“Every water has its own rules and offering”: An Amphibious Interpretation of Anne Carson’s Blue-Green Short Story “1 = 1”
First published in The New Yorker magazine in January 2016, Anne Carson’s “1 = 1” addresses profound questions about what it means to swim in a large waterbody as a human and a non-human, terrestrial animal. The short story features water as a material foundation, as a mythology, and as a trope for...
Guardat en:
| Publicat a: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/jsse, |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
| Publicat: |
Journal of the Short Story in English
2025
|
| Accés en línia: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumari: | First published in The New Yorker magazine in January 2016, Anne Carson’s “1 = 1” addresses profound questions about what it means to swim in a large waterbody as a human and a non-human, terrestrial animal. The short story features water as a material foundation, as a mythology, and as a trope for the central female character’s struggle to connect with her environment. Water is also conducive of the character’s lament for the loss of refugees’ lives on the Mediterranean Sea, and for her ekphrastic role as a commentator on visual representations of ecological and geopolitical developments. To gauge the blue poetics of Carson’s short story, this article proposes that swimming in the big lake allows the central character to reconnect with the waterbody and by extension with her trans-corporeality, which in turn affects her ekphrastic commentary. In five fluid moves from one eco-ekphrasis to another—the fictional map in John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” two photographs of refugees, and two chalk drawings on a residential sidewalk in daylight and in darkness—the short story invites readers to reflect on the pitfalls of anthropocentrism and to treasure the interdependence of terrestrial and aquatic life. |
|---|