Anne Carson in Fragments
In 1998, Classicist Anne Carson published her first fictional novel “Autobiography of Red”, a modern adaptation of Stesichoros’ fragmented poem “Geryoneis”, following a young gay man and his first love. She then published a follow-up in 2013, 15 years later, called “Red Doc>”, following the same man, now much older. Both of these novels have an incredibly distinct form and layout, especially the latter novel - a centre-aligned column that is no more than five words across which Carson claims is the result of accidental word formatting. In a 2013 interview with The New York Times she expands on this, saying that she found the new margins “instantly liberating … and finally (she) understood - after years of frustration - how her book was actually supposed to work.” To find liberation in the absurd - and the margins of “Red” are absurd - speaks to a deeper dissatisfaction Carson is clearly having with form in general, especially if “years of frustration” can be slighted with a simple margin change. Yet, this isn’t the first example from Carson where the physical layout of her prose changed - effectively changing how she viewed and wrote her work. In fact, in a 2012 interview with Brick Literary Journal Carson recalls a similar instance for “Autobiography”. She says she was “messing around with the lines” and found couplets of long and short alternations worked, even going so far to say that her original paragraphs of prose were “a bit hellish”. In both instances, Carson was clearly struggling to make complete sense of her own work in a traditional form, and opted to explore more experimental forms. But why is that? She clearly states that she had all intentions of writing “Autobiography” in prose, and “Red” is described as originally being a play before becoming a novel. This question becomes even more peculiar when considering how different the form of the two novels are from each other - it’s as though the novels are not connected at all. The answer lies within Carson’s own work as a translator of fragments, specifically that of Stesichoros and Sappho, and how translating these fragments may have influenced her novel writing. This becomes even clearer when considering the timeline in which these books were published.
1998’s “Autobiography of Red” was based on the fragments of Stesichoros’ poem “Geryoneis”, which chronicles Herakles tenth labour to steal the cattle of the red beast Geryon. While Caron’s novel is not a translation of these fragments (though the book does contain a version of this), it’s clear that working with these fragments influenced the novel’s form. In “Autobiography”, Carson forms the main narrative with 47 vignettes, with these vignettes falling between main narrative beats that are sequential, i.e. before Geryon meets Herakles, after he meets him, when they meet again in Argentina. Almost every vignette between each sequential beat could hypothetically occur in any order, and this might’ve be done on purpose by Carson as a way to evoke the nature of Stesichoros’ fragments. In the books opening essay, Carson describes the fragments of “Geryoneis” reading “as if Stesichoros had composed a substantial narrative poem then ripped it to pieces and buried the pieces in a box (…) The fragment numbers tell you roughly how the pieces fell out.” Is Carson’s novel following this same thinking? Is it such a speculation to say that each of these 47 vignettes are fragmented thoughts from Carson that have been shaken out of a box, much like she claims Stesichoros to have done? Before the reader starts the bulk narrative of the book, Carson addresses the reader specifically, handing them this figurative box and instructing them, “Here. Shake,” as though the succeeding 47 vignettes are fragments of a novel from Carson, falling into the readers lap, read and numbered as they fall.
Of course, “Autobiography” is not a fragmented novel - it’s complete - and the space Carson gives her lines (one long, one short, etc,) is there to provide rhythm and flow. However, this same rationale was not followed when approaching the follow up novel “Red Doc>”. Instead Carson adopts three different layouts; scenes of unlabelled stanzaic dialogue with speakers divided by a forward slash, scenes following the perspective of various characters that are usually devoid of punctuation beyond full stops, and pages of a Greek-like-chorus called the “Wife of Brain”. While there could be a number of reasons for why “Red” diverged so significantly from the first novel, it’s important to consider how Carson spent her time in the lead up to writing “Red”. In the 15 years between the publication of the two novels, Carson published her new translations of Sappho’s fragments and - much like how Stesichoros’ fragments influenced the first novel - it seems that Sappho’s fragments may have influenced the second.
Sappho’s influence on Carson actually coincides with her initial introduction and subsequent fascination with Greek Classics when, in 1965, she finds “a bilingual edition of Sappho by Willis Barnstone (…) with the Greek on the left, the English on the right” (Brick, 2012). Decades later, in 2002, Carson publishes “If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho”, a new translation of Sappho’s surviving yet fragmented work. Within this book, we see Carson not only translate Sappho’s words but also translate the spaces that the lost words once held, exploring a technique of fragmentation, or as she describes it, a manipulation of “spacing on the page, to … suggest syntactic motion.” This way of translating creates new stanzas and meanings from the remains of Sappho’s words while also allowing for the reader to reflect on what could be missing (like a black-out poem imposed by poor document preservation and time). This fragmentation and intentional spacing of words clearly excites Carson, she even states that there’s “no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes.” By allowing the reader to feel as though they are looking directly at Sappho’s fragments themselves, Carson is accentuating the lack of context that these gaps represent. This is especially true when considering many of the fragments only provide a line or two of text, barely introducing elements, all with no context, for example:
“]nectar poured from
gold
]with hands Persuasion”, Sappho 96
“and with delicate woven cloths covered her up well”, Sappho 100
“she summons her son”, Sappho 164
The “drama” that Carson is referring to is the endless speculation of what was and now isn’t, it’s the frustration felt when trying to make sense of what’s left while simultaneously understanding that no matter how much sense is made from these contextless fragments, they will never truly represent Sappho’s original intentions.
By her own account, Carson began to write “Red Doc>” fairly soon after the publication of “If Not, Winter”, and we can see how this process of translating Sappho has had a significant effect on her form. She seems to emulate the contextless stanzas of Sappho, employing a purposeful lack of context to much of the text in “Red Doc>”, for example:
Scenes of dialogue are unlabelled with who’s speaking, “Goodlooking boy wasn’t he / yes / blond / yes / I do vaguely / you never liked him,” Pg 3. This calls back to how often subjects are missing when working with fragments so readers must utilise all the context clues at their disposal to create a narrative that makes sense. In this instance, the reader could suppose based on what they are talking about that this is a conversation between G and his mother, but Carson never reveals who it is, so the reader can only assume and should consider all other combinations.
Some pages of the novel seem to barely (if at all) relate to the previous page, for example over pages 20 and 21. After a brief scene of dialogue between Ida and Sad where Ida is describing G, Sad briefly mentions his Dad as the reason for his Army enlistment, and then suggests they go to G, Carson has the following context-less scene, “Have the dusk deepened. Equal trouble. The one helpful thing she said to him that summer whether you keep this man in your life or put him out equal trouble. Is it the adverbs. Have the mother speak have the boy speak. In. Out. Years ago. All those darlings. Out where.” Again, based on the previous scene, the reader could suppose that this scene involves Sad and one of his parents, possibly his Dad considering he was explicitly mentioned in the previous scene. Yet, there is no subject, no location, no context within the scene for the reader to do more than speculate who this scene relates to. By it’s own account, it’s a stand alone scene that very well could be from another story entirely, it could be a fragment of something else that got mixed in with the fragments of this novel.
Carson is no longer exploring the existence of fragments like she was in the novels predecessor, but rather exploring how those fragments read and the difficulty often felt by translators in reconstruction. There also seems to be subtle references to her actual work as a fragment translator, with the character of G frequently inferring to various novels by Proust, but never quoting him directly:
“With a red pencil G had underlined the sentence where Proust observes the momentarily impaired surface of the eye of a person who has just had a thought she will not tell you.” (Pg. 89)
Carson labels this “context without citation” in her introduction to “If Not, Winter”. There she specifically describes it as when there is a reference to something Sappho might have said but is without a direct quote. She dubs these as “the inside edge where her words go missing”, it’s an echo or a ripple of what might have been said, but since there are no direct words to translate they can’t be credited as her words. In “Red”, Carson is creating her own ripples of Proust’s words, allowing for the reader to feel like they are reading Proust and understanding what Proust wrote about without having to read a single word of his. The above quote seems to confirm these intentions in a slightly sadistic manner as Carson makes sure the reader knows that G is underlining a specific sentence, she’s confirming that the sentence is there with the reader in the scene, yet never reveals the quote from Proust, offering G’s (or even Carson’s) own interpretation instead. It represents a common double-cross that Carson is all too familiar with and it’s clearly significant enough for her to include in this deeper exploration of fragments. Carson isn’t doing this maliciously, if anything, she’s allowing for the reader to further appreciate the original Greek poem, contextless fragments and all. Claiming that it took “somewhere between 9 and 11 years” (NYT, 2013) and multiple iterations, it’s cursory to think that Carson’s previous work and research would not have some impact, whether conscious or not, on how the form of this novel took shape.
Carson had originally written this book like a novel (an earlier version saw it take the form of a play), and the pressing of the wrong buttons changed the margins to the point where she could finally see the vision of the novel. The four to five word width column that the story resides in is a controversial one, and without context, is a strange choice for Carson to make, an even stranger one when considering it made Carson feel liberated. Recalling back to the question of how one can view these absurd margins as liberating, the answer lies within fragmentation, or rather, one fragment in particular. In the introduction to “If Not, Winter”, Carson speaks on how the fragments of Sappho were originally written - “on a papyrus roll the text is written in columns, without word division, punctuation or lineation”. Knowing this, it’s not hard to see why Carson found her column of words with minimal punctuation “liberating”, it was familiar. It recalled back to her history working and thinking in fragments, so when her own work instantly emulated the layout of these fragments it’s no wonder that the novel finally clicked in her head.