Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Autobiography of Red, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Creativity
Communication and Mystery
Time
Self and World
Summary
Analysis
Autobiography of Red opens with an introductory essay about Stesichoros, the poet who wrote Geryoneis, a lyric poem about the myth of Geryon. Stesichoros was born around 650 B.C.E. in Himera, a city on Sicily’s north coast. He lived near refugees who spoke Chalcidian and Doric. These refugees were “hungry for language.” Stesichoros filled 26 books with his language, though only fragments remain today. He also received glowing praise from critics. In particular, Hermogenes commended his use of adjectives.
Carson’s description of the refugees as “hungry for language” introduces the idea that language and creativity play a central role in creating unstable, changing meaning. Describing “language” as something one can be “hungry for” frames it as nourishing and essential to existence. Language doesn’t simply describe the world—it renders it real and meaningful.
Themes
Anne Carson (the author) considers the function of the adjective to answer the question, “What difference did Stesichoros make?” Adjective comes from the Greek word epitheon, which means “placed on top,” or “added,” or “foreign.” Although adjectives might seem like minor additions, Carson argues that they “are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity” and “are the latches of being.”
When Carson calls adjectives “latches of being,” she refers to how adjectives relate to meaning, in that they influence how a person ought to view the world. Carson’s claim that adjectives “are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity” refers to how adjectives make individual beings distinct by differentiating them from the external world. Adjectives help people create meaning and organization.
Themes
Carson considers all the “ways to be.” For example, the world of Homer’s epics is “stable” and grounded in tradition. He describes nouns using the same adjective, which conveys the essence of the noun most accurately: for example, “blood is black,” or “death is bad.” Stesichoros’s comes from this tradition and went in a different direction from Homer. Whereas Homer’s adjectives gave a fixed meaning, Stesichoros’s “released being,” describing horses as “hollow hooved,” or hell “as deep as the sun is high.”
The “way[] to be” that Homer establishes through his use of adjectives is “stable” and fixed. He uses adjectives to reinforce traditional, conventional understandings of how the world works. Classical adjectives are “stable” in that they provide a fixed meaning. In Homer’s epics, descriptions such as “blood is black” and “death is bad” reflect essential, immutable truths about blood and death, respectively. Stesichoros’s use of adjectives, in contrast, “release[s] being” from conventional constraints. He uses adjectives to describe reality figuratively, offering a new, equally real way of looking at the world and establishing meaning through perspective. Unlike Homer’s fixed adjectives, Stesichoros’s adjectives do not attempt to prescribe how the world is; instead, they describe how one might perceive it. The meaning Stesichoros’s adjectives offer is uncertain and shifting.
Themes
Carson shifts her attention to Geryon, the Greek mythic figure on whom Stesichoros wrote an extended lyric poem. Only fragments of the poem remain today. The poem tells of a winged red monster who lived on the island Erytheia, which means “The Red Place.” The monster raises red cattle until the poem’s hero, Herakles, arrives and kills the monster for his cattle. The “conventional” telling of the myth might pertain to the triumph of “culture over monstrosity.” Stesichoros, however, takes a different approach and tells the myth primarily from Geryon, the monster’s, perspective.
In Geryoneis, Stesichoros breaks from tradition by presenting Geryon’s story to challenge “conventional” tellings of the myth, which typically offer a morality tale that celebrates “culture over monstrosity.” Stesichoros challenges this version of reality by proposing a version of the story that portrays Geryon, the myth’s monster, in a sympathetic light. Stesichoros complicates the story rather than essentializing it. Whereas earlier tellings in the Homeric tradition ask the reader to believe that Herakles is essentially good and Geryon is essentially bad, Stesichoros leaves room for mystery and interpretation.
Themes
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Carson invites the reader to consider “what difference did Stesichoros make” for them, though she cautions that understanding the poet’s work isn’t easy. In fact, reading the surviving fragments, one has the sense of a cohesive narrative poem that Stesichoros completed, only to rip it to pieces.
Carson’s wording, “what difference did Stesichoros make” is highly intentional. To entertain the idea that Stesichoros can “make” a difference implies that language and perspective can “make” changes—can alter reality.
Themes
