Anne Carson’s brilliant long poem, Nox, is an exquisite elegy for her dead brother. Encased in a tomb-like box (the death mimesis is startling), this powerful book, daring to challenge the limits of the bound book, unfolds in accordion-pleated pages. The design is a bit of a distraction: I have to balance the book on a clipboard so it doesn’t fall off my lap and unfold across the living room floor. But the dazzling language and the originality of the concept transcend the overly-elaborate design.
Carson is a classicist, a professor at the University of Michigan. The title of her new book, Nox, which means “Night” in Latin, is used interchangeably with mors, “death.” Carson’s elegy for Michael, who died in 2000, is inextricably entangled with Catullus’ stunning elegy for his dead brother (Poem 101) . In fact, Carson’s poem is a homage to Catullus and an exploration of the difficulties of translation of language, grief, and customs honoring death across time and cultures.
The poem opens with Catullus’ Latin poem 101– no translation. It appears in the book as a crumpled scrap with blurry letters, pasted into the book (that, of course, is an illusion, and I could do without the blur). But I love her assumption that people are classically educated. One has to hope that those who haven’t read Catullus will do so.
Carson boldly expounds on the meaning of elegy, alternating long dictionary definitions of each word in Catullus CI (as if breaking up the words will lessen the grief) with scraps of biography and memories of Michael, cut-up bits of letters, childhood photos, and meditations on the relationship between history and elegy. There is also plenty of Greek here (translated) for those who love language.
In 7.1 of Nox, Carson muses on Catullus.
“I want to explain about the Catullus poem (101). Catullus wrote poem 101 for his brother who died in the Troad. Nothing at all is known of the brother except his death. Catullus appears to have travelled from Verona to Asia Minor to stand at the grave. Perhaps he recited the elegy there. I have loved this poem since the first time I read it in high school Latin class and I have tried to translate it a number of times. Nothing in English can capture the passionate, slow surface of a Roman elegy. No one (even in Latin) can approximate Catullan diction, which at its most sorrowful has an air of deep festivity, like one of those trees that turns all its leaves over, silver, in the wind. I never arrived at the translation I would have liked to do of poem 101. But over the years of working at it, I came to think of translating as a room, not exactly an unknown rom, where one gropes for the light switch. I guess it never ends. A brother never ends. I prowl him. He does not end.”
She eventually translates the poem–sorry, there is no page number. It resonates and recreates her own experience: she crossed the sea for inadequate funereal rites after her brother died in Amsterdam. She recreates the word order of the poem: almost impossible.
It is a beautiful poem: one that could be taught with Catullus.
Oh lovely. I’ve told Isabel and suggested she tell her class about Carson’s _Nox_. Have I told you that this term her class did Catullus?
Surely you could have shared one of the texts or part of one 🙂 No defiance of copyright when you quote a passage to explicate or make a point.
Ellen
It’s a prose poem and that WAS a quote! 🙂 Perhaps I’ll quote more of the poem elsewhere. There are whole pages of dictionary definitions–a dozen or more translations for every word–and it might be easier to understand if I photographed it. I’ll see what I can do!
Yes, I think Isabel should alert her class.
This is a must read for me. I’m hooked on both Anne Carson’s orignal work and her translations. ‘Nox’ would be classified as an original work, right? I’m more familiar with her work with Greek, but Catallus is Roman.
Yes, it is an original poem, not a translation (though translation is an important part of it). This is the first I’ve read by her. Is there anything special you’d recommend? I notice she’s translated, written her own poetry, and written essays.
Of Anne Carson’s original work, I’ve read “An Autobiography in Red” which is a novel in verse and “The Beauty of the Husband”. Of her translations, I’ve read “Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripedes” ( see my review at
http://anokatony.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/four-plays-by-euripedes/ ) and An Orestia. All are excellent.
Thank you for the recommendations! I went to your blog and commented. I’d love to read Carson’s translations of Euripides but perhaps I’ll try the novel in verse first.
[…] “Anne Carson’s brilliant long poem, Nox, is an exquisite elegy for her dead brother. Encased in a tomb-like box (the death mimesis is startling), this powerful book, daring to challenge the limits of the bound book, unfolds in accordion-pleated pages. The design is a bit of a distraction…..But the dazzling language and the originality of the concept transcend the overly-elaborate design.” Frisbee: A Book Journal […]
My own “translation” of Catullus’ poem:
I stare across the city and across the river
to that ashy island, brother,
and I try to talk to you again
though they’ve grubbed
you into the earth.
But take these now, take
these words. Take these words, brother,
because there’s nothing else – forever – I can give.
What a beautiful translation! Have you published this?
I recently read a translation of this poem in Robert Hellenga’s novel, The Confessions of Frances Godwin. It just keeps coming up.