Anne Carson's Eros: desire, coming to know, blind points, metaphors, imagination and symbols

In Eros the Bittersweet (1986), poet Anne Carson surveys the properties of Eros in relation to desire, writing, reading, and the structure of thought in order to "To see what passion of love has to teach us about reality." [1] Carson equates eros, not simply as synonymous with love as it is typically defined, but as reaching out or desire. A space between what we want and what we have, what we read, what we project, and what we mean. [2] This kind of desire ends in presence of attainment, fulfilment and oneness, "If an object is known or possessed, it ceases to be an object of desire. Thus Eros, by definition, can never be fulfilled." [3] A desire for solution or satisfaction of completion, which only remains until it is superseded by a new or different desire: goal, object, person or otherwise arises. It them becomes clear that eros is a lack - of something or someone, a searching for an object of desire. [4].

The relation ship between desirer and the desired can be defined as three points of transformation on a circuit of possible relationships (where eors is the lack and needs activation) ; a lover, a beloved and the thing between them. [5] Or, they sought-er/desire; the soughed/ the desired; and the connections and disconnections between them. This third aspect acts as the paradoxical element that makes them possible or impossible simultaneously, "Where the tri-circut connects, perception leaps, making something visible, that previously was not. Here, triangulation allows what is and what could be, Who acts out of a love of paradox, that is as he folds the beloved object out of sight into a mystery, into a blind point where it can float known and unknown, actual and possible, near and far, desired and drawing you on" [6]

In the chapter Symbolon, Carson notes there is asense of continuity between the satisfaction of finding love and coming to know, or learning. [7] As both love desire and knowledge desire share a similar sort of energy, as they suggest an excited action in the name of desire. Similarly, in this pleasure of reaching out is the pain of not knowing - or an inadequacy of elucidation. [8] Carson notes that can been seen in antiquical writer Homer’s verb Mnaomai, which means "to be mindful, to have mind, to direction ones attention’ and ‘to woo, court, be a suitor." [9]

Stationed at the edge of itself, or of its present knowledge, the thinking mind launches a suit for understanding into the unknown. So too the wooer stands at the edge of his value as a person and asserts a claim across the boundaries of another. Both mind and wooer reach out from what is known and actual to something different, possibly better, desired. [10]

When an individual thinks of their own thinking, or tries to feel their own desire, Carson notes they locate them self at a "blind point." [11] In being subject to ourselves we question and imagine who we are, where we are -the truth is we are no one in particular, we are abstracted from ourselves. [12] “We cannot see the blind point, just as we cannot think thought or desire desire except by subterfuge,” and so it is a type of trickery. [13] We are drawn in as we observe ourselves but all we see is our absence. The blind point becomes a space where we could be, but aren’t - where reality disapears into possibility. [14] A space between the actual and the possible.

In the blind points ability to focus and diverge, it skews the mind, Which Carson notes is much alike the Aristotles’ Metaphor, “To give names to nameless things by transference [metaphora] from things kindred or similar in appearance”. [15] In violating common standards of literal language, the metaphor dismisses actual meaning in favour for a metaphoric one, closing the space between two like things revealing their proximity. [16] Carson notes that Aristotle calls this change in distance epiphora, which attributes the shift to an act of imagination, Where the mind "reaches out from what is present and actual to something else". [17] In Phantasia, Aristotle notes that [the man] who reaches out for some delight, or the [bitter]sweet, wether in the future as hope or in the past as memory does so by means of an act of imagination. Imagination then prefaces desire by presenting the desired object as desirable to the mind of the desirer. Drawing two things together, imagination acknowledges the space between them, their previous incompatibility and a newfound compatibility. [18] The metaphor then evokes tension and unresolvability, and in turn a kind of split vision, which holds and weighs in balance two perspective simultaneously. [19] This kind of mental tension and interception puts the mind at odds with itself, it has not reached conceptual peace, as it it caught between aputure and closure, between similarity and difference. [20] This tension is a paradoxical element Carson notes, Aristotle finds essential to the nature of the metaphor. [21]

The symbolon, or symbol, Carson notes in Ancient Greece referred to as “one half of a knucklebone carried as a token of identity to someone who has the other half. Together the two halves compose one meaning.” [22] A metaphor can the be noted as a kind of symbol. The desirer can also be seen a symbol, a half that is a wooer of meaning, seeking its desired, inseparable from its absence. When we are against what we could be, wrench and arrest, to which we love and loathe. Yet, we come back to in aim to interact with the possible and its disappearance

What becomes apparent is Anne Carson’s desire is centred around the complex relationship between two half things: the desirer and desired. We may often associate desire with the act or emotion of wanting something, when in actuality it is more about a lack and perpetual reaching but never obtainment- as obtainment is the death of desire. Where to things: the desirer and desire can never meet, because they don’t derive from the same reality - the first is actual and the latter is possible. In acknowledging both and keeping their separation, Carson notes, is the trickery of eros:

Eros hold the desired object out of sight into a mystery, into a blind point where it can float known and unknown, actual and possible near and far, desired and drawing you on. [23]

[1] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, (Champaign: Dalkey Archive Press, 1998), 133

[2] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 121.

[3]- Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 65.

[4]- Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 10.

[5] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet,16.

[6] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet,17

[7] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet,70

[8] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet,70

[9] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet,70

[10] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet,71

[11] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 71

[12] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 72

[13] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 72

[14] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 72

[15] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 73-75

[16] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 73-75

[17] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 73-5

[18] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 73-75

[19] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 73-75

[20] -Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 73 -75

[21] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet, 75

[22] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet,76

[23] - Anne Carson, Eros the bittersweet,110