Autobiography Of Red

Carson translates sixteen sections of Stesichoros's fragments from “Geryoneis” to construct a basic narrative of Geryon's life. Geryon is a red monster with wings who lives with his parents on an island. Geryon's mother sees his "reversible destiny" (10), as mothers can, and tells him he doesn't have to "make up your mind right away" (10). In Heaven, the god Zeus and the goddess Athena look down "through the floor of the glass-bottomed boat" (11) of Heaven and single out Geryon. That weekend, Geryon goes out and parties with a centaur, drinking wine from "a cup made out of a skull" (11). Later, Geryon's mother sends him off to school, neatening "his little red wings" (12) and pushing him "in through the door" (12). Geryon asks his dog whether there are "many little boys who think they are a Monster" (12). The dog doesn't answer and instead runs beneath Geryon as he flies above the shore, like a "freed shadow" (13). When Herakles arrives, he kills the dog with his club, and kills Geryon with an arrow. Carson's translation ends with a summary of the "total things known about Geryon" (14): he loves lightning, he lives on an island, his mother is a river nymph, his father is "a god cutting tool" (14), he's said to have six hands and feet, and Herakles killed him and his dog for "his strange red cattle" (14). 

Carson presents three accounts of the rumor of Stesichoros' blindness following his alleged slander of Helen of Troy. According to the Suda, a 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean by Suidas, the entry for "palinodia"(15) cites Stesichoros as its originator. A palinode is an ode in which the speaker of a poem retracts something they expressed in an earlier poem. After "writing abuse of Helen" (15) and being stricken blind, Stesichoros writes an encomium, or poem that expresses praise, for Helen called "The Palinode" (15).

In his own encomium to Helen, the ancient Greek rhetorician Isokrates claims that Helen "made an object lesson" (15) of Stesichoros when she first took away then restored his sight. Finally, in Plato's Phaedrus, Stesichoros is offered as an example of a writer who understood the "ancient tactic of purgation for criminals" (16). Rather than standing "bewildered" (16) after being blinded, Stesichoros "recognized the cause" (16) and composed his palinode to Helen as apology.

The three lines of the fragment repudiate Stesichoros's earlier poem, this time stating that this is "not the true story" (17), and Helen never "went on the benched ships" (17) nor "came to the towers of Troy" (17).

Carson constructs this section as a series of conditional statements, beginning with 'if,' and trying to answer the question of whether "Stesichoros was a blind man or he was not" (18). Carson wonders if Helen's "reason" (19) for blinding Stesichoros came from "a strong remark about Helen's sexual misconduct" (19), or not. Carson imagines finding a penny and calling up Helen of Troy, and Stesichoros gets on the line, and he will either confirm "the truth about her whoring or he will admit he is a liar" (20). The section ends without a conclusion as to whether Stesichoros was blind or not.