Any translator of ancient literature confronts the challenge of fragments: works that are only partially preserved. While an apple with a chunk taken out of it is obviously still an apple, a poem with missing lines is a far more mysterious object, for there’s no telling how that missing piece would transform the whole. Anne Carson doesn’t think of fragments as a roadblock to translation; neither does she simply take them for granted as an occupational hazard. Carson is infatuated with the possibilities of fragments: how the void of those empty, missing spaces might be, or become, full with meaning. This is why her works in translation continue to be revelatory; she approaches translation with an artist’s eye.
The section in Autobiography of Red titled “Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros,” in which Carson’s loose and inventive translation of Stesichoros’ surviving "Geryoneis" fragments sets up the sprawling plot of Autobiography of Red: A Romance, embodies Carson’s unique approach to translation. Through translation she transports and transforms. Autobiography of Red was published four years before If Not, Winter (2002), Carson’s translation of nearly all of the surviving fragments of Sappho’s lyric poetry. If Not, Winter made waves in the field of translation not only for its exquisite poetry but for how the book honors the poems’ fragmentary condition. The book uses ample blank space and brackets [] to signify what’s missing, creating symbolic space for Sappho’s lost words to fill. Another of Carson’s works, “A Fragment of Ibykos Translated Six Ways” (2012), is an overt exploration of the creative potential of fragments, with each translation bolder and more inventive than the last.
In Autobiography of Red, Carson’s translation of the fragments of Stesichoros is like a broken time capsule unwrapped by modern hands. She sets the ancient story of Stesichoros’ "Geryoneis" in the modern world, and what emerges is a vivid landscape blending ancient and modern lore: one in which Geryon is a gay teenager in ripped T-shirts, Hades is an island east of Miami, and Herakles breaks hearts, not skulls. Perhaps what bewitches Carson about fragments is how what’s missing could be anything; they offer the imagination limitless possibilities.
