The Glass Essay

 

Sezen Ergen B.

‘You teach me now how cruel you’ve been—cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you—they’ll damn you. You loved me—then what right had you to leave me? What right—answer me—for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?’

When I first read these lines, I was probably about twenty or twenty-one years old. I was at that age completely captivated by the absolute power of novels. I knew that to free myself from this influence, I would have to stop reading novels—but I couldn’t manage it yet. When the novel ended, Heathcliff easily took first place among the fictional characters I was in love with. He is someone not everyone can love easily. Even Terry Eagleton, almost twenty years after I read the novel, would accuse him of bullying and cruelty—but he would never understand him. Heathcliff is not like that; he has a hidden heart of gold, visible only with Cathy and me; and the more you read, the more you want to heal his wounds and mend him. I write the above passage in my diary, and even now, I know both its English and Turkish versions by heart.

“Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy?” After Cathy’s death, Heathcliff tries to remain strong at first, but then he cannot bear it and cries like a wild beast for his love, calling for Cathy’s spirit to return. I find myself unsure whether I identify more with Cathy or with Heathcliff. Then, I bury myself in law books, abandoning living love through novels and blending into real life. I learn to read novels without identifying myself with the characters. Years follow years; I will try to distance myself from literature, or at least I think I can. But it cannot be done.

When a writing idea comes to mind, life seems to shower the person with serendipitous flowers. While contemplating this essay, I come across a post shared by a writer friend; she shared words by the famous Turkish poet Gülten Akın who was also a lawyer. She says: “I have a nature full of love, fed by dreams and images. I have always lived in ecstasy. We were taught to be silent, calm, not to express enthusiasm—especially people my age, especially women. A tiny woman full of love and passion, yet trying to be balanced, consistent, and orderly, often succeeding. That’s continuous tension right there. I had to write poetry or paint or do music; among these, poetry fit best into my heavy political life.”

On the table, there is a frame containing a painting I made, and right beside it, my first published poem. There are contracts waiting for me to review them on the table as well. I hear the washing machine finish, but I can’t rise. It feels as if I am sitting side by side with Gülten Akın, speaking her words; her serene smile known only from photographs. I have an app on my phone, an audiobook app. I still haven’t grown accustomed to listening to books, but there are e-books too. A few weeks ago, I came across a book by Anne Carson titled Eros the Bittersweet, an Essay. The book opens by discussing my beloved Sappho, and I immediately sense I will like it. 

Anne Carson, the author, is an academic, so naturally, I expect to read an academic analysis of Sappho. But I quickly realize I am mistaken. The book credits the epithet “bittersweet” to the god of love, Eros, as being first applied by Sappho, adding that no one who has ever been in love will dispute her on this. Thus, I understand the book will not remain strictly academic, which further draws me in.

Anne Carson continues elucidating Sappho’s fragments. She explains, for example, that the fragment beginning with “If you ask me, an equal to the gods, a wife sitting opposite you, the man” is actually about jealousy; I reread the pages several times to absorb this. While reading, I encounter passages so beautiful and moving that my eyes fill with tears. Through Sappho, Anne Carson speaks about life in ways I have never heard before. The passion described by Gülten Akın is present here too, visible as I move along the lines. Sappho, the essay—these are merely pretexts. In a text disguised as academic, I wasn’t expecting to read such lines: “Eros is expropriation. He robs the body of limbs, substance, integrity and leaves the lover, essentially, less. Love does not happen without the loss of vital self. The lover is the loser. ”

Anne Carson was not yet a poet when she wrote this book; she was still an academic. As I read in a later critique, she will transform from an “ugly duckling” essayist into a swan poet.

“Sebald, an expert in comparative literature, suddenly began to produce fictional works after turning fifty. This moment is one of the most important parts of the halo and legend surrounding the author. What happened that critical essays stopped being enough?” Carson strikes me like lightning; she also talks about our passion for letters and handwriting. The book ends, but I cannot get enough of Carson and immediately search out her other works. Anne Carson’s books are filled with layers of intertextual references. Cem İleri’s question about Sebald can be asked for Anne Carson too: what happened that essays no longer sufficed? Seeking an answer, I explore her layered writing style where essay and poetry intertwine. Writers who transcend genres and overflow their boundaries always fascinate me.

“Sebald’s text depicts a place—a place that reaches far into the past where archaeological ruins, debris, and traces from different eras pile up one on another, feeling the passage of time in its body. Upon all that a new, contemporary structure is built,” says Cem İleri about Sebald’s text. Anne Carson is exactly like that; she constructs the most modern poems imaginable on top of Sappho and all the ancient Greek texts she expertly studies.

As I dwell on these thoughts, the dryer finishes. I get up, fold the laundry, and sing loudly along with the music in my ears. Enjoying books nourished by intertextuality is a process; the accumulation of what we read perhaps requires that we grow a little older—this is what I think. Of course, there are authors who achieve remarkable works focusing purely on the stories they tell; one need not master the entire history of literature to love a book. I am reminded of a childhood movie, Hook, starring Robin Williams. In the film, Peter Pan has grown up, become a lawyer, and is consumed by work, never letting go of his phone. — For some reason, all fictional protagonists who kill imagination end up lawyers — Eventually, we learn he is indeed Peter Pan. In one scene, when he finally remembers how to use his imagination, he begins to actually see the imaginary delicious dishes laid out amid empty plates. Recognizing intertextual links is a bit like this. Each book we read adds new wings and portals to the imaginary castles. I fold the laundry and put it away; I’ve already reviewed the contracts. I have serious business—I must be balanced, consistent, and orderly. Yet, as the French say of dreamers, I want to build castles in Spain.

One of Anne Carson’s most famous poems is The Glass Essay, translated into Turkish as Cam Deneme, though it is composed in poetry form. At the opening lines, I hesitate; it is a poem of separation, and the man she parted from is named Law—is it an allusion to the law profession, I am thinking. I continue eagerly. What I thought was simply a poem about a breakup is also a layered portrayal of the woman in the poem. Another layer is the essay part where Anne Carson examines Emily Brontë’s life. In one verse, three silent figures sit at a table: Anne Carson, her mother, and Emily Brontë. The poet imagines this scene; I imagine myself sitting there as well—alongside Gülten Akın. The woman in the poem tries to cope with the breakup beside her mother. Then I read these lines:

“But early this morning while mother slept

and I was downstairs reading the part in Wuthering Heights

where Heathcliff clings at the lattice in the storm sobbing

Come in! Come in! to the ghost of his heart’s darling,

.”

Heathcliff is back after all these years, testing me. Eros is in action. The moment I fully grasp what she is doing, I fall headlong, wildly, and deeply in love with Anne Carson’s writing. Carson already said it herself; Eros does not only exist between lovers but for every passion we hold. We can fall in love with poems, letters, words. Literature breathes life through Anne Carson, unlike Annie Ernaux, who lives to document life. Ernaux is mostly interested in telling a story; Anne Carson is not. She sacrifices herself, her poetry, and her texts to create an intertextual, multifaceted world. What matters most to her is not the story but this very intertextuality that has enchanted both of us. Carson’s writing and her autobiographical, although she insists it is not, poem-novel The Beauty of the Husband (translated into Turkish), brims with intertextuality. She cannot be confined by literary genres because she discusses ancient works and authors and thus must write essays. But from her very first book, the passionate woman described by Gülten Akın, who defies academia, is present—and Carson can express herself fully only through poetry.

In reply to Gülten Akın’s “If you peel the shell, the wound deepens,” Anne Carson writes:

“A wound gives off its own light 

surgeons say. 

If all the lamps in the house were turned out

you could dress this wound

by what shines from it.”

At the end of The Glass Essay, she transforms her body—and ours—into a conduit.

To convey the grandeur that books create, Anne Carson bares herself in her poem; she recounts how helplessly she stripped off her clothes beside the man she parted from, how she remained completely naked and humiliated just to be with him again. What she ultimately wants to show is how Emily Brontë’s life’s voids reflect in Heathcliff. A person in love does what? They think about their beloved day and night, unable to focus elsewhere, seeing them everywhere.

“For some women, love is
like a dreamless, carefree sleep,
like a fearless slumber.-Gülten Akın”

I lie awake, endlessly thinking of Anne Carson and her writings. In a talk, she refers to Descartes: “The original of ‘Cogito ergo sum’ is ‘Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum.’ Doubt is always forgotten, never remembered.” That is, I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. Because I am in love, I repeat the phrase like a mantra for days: Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum.

One evening, we go to a dinner with friends. It is a newly opened Greek restaurant in Vienna. As I step forward to wash my hands, I see a phrase written on the wall among others: Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum. Gülten Akın, I, and Anne Carson, two lawyers and an academic, sit down together and drink uzo.