Fragment 31

He seems to me equal to gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
           to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing—oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
           is left in me

no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
           fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead—or almost
           I seem to me.

But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty

- Sappho, tr. Anne Carson


("In the poem Sappho doesn’t use the word ecstasy, but she talks about herself as standing outside herself and observing her own condition. It sounds as if she’s achieving the state of standing outside one’s own soul that constitutes ecstasy, but which also constitutes what many mystics strive to achieve in canceling their selfhood so that they can be empty vessels for God. I don’t think Sappho has that idea as such—it’s an anachronism to ascribe it to her—but I do think there is a deep spiritual substance to Sappho’s descriptions of gods and our relation to gods that ought to be taken account of in reading her poetry. But I don’t exactly know how.")

via

'continues to be like a harbor always welcoming'

CARSON

....At least half of your mind is always thinking, I’ll be leaving; this won’t last. It’s a good Buddhist attitude. It prepares you for life as a Buddhist. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I’m just sad.

INTERVIEWER

You would be well on the road to enlightenment if you were a Buddhist.

CARSON

Instead, I’ve avoided enlightenment resolutely.

INTERVIEWER

I’d like to talk a little bit about your discovery of ancient Greece. You first started studying Greek in high school?

CARSON

Yes. Grade thirteen.

INTERVIEWER

Was it immediately apparent that it was changing your life?

CARSON

Yes, immediately. Mrs. Cowan started to teach me Greek—she was our Latin teacher in high school, in Port Hope—but she also knew Greek, so she offered to teach me because she found out I was interested in it, so we did it on our lunch hour.

INTERVIEWER

There wasn’t a Greek class?

CARSON

No. No one was interested except me. We read Sappho together, and it was simply revolutionary. I don’t know every language in the world—maybe if I knew Sanskrit and Chinese I would think differently—but there’s something about Greek that seems to go deeper into words than any modern language. So that when you’re reading it, you’re down in the roots of where words work, whereas in English we’re at the top of the tree, in the branches, bouncing around. It was stunning to me, a revelation. And it continues to be stunning, continues to be like a harbor always welcoming. Strange, but welcoming.

INTERVIEWER

That must be really nice, to have that place to go to.

CARSON

It is. I’m sure it’s part of what mental health I have. A large part. It’s a home. It’s a home in my mind. And then to be able to make my living at it is a great benevolence of the universe.

INTERVIEWER

A lot of people say the ancient Greeks are really our contemporaries. Spiritually, I mean.

CARSON

I don’t feel much direct relevance of ancient things to modern things. It was the temper of the times, especially in the seventies and eighties when I was getting my degree and teaching, to claim that the project of being a classicist was to find relevance to antiquity and invent courses that convinced students that you could learn everything you needed to know about modern life from studying the ancient Greeks. Well, this is bizarre, to say the least. What’s entrancing about the Greeks is that you get little glimpses, little latches of similarity, embedded in unbelievable otherness, in this huge landscape of strange convictions about the world and reactions to life that make no sense at all.

INTERVIEWER

So there’s this dense otherness that you just want to find out about. Whether it’s relevant is besides the point.

CARSON

One thing I do understand about the Greeks is that they, too, understood this and valued it. That is what the god Dionysus is as a principle—the principle of being up against something so other that it bounces you out of yourself to a place where, nonetheless, you are still in yourself; there’s a connection to yourself as another. It’s what they call "ecstasy." The Greeks invented this concept, but they also embody it for us, which may just be just our utilitarian approach to them. But who can say. We are always going to be looking at the Greeks and figuring out who they are in relation to what we are. We can’t get out and be in a third place and judge both of us.

INTERVIEWER

From a nice objective place?

CARSON

There is no objective place, just like there is no third gender; you’ve got to be in one place or the other.

- Anne Carson's Paris Review interview