Anne Carson, the fifth woman to be recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature, has been awarded, according to the Swedish Academy that grants it, “for her bold and inventive work that, in a playful dialogue with classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.” Because if there is one thing that characterizes the bibliography of the Canadian author, it is challenging the boundaries of literary genres, blending verses, essays, diaries and imagined interviews or fragments in prose.
Although she published her first book in the mid-80s, one had to wait until 2001 to read Carson in our country. With 19 books published, several publishers in our country have published her poetry or essays. And among them we have selected six books that are perfect to know her acclaimed writing, which in 2020 already earned her the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.
From the essays in which she reflects on the love for works in which she reimagines the classics, these are the six works by Anne Carson perfect to discover the new Nobel Prize in Literature.
Portada de Eros dulce y amargo, de Anne Carson.
Sweet and Bitter Eros. Anne Carson. Lumen.
How do we fall in love? How does erotic desire arise? Why do love and hate converge in it? With the grace and brilliance that define her poetry, Anne Carson unravels in this book the origins of desire and its contradictions, exploring the figure of Eros from Sappho of Lesbos or Plato, to Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina or our Regenta.
A classicist by training, the Canadian writer takes us to the origin of our culture and of our human condition to illuminate problems of our time in a grand essay, ideal for starting to delve into her work or for reconnecting with it.
Portada de Hombres en sus horas libres, de Anne Carson
Men in Their Free Hours. Anne Carson. Editorial Pre-textos.
In this volume of poems and essays published in 2000, Carson intertwines the figure and work of the poet Paul Celan with the thinker and writer of Ancient Greece, Simonides of Kos. A book that blends poetry, essay, reflections on economy, loss, memory and the craft of translating and rescuing what time erases, always starting from the idea that, no matter how hard life is, the essential thing is to do something interesting with it through the physical world, perception and creation.
Portada de Decreación, de Anne Carson
Decreation. Anne Carson. Broken Vessel.
From the concept that gives it its title, an activity that Simone Weil described as “undoing the creature within us,” a dissolution of the self. But how can we dissolve the self without moving through it, without reaching the very center of its definition? In what other place if not in the self can we begin that task? The author employs an extraordinary cast (Homer, Sappho, Longinus, Virginia Woolf or Simone Weil) to embark on a journey whose destination, since time immemorial, is sleep, that knowledge that is only given in sleep.
Portada de Eros dulce y amargo, de Anne Carson
The Beauty of the Husband. A Narrative Essay in 29 Tangos. Anne Carson. Lumen.
The first book published in Spain by the Canadian writer is one of the most original and unsettling manifestations of poetry today, a book that defies classification that tells the story of a marriage around Keats’ idea “beauty is truth.”
Across these 29 tangos (a tango is like a marriage, something you have to dance until the end), Carson introduces us to the intimate story of a marriage that is crumbling. Illuminating, often brutal, moving and darkly funny, this book dazzles us with scenes, dialogues and reflections that delve into the oldest of poetic concerns, love, as if it were expressed for the first time.
Portada de Autobiografía de Rojo, de Anne Carson
Autobiography of Red. A Verse Novel. Anne Carson. Pre-Textos.
Considered one of the best works by the Canadian author, and the one that propelled her to fame, this work reimagines the plot of the fragmentary poem Gerioneida by the Greek author Stesichorus, in which the episode of Heracles’ life is told as he kills the red and winged monster known as Geryon to steal his cattle. In the novel, Carson imagines Geryon as a gay teenage boy with wings who lives in the present day and falls in love with a rebellious boy named Heracles, who breaks his heart.
Portada de NOX, de Anne Carson
NOX. Anne Carson. Broken Vessel.
Publicada en 2010, esta obra le valió para ser nominada al National Book Critics Circle Award y nació como un epitafio a la muerte de su hermano, que falleció repentinamente después de pasar años sin saber de él. El retrato del proceso de reconciliación con la pérdida y de aceptación de la misma a través de la traducción del Poema 101 de Catulo: «Para su hermano que murió en el camino». Una experiencia poética y visual que incita a una noción más abierta y desprejuiciada de lo que suele entenderse por lectura poética.
