Few, like Anne Carson, can incorporate the classic myths into our own contemporary stories. She was introduced in Sweden in 2009 with the 1998 novel "Red Autobiography"; In it, a figure from the Heracle story, the little red monster Geryon, is transformed into a young man in a completely modern love story. Over the past ten years, more and more of her books have been published in Swedish, earlier this year "Vacant men" appeared in Lars-Håkan Svensson's interpretation and now Carson's very first book "Eros the Bitterly" from 1986 in Niklas Haga's translation.
Carson's books are never easy to determine, she moves freely between essay, novel and poetry, usually in the same book. "Eros the Bitter Lover" is more purely essayist than her later books and may not be as accessible; All quotes in classical Greek can be daunting at first, but since the translation comes immediately after, Greek works mostly as an illustration, the difficulty lies on another level: One must be prepared to follow Carson as she walks the words closely into life.
She chases Eros along the lines of poetry, yes down to the letter level, and shows how the newly invented script changed the Greek poets' view of love. She asks the breathtaking question "what's erotic about literacy?" and replies that the eroticism, when oral poetry was put on print, moved from ear to eye, and got sharp edges. Suddenly, the body and the self are exposed, love becomes a matter of hunting and flight, of capturing the moment and halting time.
In this debut book there is the subject of Anne Carson ever since it has made its own: the similarity between erotic and literary desire, between lust and fantasy. Eva was not alone, even at Sapfo someone wants to pick an apple to give to the beloved, the knowledge and the love apple. To read Anne Carson is to strive eagerly for her knowledge and her amazing ability to not only bring the poets of antiquity alive, but also to connect them with later writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud and Frans Kafka.
Anne Carson is a demanding writer, but she carries her education so infectiously light and elegant that the reader feels drawn into her world.