Tria Carmina
med
Anne Carson
(f. 1950)
***
Den kanadensiska författaren, poeten, essäisten och översättare Anne Carson föddes i Toronto. Hon är professor i klassiska språk vid McGill University i Montreal och har också varit gästprofessor vid flera andra ansedda universitet. Källa: Alex författarlexikon
Det är fullständigt omöjligt att ge er en enhetlig karakteristik över Anne Carsons författarskap. Det skulle kräva en avhandling inom litteraturvetenskap. Istället inleder jag med ett längre citat om hennes författarskap, som går att återfinna i hennes biografi hos Poetry Foundation. Merkin som omnämns är Daphne Merkin, skribent i New York Times Book Review.
”Carson has gained both critical accolades and a wide readership over the course of her “unclassifiable” publishing career. In addition to her many highly-regarded translations of classical writers such as Sappho and Euripides, and her triptych rendering of An Oresteia (2009), Carson has published poems, essays, libretti, prose criticism and verse novels that often cross genres. Known for her supreme erudition—Merkin called her “one of the great pasticheurs”—Carson’s poetry can also be heart-breaking and she regularly writes on love, desire, sexual longing and despair."
Hennes första skönlitterära publicering blev Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay (1986). Dessförinnan hade hon publicerat sin doktorsavhandling, Odi et Amo Ergo Sum.
Jag hoppar fram till det märkliga verket Short talks (1992) som innehåller miniessäer/korta prosadikter/repliker, eller vad jag nu ska kalla dem.
On the Mona Lisa, by Anne Carson
(from Short talks. London, Ont. : Brick Books, 1992.)
Every day he poured his question into her, as you pour water from one vessel into another, and it poured back. Don’t tell me he was painting his mother, lust, et cetera. There is a moment when the water is not in one vessel nor in the other - what a thirst it was, and he supposed that when the canvas became completely empty he would stop. But women are strong. She knew vessels, she knew water, she knew mortal thirst.
***
En av hennes mer "populära" texter är den långa essän "Kinds of water" som beskriver en pilgrimsresa till Santiago de Compostela i norra Spanien. Den är skriven som en pilgrims dagbok och utgörs av hennes reflektioner kring fenomenet vallfärd.
***
(From Kinds of Water, by Anne Carson. First published in Grand Street and in The Best American Poetry of 1990.)
To Pamplona 23rd of June
Kinds of water drown us. Kinds of water do not. My water jar splashes companiably on my back as I walk. A pool of thoughts tilts this way and that in me. Sokrates, after bathing, came back to his cell unhurriedly and drank the hemlock. The others wept. Swans swam in around him. And he began to talk about the coming journey, to an unknown place far from their tears, which he did not understand. People really understand very little of one another. Sometimes when I speak to him, My Cid looks very hard and straight into my face as if in search of something (a city on a map?) like someone who has tumbled off a star. But he is not the one who feels alien—ever, I think. He lives in a small country of hope, which is his heart. Like Sokrates he fails to understand why travel should be such a challenge to the muscles of the heart, for other people. Around every bend of the road is a city of gold, isn’t it?
I am the kind of person who thinks no, probably not. And we walk, side by side, in different countries.
Pilgrims were people in scientific exile.
***
År 2010 gav hon ut ett annorlunda verk. "Nox" (2010) är en slags minnesbok, som skapats via brev, kort och bilder med mera och varigenom Carson försöker närma sig den äldre bror hon aldrig kände medan han levde. Källa: Alex författarlexikon
Verket har dessutom en mycket ovanlig design, det går att veckla ut hela boken likt en enorm broschyr (eller kalender) av något slag.
Det tog två veckor innan broderns danska maka fick kontakt med Anne Carson, och då hade begravningen redan ägt rum. Nox är hennes bearbetning av broderns bortgång.
Det går knappt att citera något från en bok som är så privat. Jag förstår inte riktigt varför verket gavs ut.
(Utdrag ur Nox, by Anne Carson. New York : New Directions, 2010.)
Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.
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