Eros, the Bittersweet

Aidos ('shamefastness') is a sort of voltage of decorum discharged between two people approaching one another for the crisis of human contact, an instinctive and mutual sensitivity to the boundary between them. It is the shame suitably felt by a suppliant at the hearth, a guest before his host, youth making way for old age, as well as a shared shyness that radiates between lover and beloved. The proverbial residence of aidos upon sensitive eyelids is a way of saying that aidos exploits the power of the glance by withholding it, and also that one must watch one's feet to avoid the misstep called hybris. In erotic contexts aidos can demarcate like a third presence, as in a fragment of Sappho that records the overture of a man to a woman:

I want to say something to you, but aidos prevents me.

The static electricity of erotic "shame" is a very discreet way of marking that two are not one.


~ Anne Carson