveils an unexpected and stimulating kinship between Simonides and Celan. And even when she’s off the mark, her effort is worth a thought-filled taste test.
*("Aber sie [die Sprache:] musste nun hindurchgehen durch ihre eigenen Antwortlosigkeiten, hindurchgehen durch furtchbares Verstummen, hundurchgehen durch die tausend Finsternisse todbringender Rede. Sie ging hindurch und gab keine Worte her fuer das, was geschah; aber sie ging durch dieses Geschehen." -- "Language had to go through its own lack of answers, had to go through its own terrible muteness, had to go through the thousand darknesses of death-bringing talk. It went through and gave no words out for this, for what happened; but it went through this happening.")
Shame. But maybe it's better all the same that they don't, for who knows how many of them could yoke these difficult and seemingly very different poets as harmoniously as Carson frequently does.
Based around a series of lectures Carson gave at Oberlin for their annual series in classics, the book quizzes the Simonidean corpus with a series of fairly basic questions--how does he talk about exchange, money, virtue, death, nothingness?--that yield not very basic answers. She elucidates the persistent yes-and-no of Simonides' poetry--yes: life flees as quickly as a fly moves its wing, no: life does not, thanks be to poetry, lack recourse to immortality. But along the way she challenges us to think carefully about some other things classicists don't generally talk about with such readable acumen: money, friendship, war, even the physics of getting words etched onto stone.
Paul Celan spent most of his life trying to figure out whether language, specifically his own German, could hold any value. He famously claimed* that German had both gone through the "thousand darknesses of death-bringing talk" but, while passing through, had been unable to comment. Language had survived. It was also incapable of describing the things that nearly killed it.
Carson’s svelte sentences handle weighty themes like these with legible dexterity. Given the vast cultural differences apparent between the 5th-century Greek Simonides and the 20th-century Romanian Celan, who was Jewish, lived in Paris after losing his family to the Holocaust, was married to a Christian, and wrote in German, the marvel of this book is the consistent magic Carson puts before us in relating these poets through their poetic technique, their biographies, and their attempt to figure out whether poetry had any value for answering questions about day-to-day living.
But I use the word magic mindfully, for Carson is on several occasions guilty of crafty legerdemain. The primary flaw of this study is the biographical treatment of Simonides. Biographical criticism works well for Celan but not for Simonides. There’s too much we don’t know, and the attempt make him fit the argument leads often to carelessness (see Steven J. Willet’s review in the archived Bryn Mawr Classical Review online). Carson’s argument would be stronger and possibly more interesting if she conceded the shakiness of the scholiastic attributions to the Simonides biography. What she could then compare would be the actual life of Celan with the traditional “life” of Simonides, for so much of what Simonides might have been is likely to be what tradition wants “Simonides” to have been.
All the same, this is a book to celebrate, if not necessarily for the success of its product then for the ingenuity and originality of its mode of inquiry. In the moments where she does get the ingredients right, Carson unveils an unexpected and stimulating kinship between Simonides and Celan. And even when she’s off the mark, her effort is worth a thought-filled taste test.
*("Aber sie [die Sprache:] musste nun hindurchgehen durch ihre eigenen Antwortlosigkeiten, hindurchgehen durch furtchbares Verstummen, hundurchgehen durch die tausend Finsternisse todbringender Rede. Sie ging hindurch und gab keine Worte her fuer das, was geschah; aber sie ging durch dieses Geschehen." -- "Language had to go through its own lack of answers, had to go through its own terrible muteness, had to go through the thousand darknesses of death-bringing talk. It went through and gave no words out for this, for what happened; but it went through this happening.")
January 9, 2023
Anne Carson hace un gran trabajo interpretativo muy complejo (demasiado complejo, diría). Pido perdón por atreverme a escribir lo que sigue: me parece que de repente se llega a una sobreinterpretación de los poemas que analiza. En el ensayo a mí me interesa ver a la autora en cuestión, pero aquí intenta ocultarse para ofrecer un ensayo a caballo entre lo académico y la escritura literaria. Pienso que el libro va más para especialistas en los antiguos griegos o en Celan.
Read
May 11, 2009Read intently, read with respect and at times, astonishment. AC, deep bows.
January 4, 2011
This is one of my favorite books of all time.
May 7, 2022
Where even to begin with this pseudo-scholarship…
August 5, 2024
No not nothing
February 18, 2022
After having read Celan for several years, I went into this book having read very little criticism about him. There's something odd and disorienting about dipping for the first time into critical reflections about a writer you love. Their work has become a world unto itself for you, and suddenly you find that this isn't necessarily the same world it's become for others who've likewise fallen in love with them. This sense of disorientation was heightened by the fact that, since my training is in philosophy, I tend to gravitate to criticism whose touchstones are philosophical. Carson makes occasional reference to philosophy (especially Marx), but her background as a classicist and poet is much more prominent, which placed this text squarely outside my wheelhouse.
Still, it's good to venture out of your wheelhouse, and in this case, it was well worth the time and effort.
I will only add a couple of points that might help folks who are considering reading this book. First, Carson devotes significantly more attention to Simonides than to Celan. For me, this was perfectly fine, because I'd never even heard of Simonides before, and really enjoyed learning about him. However, I did find myself wishing there were more about Celan here. That, of course, is no fault of the book, but it did decrease my level of engagement, since I picked it up specifically to aid in my own attempts to understand Celan. Second, the book, as far as I can tell, has no single over-arching argument. Rather, it's more like a loose assortment of connected poetic reflections about poetry. The philosopher in me grew impatient at times with this, but I was nevertheless rewarded with a host of insights about Celan, and some truly bravura readings of individual poems. Still, though, I came away unclear about what exact points Carson wanted to make about the notion of 'economy' (purportedly, the main theme of the book) in its many senses.
Still, it's good to venture out of your wheelhouse, and in this case, it was well worth the time and effort.
I will only add a couple of points that might help folks who are considering reading this book. First, Carson devotes significantly more attention to Simonides than to Celan. For me, this was perfectly fine, because I'd never even heard of Simonides before, and really enjoyed learning about him. However, I did find myself wishing there were more about Celan here. That, of course, is no fault of the book, but it did decrease my level of engagement, since I picked it up specifically to aid in my own attempts to understand Celan. Second, the book, as far as I can tell, has no single over-arching argument. Rather, it's more like a loose assortment of connected poetic reflections about poetry. The philosopher in me grew impatient at times with this, but I was nevertheless rewarded with a host of insights about Celan, and some truly bravura readings of individual poems. Still, though, I came away unclear about what exact points Carson wanted to make about the notion of 'economy' (purportedly, the main theme of the book) in its many senses.
January 20, 2025
Carson combina temas clásicos con preocupaciones contemporáneas, mostrando cómo la poesía, el lenguaje y la pérdida son universales y atemporales. Carson tiene el talento de transformar conceptos abstractos —como el valor, la memoria y el intercambio— en algo profundamente humano. Al abordar a Simónides y Celan, creo que busca un diálogo entre la historia y el presente, explorando cómo los poetas procesan y transmutan las experiencias humanas más profundas, como el duelo y la fragilidad.
Me impactó cómo Anne Carson conecta la economía con la escritura y la memoria. Me pareció fascinante la idea de que las palabras, como las cosas materiales, pueden perderse o preservarse, y que esa economía también tiene un costo emocional y cultural. Sin embargo, algunos pasajes me parecieron difíciles de interpretar, como si Carson esperara que yo trajera algo de mí para llenar los vacíos. Eso me dejó reflexionando bastante.
"Supongo que un poeta escribe acerca del mundo de acuerdo con el modo en que el mundo escribe acerca del poeta"
Celan:
[Lo que tejiste tú con lo más ligero
lo visto yo en honor de la piedra]
Simónides:
[Siendo Hombre, no digas nunca qué sucederá mañana
ni, al ver a un hombre afortunado, por cuánto tiempo lo será.
Pues ni la mosca de alas largas es tan veloz
como el cambio]
[Simónides nos aconseja jugar el juego de la vida y ser 100% serios acerca de Nada]
Me impactó cómo Anne Carson conecta la economía con la escritura y la memoria. Me pareció fascinante la idea de que las palabras, como las cosas materiales, pueden perderse o preservarse, y que esa economía también tiene un costo emocional y cultural. Sin embargo, algunos pasajes me parecieron difíciles de interpretar, como si Carson esperara que yo trajera algo de mí para llenar los vacíos. Eso me dejó reflexionando bastante.
"Supongo que un poeta escribe acerca del mundo de acuerdo con el modo en que el mundo escribe acerca del poeta"
Celan:
[Lo que tejiste tú con lo más ligero
lo visto yo en honor de la piedra]
Simónides:
[Siendo Hombre, no digas nunca qué sucederá mañana
ni, al ver a un hombre afortunado, por cuánto tiempo lo será.
Pues ni la mosca de alas largas es tan veloz
como el cambio]
[Simónides nos aconseja jugar el juego de la vida y ser 100% serios acerca de Nada]
December 15, 2019
What would become of the Left, without the Holocaust? If there hadn't been a Holocaust, we would have had to invent it.
Otherwise, the Left would just sit there dumfounded like Celan in front of Martin Buber (an episode retold by Carson), amazed that most of mankind hasn't completely lost faith in language and is not particularly troubled by the limits of our humanity. Life is brutal: if you go to Hiroshima, you'll soon learn that American tourists are more sentimental about the nuclear bombing than the native themselves, who've lost relatives to it. Life goes on regardless of trauma.
This book can be read as an expansion to Adorno's dictum that there can be no more poetry after Auschwitz. Well, in fact there can be, there has been and there will always be.
Carson is always insightful, though. I'd much sooner have authors like her to disagree with than what we're commonly used to. We're fighting an uphill battle, yes, when we try to remain human in inhuman times; but I suspect Simonides would be much less gloomy about it than Celan (A poet I nonetheless enjoy), which might well be one of Carson's main points here.
Otherwise, the Left would just sit there dumfounded like Celan in front of Martin Buber (an episode retold by Carson), amazed that most of mankind hasn't completely lost faith in language and is not particularly troubled by the limits of our humanity. Life is brutal: if you go to Hiroshima, you'll soon learn that American tourists are more sentimental about the nuclear bombing than the native themselves, who've lost relatives to it. Life goes on regardless of trauma.
This book can be read as an expansion to Adorno's dictum that there can be no more poetry after Auschwitz. Well, in fact there can be, there has been and there will always be.
Carson is always insightful, though. I'd much sooner have authors like her to disagree with than what we're commonly used to. We're fighting an uphill battle, yes, when we try to remain human in inhuman times; but I suspect Simonides would be much less gloomy about it than Celan (A poet I nonetheless enjoy), which might well be one of Carson's main points here.
May 15, 2021
“Essere seri al cento per cento sul nulla, sull’assenza, sul vuoto che è pieno, è questo il destino e il compito del poeta. Il poeta è un uomo che banchetta alla stessa tavola di altri commensali. Ma a un certo punto avverte una mancanza. È stimolato dalla percezione di un’assenza in ciò che gli altri considerano un presente pieno e soddisfacente. La sua risposta a questo scarto è un atto di creazione poetica”
Non avevo mai letto un libro così. Grazie Ann Carson.
Non avevo mai letto un libro così. Grazie Ann Carson.
January 2, 2026
“Reachable, near and unlost amid the losses, this one thing remained: language. This thing, language, remained unlost, yes, in spite of everything. But it had to go through its own loss of answers, had to go through terrifying muteness, had to go through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing talk. It went through and gave no words for that which happened; yet it went through this happening. Went through and was able to come back to light “enriched” by it all.
In this language I have tried, during those years and the years after, to write poems.”
In this language I have tried, during those years and the years after, to write poems.”
April 23, 2025
“Do poets still watch the flame burn down? But to praise it is a gratuitous act, like throwing coins on a pyre. On the other hand, the economy of the unlost always involves gratuity. Whether you call it a waste of words or an act of grace depends on you.”
August 31, 2020
Bäst är när Carson jämför bild och dikt!!! Intressant
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews