General Instructions

• You will be divided into groups/pairs and assigned a section of the essay to discuss. The
divisions are the following:
o Group 1: Chapters 1-6 (Bittersweet, Gone, Ruse, Tactics, The Reach, Finding the
Edge)
o Group 2: Chapters 7-12 (Logic at the Edge, Losing the Edge, Archiolochos at Edge,
Alphabetic Edge, What Does the Lover Want from Love?, Symbolon)
o Group 3: Chapter 13-18 (A Novel Sense, Something Paradoxical, My Page Makes
Love, Letters, Letters, Folded Meanings, Bellerophon Is Quite Wrong After All)
o Group 4: Chapters 19-24 (Realist, Ice-pleasure, Now Then, Erotikos Logos, The
Sidestep, Damage to the Living)
o Group 5: Chapters 25-30 (Midas, Cicadas, Gardening for Fun and Profit, Something
Serious Is Missing, Takeover, Read Me the Bit Again)
o Group 6: (Chapter 31-34, Then Ends Where Now Begins, What a Difference a Wing
Makes, What Is This Dialogue About?, Mythoplokos)
• As a group, discuss and formulate answers to your assigned questions.
• Summarize your answers to each question in a single document (TNR/Garamond 12, 1.5
spacing, print on A4). Email this me on or before 9.30 AM of our next class day (17
February). This serves as your quiz for the next meeting.
• Bullet points are acceptable, but must be articulated in full sentences.
• You will use this to introduce your part of the discussion next meeting.

Group 1

1. What does Kafka’s story of the philosopher chasing the spinning top suggest about the
nature of the pursuit of knowledge? Of falling in love?
2. Unpack Sappho's term glukuprikon, in light of its English rendering: “bittersweet.” What
differences of nuance can you perceive between the original term and its translation? What
paradoxes about the nature of desire do the terms highlight or foreground?
3. Explain the triangular relationship Carson thinks is produced by Eros; why are these three
elements essential to one another?
4. Explain how (and/or why) the edges and boundaries of the self are felt only in desire.

Group 2

1. Carson writes, “It is in the poetry of those who were first exposed to a written alphabet and
the demands of literacy that we encounter deliberate meditation upon the self, especially in
the context of erotic desire” (p. 69). Discuss this link between the development of a written
language and the invention of Eros as a key concern of the lyric poet, in the context of the
culture of Ancient Greece. Or, to use Carson’s words, “what is erotic about
alphabetization?”
2. How does Carson describe the differences between oral and written language? In light of
this, how does she describe the differences between epic and lyric poetry?
 3. Explain: “There would seem to be some resemblance between the way Eros acts in the mind
of a lover and the way knowing acts in the mind of a thinker” (p. 102). Discuss, in light of
this, what you understand about where the “blind point” of desire is.

Group 3

1. “Let us superimpose on the question ‘What does the lover want from love’ the questions
‘What does the reader want from reading? What is the writer’s desire?’ Novels are the
answer” (p. 111). Explain Carson's analogy between the lover and the writer/reader.
2. What does this analogy proceed to uncover about the “erotics” of the novel as a literary
form? Or, what aspects of the novel are suggestive of erotic desire as Carson has been
discussing it?
3. In the story of Apollonius and the king’s daughter, how do letters (both in the sense of letter
as written character and letter as written correspondence) have the power to change reality?
How is eros an act of imagination, as illustrated by the actions of the king’s daughter?

Group 4

1. According to Carson, what is erotic about reading or writing? What does the imagination
have to do with it?
2. In what ways does the lover desire to control time? How do the acts of reading and writing
make this (or an approximation of it) possible?
3. Explain Lysias’ allegedly subversive theory of Eros. What does he argue about “the
invariably transient nature of erotic desire” (p. 167), and the relationship of desire to time?
How does he aim to “sidestep” the dilemma of Eros?

Group 5

1. In what ways is Midas illustrative of the “bad lover” decried by both Socrates and Lysias?
How does the “Midas touch” essentially destroy the object of desire? Describe, in turn, the
nobler approach of the cicadas to the problem of the painful transition between “then” and
“now.”
2. What is worrisome to Plato about the acts of reading and writing? What does he believe
about the process of reaching for true knowledge, and how is this knowledge achieved? You
may look to Carson’s description of the gardens of Adonis as a central metaphor.
3. Why does Sokrates deny that control of Eros is ever possible, or even desirable, to human
beings? Discuss this in light of his critique of the “stinginess” of Lysias’ nonlover.

Group 6

1. How is Eros characterized in conventional early Greek thought “as devastating takeover of
the self and a generally negative experience” (p. 201)? How does Sokrates proceed to
vindicate the mania caused by Erotic desire?
2. What is gained in our (re)imagining of desire as having wings—of Eros as Pteros? What,
according to Sokrates, is lost (considering, for instance, the way the word “Pteros” disrupts
established standards of poetic meter)? How is this indicative of the way desire deforms and
distorts human life?
3. Discuss the act of “reaching” as illustrative both of eros and of the movement of
imagination: how does Carson conflate the ability to desire with the capacity to imagine? In
light of this, what exactly are the likes of Sokrates and Sappho said to be in love with?