“Love is the mystery inside this walking”: Anne Carson on the Road to Compostela
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.42.2021.179-197Keywords:
Anne Carson, pilgrimage, water, resilience, Camino, Santiago de CompostelaAbstract
This paper explores Anne Carson’s “Kinds of Water: An Essay on the Road to Compostela,” the author’s journal on her pilgrimage to Santiago. Taking water as a metaphor for the Camino, the text reflects the creative dimension of the pilgrimage both from an artistic and personal standpoint. Alternative discourses of the female writer and pilgrim occur in a text that is an essay and a meditation on the forms of resilience put into practice by Carson after facing a series of personal losses. The progressive construction of self-knowledge is seen as an emancipatory act that transcended Carson’s mourning period in her experience, which she took as an opportunity to embrace personal transformation. I suggest that my approach can bring useful perspectives not only to further and refine knowledge on Carson in Spain but also for the consideration of resilience as an aspect that contributes to the critical understanding of narratives of individual and social transformation.
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
References
“Anne Carson, 1950–.” Poets.org, Poets.org/poet/anne-carson/.
Butler, Judith. “Can’t Stop Screaming.” Public Books, 2012, www.publicbooks. org/cant-stop-screaming/.
Carson, Anne. “Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete, and Simone Weil Tell God.” Common Knowledge, 2002, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 188–203, doi:10.1215/0961754X-8-1-188.
Carson, Anne. “Diving: Introduction to the Anthropology of Water.” Carson, Plainwater, pp. 117–18.
Carson, Anne. Eros the Bittersweet. Illinois State U, 2005.
Carson, Anne. “Kinds of Water: An Essay on the Road to Compostela.” Carson, Plainwater, pp. 124–87.
Carson, Anne. Plainwater: Essays and Poetry. 1995. Vintage Books, 2000.
Carson, Anne. “Thirst: Introduction to Kinds of Water.” Carson, Plainwater, pp. 119–23.
Carson, Anne. Tipos de agua. Translated by Sara Cantú Pérez de Salazar, Vaso Roto, 2018.
Coles, Elizabeth. “The Sacred Object: Anne Carson and Simone Weil.” Acta Poetica, vol. 34, no. 1, 2013, pp. 127–54, doi:10.1016/S0185-3082(13)72397-6.
Collins-Kreiner, Noga. “Geographers and Pilgrimages: Changing Concepts in Pilgrimage Tourism Research.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie / Journal of Economic and Human Geography, vol. 101, n. 4, 2010, pp. 437–48, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9663.2009.00561.x.
Constantine, Peter, and Anne Carson. “Ancient Words, Modern Words: A Conversation with Anne Carson.” World Literature Today, vol. 88, n. 1, 2014, pp. 36–37, doi:10.7588/worllitetoda.88.1.0036.
Crown, Sarah. “Red Doc by Anne Carson – review.” The Guardian, 16 Aug. 2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/16/red-doc-anne-carson- review/.
Cyrulnik, Boris. Resilience: How Your Inner Strength Can Set You Free from the Past. Translated by David Macey, Penguin Books, 2009.
D’Agata, John, and Anne Carson. “A __ With Anne Carson.” The Iowa Review, vol. 27, no. 2, 1997, pp. 1–22, JSTOR, doi:10.17077/0021-065X.4868.
Doce, Jordi. “Anne Carson, la poesía desde fuera.” El Cultural, 2020, elcultural.com/anne-carson-la-poesia-desde-fuera/.
Domínguez García, Beatriz. “Resilience as Regeneration in Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 21, no. 1, 2019, doi:10.7771/1481-4374.3378.
Eade, John, and Michael Sallnow, editors. Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. Routledge, 1991.
Fleming, Joan. “‘Talk (Why?) with Mute Ash’: Anne Carson’s Nox as Therapeutic Biography.” Biography, vol. 39, no. 1, 2016, pp. 64–78.
Foucault, Michel. El coraje de la verdad: Curso en el Collège de France (1983–1984). Translated by Horacio Pons, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010.
Frey, Nancy Louise. Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago, Journeys Along the Ancient Way in Modern Spain. U of California P, 1988.
García Navarro, Carmen. “Joy Harjo’s Poetics of Memory and Resilience.” Atlantis, vol. 41, no. 1, 2019, pp. 51–68, doi:10.28914/Atlantis-2019-41.1.03.
Hidalgo, Manuel. “El camino de Anne Carson.” El Cultural, 2019, elcultural.com/el-camino-de-anne-carson/.
Hume, Christine. “How is a Pilgrim Like a Soldier? Anne Carson's ‘Kinds of Water: An Essay on the Road to Compostela’.” Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre, edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson, U of Michigan P, 2015, pp. 50–55.
Kellaway, Kate. “Anne Carson: ‘I do not believe in art as therapy’.” The Guardian. 30 Oct. 2016, www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/30/anne-carson-do-not-believe-art-therapy-interview-float/.
Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe, edited by Lynn Staley, Medieval Institute Publications, 1996, d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/staley-book-of-margery-kempe-book-i-part-i/.
Ketenjian. “Beyond Antigone.” An interview with Anne Carson. Anne Carson on Translating Antigone for Ivo Van Hove's Brooklyn Academy of Music Production from The Guardian, 24 Sep. 2015, www.theguardian.com/ stage/audio/2015/sep/24/bam-antigone-anne-carson-juliette-binoche-podcast/.
King, Andrew Robert. “Unwriting the Books of the Dead: Anne Carson and Robert Currie on Translation, Collaboration, and History.” Kenyon Review. 6 Oct. 2012, kenyonreview.org/2012/10/anne-carson-robert-currie-interview/.
Lago, Eduardo. “Ann Carson: ‘La gran paradoja es escribir con placer sobre algo trágico’.” El País. Babelia, 2019, elpais.com/cultura/2019/05/03/ babelia/1556899710_745273.html/.
Liebenberg, Linda, and Michael Ungar, editors. Resilience in Action: Working with Youth across Cultures and Contexts. U of Toronto P, 2008.
Machado, Antonio. 1912–1917. Poesías Completas. Espasa-Calpe, 1981.
MacKinnon, John E. “Risk and Resilience in Catherine Bush’s Minus Time.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 41, no. 2, 2006, pp. 101–20, doi:10.1177/0021989406065774.
Marsden, Jill. 2013. “In Search of Lost Sense. The Aesthetics of Opacity in Anne Carson’s Nox.” Comparative and Continental Philosophy, vol. 5, no. 2, 2015, pp. 189–98, doi:10.1179/1757063813Z.00000000022.
Meretoja, Hanna. The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible. Oxford UP, 2017.
Merkin, Daphne. “Last Tango.” The New York Times, 2001, www.nytimes. com/2001/09/30/books/last-tango.html/.
Nilsson, Mats. “Wanderers in the Shadow of a Sacred Myth: Pilgrims in the 21st Century.” Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 19, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21–38, doi:10.1080/14649365.2016.1249398.
Ratliff, Ben. “Nox.” El Cultural, 2018, elcultural.com/nox.
Seoane, Andrés. “Anne Carson: ‘La poesía es el espacio que hay entre dos realidades’” El Cultural, 2020. elcultural.com/anne-carson-la-poesia-es-el-espacio-que-hay-entre-dos-realidades/.
Shuman, Amy. “Entitlement and Empathy in Personal Narrative.” Narrative Enquiry, vol. 16, no. 1, 2006, pp. 157–64, www.academia.edu/20127993/ Entitlement_and_Empathy_in_Personal_Narrative/.
Streckfus, Peter, and Anne Carson. “Collaborating on Decreation: An Interview with Anne Carson.” Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre, edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson, U of Michigan P, 2015, pp. 214–22.
Tenenbaum, Tamara. “Anne Carson: ‘Creo que a los más jóvenes les interesa mi trabajo porque no tengo género’.” Infobae. 14 Jan. 2018, www.infobae .com/america/cultura-america/2018/10/14/anne-carson-creo-que-a-los-mas-jovenes-les-interesa-mi-trabajo-porque-no-tengo-genero/.
Ungar, Michael. “Putting Resilience into Action: Five Principles of Intervention”, edited by Linda Liebenberg and Michael Ungar. Resilience in Action. Working with Youth across Cultures and Contexts. Toronto U Press, 2008, pp. 17–36.
Butler, Judith. “Can’t Stop Screaming.” Public Books, 2012, www.publicbooks. org/cant-stop-screaming/.
Carson, Anne. “Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete, and Simone Weil Tell God.” Common Knowledge, 2002, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 188–203, doi:10.1215/0961754X-8-1-188.
Carson, Anne. “Diving: Introduction to the Anthropology of Water.” Carson, Plainwater, pp. 117–18.
Carson, Anne. Eros the Bittersweet. Illinois State U, 2005.
Carson, Anne. “Kinds of Water: An Essay on the Road to Compostela.” Carson, Plainwater, pp. 124–87.
Carson, Anne. Plainwater: Essays and Poetry. 1995. Vintage Books, 2000.
Carson, Anne. “Thirst: Introduction to Kinds of Water.” Carson, Plainwater, pp. 119–23.
Carson, Anne. Tipos de agua. Translated by Sara Cantú Pérez de Salazar, Vaso Roto, 2018.
Coles, Elizabeth. “The Sacred Object: Anne Carson and Simone Weil.” Acta Poetica, vol. 34, no. 1, 2013, pp. 127–54, doi:10.1016/S0185-3082(13)72397-6.
Collins-Kreiner, Noga. “Geographers and Pilgrimages: Changing Concepts in Pilgrimage Tourism Research.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie / Journal of Economic and Human Geography, vol. 101, n. 4, 2010, pp. 437–48, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9663.2009.00561.x.
Constantine, Peter, and Anne Carson. “Ancient Words, Modern Words: A Conversation with Anne Carson.” World Literature Today, vol. 88, n. 1, 2014, pp. 36–37, doi:10.7588/worllitetoda.88.1.0036.
Crown, Sarah. “Red Doc by Anne Carson – review.” The Guardian, 16 Aug. 2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/16/red-doc-anne-carson- review/.
Cyrulnik, Boris. Resilience: How Your Inner Strength Can Set You Free from the Past. Translated by David Macey, Penguin Books, 2009.
D’Agata, John, and Anne Carson. “A __ With Anne Carson.” The Iowa Review, vol. 27, no. 2, 1997, pp. 1–22, JSTOR, doi:10.17077/0021-065X.4868.
Doce, Jordi. “Anne Carson, la poesía desde fuera.” El Cultural, 2020, elcultural.com/anne-carson-la-poesia-desde-fuera/.
Domínguez García, Beatriz. “Resilience as Regeneration in Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 21, no. 1, 2019, doi:10.7771/1481-4374.3378.
Eade, John, and Michael Sallnow, editors. Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. Routledge, 1991.
Fleming, Joan. “‘Talk (Why?) with Mute Ash’: Anne Carson’s Nox as Therapeutic Biography.” Biography, vol. 39, no. 1, 2016, pp. 64–78.
Foucault, Michel. El coraje de la verdad: Curso en el Collège de France (1983–1984). Translated by Horacio Pons, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010.
Frey, Nancy Louise. Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago, Journeys Along the Ancient Way in Modern Spain. U of California P, 1988.
García Navarro, Carmen. “Joy Harjo’s Poetics of Memory and Resilience.” Atlantis, vol. 41, no. 1, 2019, pp. 51–68, doi:10.28914/Atlantis-2019-41.1.03.
Hidalgo, Manuel. “El camino de Anne Carson.” El Cultural, 2019, elcultural.com/el-camino-de-anne-carson/.
Hume, Christine. “How is a Pilgrim Like a Soldier? Anne Carson's ‘Kinds of Water: An Essay on the Road to Compostela’.” Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre, edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson, U of Michigan P, 2015, pp. 50–55.
Kellaway, Kate. “Anne Carson: ‘I do not believe in art as therapy’.” The Guardian. 30 Oct. 2016, www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/30/anne-carson-do-not-believe-art-therapy-interview-float/.
Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe, edited by Lynn Staley, Medieval Institute Publications, 1996, d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/staley-book-of-margery-kempe-book-i-part-i/.
Ketenjian. “Beyond Antigone.” An interview with Anne Carson. Anne Carson on Translating Antigone for Ivo Van Hove's Brooklyn Academy of Music Production from The Guardian, 24 Sep. 2015, www.theguardian.com/ stage/audio/2015/sep/24/bam-antigone-anne-carson-juliette-binoche-podcast/.
King, Andrew Robert. “Unwriting the Books of the Dead: Anne Carson and Robert Currie on Translation, Collaboration, and History.” Kenyon Review. 6 Oct. 2012, kenyonreview.org/2012/10/anne-carson-robert-currie-interview/.
Lago, Eduardo. “Ann Carson: ‘La gran paradoja es escribir con placer sobre algo trágico’.” El País. Babelia, 2019, elpais.com/cultura/2019/05/03/ babelia/1556899710_745273.html/.
Liebenberg, Linda, and Michael Ungar, editors. Resilience in Action: Working with Youth across Cultures and Contexts. U of Toronto P, 2008.
Machado, Antonio. 1912–1917. Poesías Completas. Espasa-Calpe, 1981.
MacKinnon, John E. “Risk and Resilience in Catherine Bush’s Minus Time.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 41, no. 2, 2006, pp. 101–20, doi:10.1177/0021989406065774.
Marsden, Jill. 2013. “In Search of Lost Sense. The Aesthetics of Opacity in Anne Carson’s Nox.” Comparative and Continental Philosophy, vol. 5, no. 2, 2015, pp. 189–98, doi:10.1179/1757063813Z.00000000022.
Meretoja, Hanna. The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible. Oxford UP, 2017.
Merkin, Daphne. “Last Tango.” The New York Times, 2001, www.nytimes. com/2001/09/30/books/last-tango.html/.
Nilsson, Mats. “Wanderers in the Shadow of a Sacred Myth: Pilgrims in the 21st Century.” Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 19, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21–38, doi:10.1080/14649365.2016.1249398.
Ratliff, Ben. “Nox.” El Cultural, 2018, elcultural.com/nox.
Seoane, Andrés. “Anne Carson: ‘La poesía es el espacio que hay entre dos realidades’” El Cultural, 2020. elcultural.com/anne-carson-la-poesia-es-el-espacio-que-hay-entre-dos-realidades/.
Shuman, Amy. “Entitlement and Empathy in Personal Narrative.” Narrative Enquiry, vol. 16, no. 1, 2006, pp. 157–64, www.academia.edu/20127993/ Entitlement_and_Empathy_in_Personal_Narrative/.
Streckfus, Peter, and Anne Carson. “Collaborating on Decreation: An Interview with Anne Carson.” Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre, edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson, U of Michigan P, 2015, pp. 214–22.
Tenenbaum, Tamara. “Anne Carson: ‘Creo que a los más jóvenes les interesa mi trabajo porque no tengo género’.” Infobae. 14 Jan. 2018, www.infobae .com/america/cultura-america/2018/10/14/anne-carson-creo-que-a-los-mas-jovenes-les-interesa-mi-trabajo-porque-no-tengo-genero/.
Ungar, Michael. “Putting Resilience into Action: Five Principles of Intervention”, edited by Linda Liebenberg and Michael Ungar. Resilience in Action. Working with Youth across Cultures and Contexts. Toronto U Press, 2008, pp. 17–36.
Downloads
Published
09/11/2021
How to Cite
García Navarro, C. “‘Love Is the Mystery Inside This walking’: Anne Carson on the Road to Compostela”. ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies, no. 42, Nov. 2021, pp. 179-97, doi:10.24197/ersjes.42.2021.179-197.
Issue
Section
Articles
License
Authors retain publishing rights and grant ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies right of first publication.
Simultaneously, all articles and reviews published in ES Review will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), by which others are allowed to share and use their work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
In addition, ES Review allows authors to arrange additional contracts for the non-exclusive publication of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. In such a case, authors are required to approach the editor(s)/publisher to request permission.
