Carson - The beauty of the husband : a fictional essay in 29 tangos

FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, FEBRUARY 2002 Copyright 2001 by Anne Carson All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2001. Portions of this work (tangos ) were previously published in The London Review of Books. Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows: Carson, Anne, [date]
The beauty of the husband : a fictional essay in 29 tangos / by Anne Carson.1st. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-375-40804-5 (alk. paper)
1. Married peoplePoetry. 2.

MarriagePoetry. 3. AdulteryPoetry. I. Title.
PS3553.A7667 B43 2001
811.54dc21 00-062002 eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-55456-7
Vintage ISBN: 0-375-70757-3 www.vintagebooks.com Cover design by Carol Devine Carson
Cover photograph Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Desdeban, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres Scala/Art Resource, NY v3.1

This book contains long lines of poetry. The line below is the longest in the book.

Out the corner of his eye he can just see the dark blue silk curve of the belly of Dolor. If this line is breaking on your e-reader, you may choose to decrease the font-size setting until the entire line fits on your screen. This may not be possible on all e-reading devices.

Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. more Bad reasons for her sorrow, as appears In the famed memoirs of a thousand years Written by Crafticant
JOHN KEATS , The Jealousies: A Faery Tale, by Lucy Vaughan Lloyd of China Walk, Lambeth, lines 8487 I. I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO KEATS (IS IT YOU WHO TOLD ME KEATS WAS A DOCTOR?) ON GROUNDS THAT A DEDICATION HAS TO BE FLAWED IF A BOOK IS TO REMAIN FREE AND FOR HIS GENERAL SURRENDER TO BEAUTY 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. Fair reader I offer merely an analogy. A delay. Use delay instead of picture or painting a delay in glass as you would say a poem in prose or a spittoon in silver. So Duchamp of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors which broke in eight pieces in transit from the Brooklyn Museum to Connecticut (1912). What is being delayed? Marriage I guess.

That swaying place as my husband called it. Look how the word shines.

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Tis chosen I hear from Hymens jewelry, And you will prize it, lady, I doubt not, Beyond all pleasures past and all to come. JOHN KEATS , Otho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts, 1.1.13739 II. BUT A DEDICATION IS ONLY FELICITOUS IF PERFORMED BEFORE WITNESSESIT IS AN ESSENTIALLY PUBLIC SURRENDER LIKE THAT OF STANDARDS OF BATTLE You know I was married years ago and when he left my husband took my notebooks. Wirebound notebooks.

You know that cool sly verb write. He liked writing, disliked having to start each thought himself. Used my starts to various ends, for example in a pocket I found a letter hed begun (to his mistress at that time) containing a phrase I had copied from Homer: is how Homer says Andromache went after she parted from Hektoroften turning to look back she went down from Troys tower and through stone streets to her loyal husbands house and there with her women raised a lament for a living man in his own halls. Loyal to nothing my husband. So why did I love him from early girlhood to late middle age and the divorce decree came in the mail? Beauty. No great secret.

Not ashamed to say I loved him for his beauty. As I would again if he came near. Beauty convinces. You know beauty makes sex possible. Beauty makes sex sex. You if anyone grasp thishush, lets pass to natural situations.

Other species, which are not poisonous, often have colorations and patterns similar to poisonous species. This imitation of a poisonous by a nonpoisonous species is called mimicry. My husband was no mimic. You will mention of course the war games. I complained to you often enough when they were here all night with the boards spread out and rugs and little lamps and cigarettes like Napoleons tent I suppose, who could sleep? All in all my husband was a man who knew more about the Battle of Borodino than he did about his own wifes body, much more! Tensions poured up the walls and along the ceiling, sometimes they played Friday night till Monday morning straight through, he and his pale wrathful friends. They sweated badly.

They ate meats of the countries in play. Jealousy formed no small part of my relationship to the Battle of Borodino. I hate it. Do you. Why play all night. The time is real.

Its a game. Its a real game. Is that a quote. Come here. No. No. Yes. Yes.

That night we made love the real way which we had not yet attempted although married six months. Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day Im not sure we got it right. He seemed happy. Youre like Venice he said beautifully. Early next day I wrote a short talk (On Defloration) which he stole and had published in a small quarterly magazine.

Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us. Or should I say ideal. Neither of us had ever seen Venice.

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Will you return, Prince, to our banquetting? JOHN KEATS , Otho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts, 1.2.152 III. AND FINALLY A GOOD DEDICATION IS INDIRECT (OVERHEARD, ETC.) AS IF VERDIS LA DONNA MOBILE HAD BEEN A POEM SCRATCHED ON GLASS His mistress at that timeindeed the very concept mistress for himwas French. Friends of his told me that she didnt wash and in bars was inclined to order liters of champagne on his tab.

I can imagine how he would frown, curse, sigh, lift his hands and adore it. He took me to a movie about a bookshop in Paris whose owner liked to have his assistant mount a ladder to fetch a book then he slides his hand up her leg. Just thatone hand, momentary. Her blush heats the theater. Every time he said Go, up she went. How do people get power over one another he said wonderingly as we came out onto the street.

Bruises too filled him with curiosity. I could not meet this need, I hear she did. The reason I mention washing is that it puzzled me why none of this seemed unclean in his study of it. None of it was orgasmic for him, his thrustanalytic you could say, as if discovering a new crystal. Is innocence just one of the disguises of beauty? He could fill structures of threat with a light like the earliest olive oil. I began to understand