Volume 45, Number 18 · November 19, 1998
Under the Volcano
By Bernard Knox
Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse
by Anne Carson
Knopf, 149 pp., $23.00
My letter to the Princeton University Press recommending Anne Carson's first book Eros the Bittersweet (it was published in 1986) contained the following sentences: 'This is an extraordinary book—the book of a poet, a subtle critic, and a scholar. It is also a brilliant piece of writing, flawlessly phrased throughout, constantly surprising but never disappointing, and laced with a wit that is all the more effective because it is perfectly disciplined.' The book is a perceptive analysis of the Greek conception of Eros and of his role in Greek poetry, philosophy, and life. He is a winged creature and his invasion of his target's body causes the heart to fly up in the chest, as Sappho and Alcaeus put it, an image reshaped by Socrates in Plato's Phaedrus.
Review, 4609 words
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