Completely Subjective: Anne Carson’s “A Fragment of Ibykos Translated Six Ways” 

by Paige Dewbrey

“…this is the magic of fragments—the way that poem breaks off leads into a thought that can’t ever be apprehended. There is the space where a thought would be, but which you can’t get hold of. I love that space. It’s the reason I like to deal with fragments. Because no matter what the thought would be if it were fully worked out, it wouldn’t be as good as the suggestion of a thought that the space gives you.” Anne Carson, The Art of Poetry No. 88, The Paris Review

I have long been a linguist with an unfocused ambition. Guided by fickle whims, I have danced among a cacophony of dissonant tongues. I have longed to be a translator—regardless of my lack of proficiency in any one particular language. 

Spanish, foisted upon me by elementary school language requirements, surrendered first, its rolled Rs a guttural rebellion against my clumsy tongue. French, with its languorous vowels and nasal tone, soon followed suit, deposed by the austere pronouncements of its predecessor, Latin. My learning of Latin in high school was punctuated by fervent episodes of self-education in Yiddish, Italian, Russian, Polish, and French (reunited once again), a revolving door of aspirations tumbling over themselves. Sometimes, I venture into, or stumble upon, phrases in Mandarin or Cantonese or Korean. At my greatest points of delusion, I will hold niche fantasies of learning Aramaic or Classical Irish, Judeo-Spanish or Judeo-Italian (recognition dawns quickly: these fleeting desires are a chimera, for no real ambition or tangible pursuit is backing them). In the sun-streaked aisles of the library, beneath the hum of fluorescent tubes, language danced around me like fireflies in a twilight meadow. As a child, I sifted through the “non-English” enclave of the library, reading what I could not read. I would make up the stories that would accompany the words I saw—words that were more so perceived as drawings, as hieroglyphs. I would fill in the gaps with my own expression. I suppose I now have an “affinity” for the English language, but as a child, my allegiance lay with symbols and illustrations—interpretation in its most primitive state. Today, my own bookshelves are partially populated with texts—French poetry, classic Yiddish literature, art catalogs plastered with Cyrillic scripts—that elude complete comprehension. These were, and are, my fragments, my mosaics of meaning gleaned from the margins of comprehension. No Rosetta Stone would decode their secrets, no grand unveiling to illuminate the shadows. Within their incompleteness, a curious alchemy took place. The gaps, the absences, became portrayals to an imagined landscape: impressionistic, but vibrant and alive with possibility. And yet the supposed “true” meaning of these texts is reduced to shards. 

Anne Carson, author of “A Fragment of Ibykos Translated Six Ways,” has long reckoned with fragmentary texts; she partially owes a portion of her acclaim to her translations of Sappho’s fragments in her 2002 text If Not, Winter. Carson is aware that translation is not an infallible, definite art, for there is always a degree of interpretation. Carson is, one way or another, filling the lacunae of these fragments with a part of herself, whether in a more “strict” translation like If Not, Winter or more “loose” interpretations as in “A Fragment of Ibykos”, and she admits it to be so: this is “the magic of fragments” she speaks of. 

​​In pursuit of understanding the fragmented, Anne Carson, in her poem “A Fragment of Ibykos Translated Six Ways,” embarks upon a voyage through linguistic disarray of obscured verses authored by Ibykos, an Ancient Greek lyrical poet. Like me, Carson saw no loss in the incompleteness, but liberation. She refrains from the pursuit of reconstructing or envisaging the completeness of a text; instead, she indulges in the fractured, the incomplete. Her translations eschew strict fidelity to the original poem; instead, they take bits and pieces of language from other sources—ranging from Bertolt Brecht’s FBI file, signage from the London Underground, the owner’s manual of a new microwave, and so on—to form six distinct “translations” of the fragment 286 of Ibykos. Despite the immediate difference in the minutia of the language, each translation resonates with its own discordant yet familiar rhythm, ultimately serving as both a creative interpretation as well as a translation. They do not seek to resurrect the lost original, but to breathe new life into its ghost. They are fragments, not as rubble, but as stepping stones across the void.

It is within the ruptures of a fragment, where a poem breaks off, or a thought remains suspended, that expression can emerge. Carson fills in these “gaps” by transforming the original poem into something newborn, constructing meaning from disparate texts: different sources, disparate ideas, and dissonant languages converging to become anew. And I, the child who once filled the silences of foreign tongues with her own imaginings, saw myself reflected in this dance of interpretation. Comprehension, then understanding, serves not as a passive possession, but an active co-creation, a collusion between the text and its reader. The “magic” lies not in the final flourish of clarity, but in the slow burn of unraveling, the thrill of each thread pulled taut, revealing glimpses of a world unseen. Like Carson, I no longer chase the mirage of complete comprehension, of infallible translation. I learned to find solace in the lacunae between understood language, in the replete silences where meaning tiptoes on the edge of articulation. For within those silences, a multiplicity of possibilities unfurled, unconstrained by the shackles of literal understanding. 

Perhaps, then, the essence of language lies not in the perfect articulation of thought but in the invitation to participate in its creation. In the gaps, the stumbles, the unfinished sentences, the fissures of the known, we are granted agency. 

In Carson’s world, fragments are not limitations but gateways to the infinite. They offer a glimpse into the unbounded realm of potential meanings, inviting us to partake in the act of creation by filling the voids with our interpretations and emotions, even the language of another text. The absence becomes an integral part of the narrative, shaping the poetry of what remains unsaid, and how one can choose to fill that space (or not).