EROS THE BITTERSWEET

Carson presents an insightful and comprehensive analysis of desire and love as represented in ancient Greek literature. In the book “Eros the Bittersweet”, Carson acknowledges that love or desire itself can be damaging to a human being as much as it is expected to bring joy and happiness. Some of Carson’s distinctive ideas in her interpretation of the works she studies is that there is usually a correlation between love and evil intentions, and that the woman, in a romantic relationship, is often the subject of the male counterpart’s deranged behavior, as shown by the portrayal of the jealous lover as a destructive force in the life of the beloved. For a proper understanding of Anne Carson’s work in “Eros the Bittersweet,” it is important to consider that Eros, according to Greek mythology, was the god of sexual attraction (Thornton).

Eros’ Roman equivalent was Cupid, the god of erotic love, affection, attraction, and desire. Another instance where we see the destructive effect of the lover on the beloved is in “What does the Lover Want from Love” where we get the quote “If we look carefully at a lover in the midst of desire, for example, Sappho in her fragment 31, we see how severe an experience for her is confrontation with the beloved even at a distance. Union would be annihilating. What the lover in this poem needs is to be able to face the beloved and yet not be destroyed, that is, she needs to attain the condition of "the man who listens closely" (Carson 62). Another claim that made by Carson is that human desire is often a result of solitude and misperception, and often leads to misery and melancholy on the part of the individual who carries the desire in his or her bosom.

Eros, as portrayed by Carson, is often only valued when lost, and motivates negative emotions including greed, hate, and jealousy. The lover appears to want to control time even at the expense of the beloved for his own selfish interests. The desire to freeze time, or to at least control it, is evident in the behavior of the lover. Carson compares the lover’s struggle with time to the writer’s desire to freeze his thoughts through written words. Written words are frozen in time because they are resistant to change and can retain their form for ages just like the writer wants to see them. Carson’s thoughts on the lover and writer’s odds with time are agreeable because the writer seeks to have his or her thoughts frozen in time, to be unchanged for eternity, while the lover wants to be in constant communication and contact with the beloved for all time.

Desire itself, according to Carson, breeds evil in the context of the bad lover who wants to freeze his beloved in time so that he can exploit him endlessly. Carson’s primary portrayal of Eros, therefore, is the desire of something that is gone and cannot be recovered. Nonetheless, Eros in this context has not been clearly represented because no benefits of Eros are discussed by the writer despite the available evidence to support the fact that the lover’s true intention is to achieve prolonged union with the beloved and despite the flaws that may result from romantic feelings. Despite the presentation of multiple pieces of evidence in “Eros the Bittersweet” to describe eros as a product of paradox, and claims that the lover does not really want to be with the beloved, and that the lover damages the beloved, there are other pieces of evidence to support a different valuation of eros-that of joy and union.

Moreover, eros is portrayed to have bitterness based on the fact that Carson supports the idea that Eros is a retrogressive feeling, and that desire has only one ending, grief. Carson, however, believes that such desire comes from a “bad lover” (Carson 134-137). Also, in “Damage To The Living,” the author refers to Plato’s concern over the damage brought about by the lover through the concerted efforts he puts in trying to freeze the beloved in time (Carson,130-133). When comparing the damage caused by lovers to each other by a desire to the damage caused in writing such that the text becomes dead, the author criminalizes the act of desire. There is, nonetheless, the question on what motivates a desire so strong that a human being would want to freeze another in time-is love so powerful and enjoyable to the beloved that it may drive him to such a level of thinking? Furthermore, another reference used by Carson to discredit the intentions of the lover is seen in “Gardening for fun and profit” where she refers to Sokrates’ thoughts about the use of seeds of fennel, wheat, and barley to honor Adonis in the festival held to honor Adonis (Carson 141-144).

The gardens of Adonis are in this context compared to the beloved who is frozen in his youthful bloom. For instance, in “The Reach” Carson says “A space must be maintained or desire ends” (Carson 26). If space must be maintained for love to prosper, why then does Carson promote the idea that Eros brings about anguish especially when a lover betrays or abandons the other? There is evidence of contradiction in “What Does the Lover Want From Love” when the author claims that oneness should not be prioritized and is in fact not as important as believed to be (Carson 62-69). Also, we see evidence portraying eros as beneficial and pleasurable (sweet) in the words “The essential features that define this eros have already emerged in the course of our exploration of bittersweet-ness.

Simultaneous pleasure and pain are its symptoms. Lack is its animating, fundamental constituent” (Carson 62). If an object is known or possessed, it ceases to be an object of desire. Thus Eros, by definition, can never be fulfilled” (Gold 400-403). It is therefore clear that despite the extensive portrayal of love as only having bitterness regardless of union or distance in eros, we also see evidence to support the fact that eros is not one-sided in the context of having only bitterness, but also has sweetness. This essay therefore brings to light this contradiction using evidence from “Eros the Bittersweet”. ‘ Works Cited Kuiper, Kathleen. Eros, the Bittersweet: An Essay. Smoot, William. Eros the Bittersweet. Thornton, Bruce S.  Eros: the myth of ancient Greek sexuality.