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Chapter 47
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Autobiography of Red, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Creativity
Communication and Mystery
Time
Self and World
Summary
Analysis
This chapter relays an interview with Stesichoros. The interviewer asks Stesichoros about the “concealment drama” at play in his work, which explores how people respond to the knowledge that critical knowledge is withheld from them. The interview describes this as an “aesthetic of blindness.” Stesichoros responds by discussing blindness but explains that to do so, he must start with what he saw, beginning in 1907. He describes paintings that covered the walls from floor to ceiling, explaining, “I saw what I saw,” followed by a series of nonsensical, circuitous assertions about seeing.
The identity of Stesichoros’s interviewer is not made clear, but one might interpret them as a stand-in for Carson herself. The interviewer poses questions that are intentionally vague and opaque. In fact, they are even topically about “concealment” and opacity: “aesthetic of blindness” and “concealment drama” are about withholding—the absence of truth or certainty. Stesichoros responds with equally opaque answers. This demonstrates (comically) the novel’s concluding idea, which is that self-affirmation, knowledge, and truth are arrived at by seeing oneself and the world through other people’s eyes. Stesichoros can only offer the interviewer as revealing an answer as the question the interviewer asked him. The interviewer doesn’t get insightful answers from Stesichoros because their questions were vague in the first place.
Themes
Stesichoros claims that he used to be responsible for the world’s seeing; if he blinked, therefore, the world would go blind. Because of this, he didn’t blink from 1907 until the start of the war. Stesichoros suddenly demands that they change the subject. The interviewer suggests talking about description. Stesichoros replies that “the difference between a volcano and a guinea pig is not a description.” Next, the interviewer tries to discuss Geryon, the hero of Stesichoros’s poem. Stesichoros states that Geryon is red and suggests “a link between geology and character” but can’t begin to know what that link is. When the interviewer suggests they talk about Helen, Stesichoros claims that “there is no Helen.” The interview says their time is up. Stesichoros thanks him for not mentioning “the little red dog.” The interviewer promises to do so next time. “That’s three,” replies Stesichoros.
The point of this hypothetical interview is to answer the question Carson posed in the beginning of the novel: what difference did Stesichoros make? The interviewer seems to be trying to guide Stesichoros to admit that his blindness has made the difference, has affected his compositional techniques in some formal way. Yet while Stesichoros claims to talk about seeing, all his answers involve unseeing or blindness. His refusal to answer any questions reflects the idea that language is a tool people use to create meaning and make sense of the world—without clear, descriptive language, things seem nonsensical and random. This passage also reaffirms the fact that no one can ever fully access or understand another person’s inner thoughts and experiences.
Themes
