I loved Anne Carson's Nox. A cliche often used in eulogies is that the deceased lives on through the memories and thoughts of the living. Such thinking to me is dishonest. It is selfish. It is human nature. However, Carson created a version of that cliche in a way that is so refreshing, and honest. It is unpretending. She is not trying to glorify her brother Michael's life in anyway. She is simply mourning.
Carson mourns by tying her feelings with that of another poet, albeit much older than she. Catullus' poem 101 was an elegy for his brother who also died on a foreign shore. It is really amazing that Carson links her own experience to another through history, literature, and in such a way, writes about the human experience as much as her own experience. By linking Nox to a celebrated Roman poet, she creates something much bigger, and meaningful that just a scrapbook for her own moping.
The book as a whole works to create this effect. The cover looks like a stone tablet, or a headstone. The pieces of her brother's letters, pictures, paintings. But, with these reminders of Michael as a person is a question. How do you mourn the passing of a brother who has disappeared from your life a long time ago? Carson asks this implicitly as she gradually, with many mysteries that we do not necessarily need to know, reveals the life of Michael: why he left, where he is, what he is doing. They have only heard from him a couple of times in twenty two years.
I think each page is a poem, if only because everything relates to a word in Catullus' poem 101. Although she writes in prose, there is a clear purpose in each word that she writes. The book is carefully crafted, and a true analysis of mourning. A perennial question in Nox is: How should we deal with death? What is the right approach? After all, mourning is an act that only helps the living; the dead could care less. But, when you cannot communicate with someone anymore, how do you move on?
The thing I appreciate most about Carson's Nox is that she doesn't assume. People who are attacked, or hurt by death are often defensive. But, Carson simply gives the reader things to process, as she must have done when she got the news. Each word in Catullus' poem is defined. Carson creates a new form of poetry that incorporates story-telling, prose, all kinds of visuals. The pictures, paintings, all of the visuals add to the story.Even the form of the book is unique in that it opens up like an accordion. Carson does not pretend to answer the question of "What should I do?" Nox is the asking of that question.
“By linking Nox to a celebrated Roman poet, she creates something much bigger, and meaningful that just a scrapbook for her own moping.”
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you here. At first I thought it was kind of sleezy of Carson to mourn her brother’s death in a personal epitaph that she then published and sold as a profit. However, I realized that because she collaborates with Catullus, she is expressing something much grander than just her brother’s death. Nox says something about the persistence and universality of human nature, specifically in humans’ response to death. The sadness and mourning expressed by Carson are expressible by an ancient Latin poet. Her sentiments have been expressed before from Catullus, so she translates it and applies it to her own situation. I’m always intrigued when I read really old poetry or writing and I think to myself, “wow, people’s emotions really have not changed that much!” Which is why collaborating with a dead author is so suitable in Nox, and why it was so fluid when I did my own “collaborating with a dead author” creative work. This makes me think that though societal norms, habits, environments, and technologies have changed, human nature has remained constant across time and place. We behave the same way and we experience the same emotions. Evolution hasn’t penetrated our souls.
I actually thought of something while reading your response. Carson chose Latin because it's a dead language and she didn't want to use an existing language. She wanted to create a parallel between her dead brother and the dead language (just go with me here...)of the poem. However, I am assuming of course here, that maybe Carson was not that knowledgeable about Latin so she chose a preexisting poem to open epitaph for her brother.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you bring up how does one mourn he death of someone. Rather, I would say, how does one celebrate the life of someone? Carson definitely wanted to do something but maybe could not have put it into words, because maybe to emphasize that no words in the English language can represent what she felt for her brother. So she just decided to use the these clippings and the Latin poem to convey her feelings across to the reader.