o sappho

not one girl I think

who looks on the light of the sun

will ever

have wisdom

like this (#56)

Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me --

sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in (#130)

stand to face me beloved

& open out the grace of your eyes (#138)

their heart grew cold

they let their wings down (#42)

spangled is

the earth with her crowns (#168C)

All of the poem-fragments beneath the pictures come from Anne Carson's translations of Sappho's poetry, from a book called 'If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho'.

(All the pictures I took in the river valley about two weeks ago)

Last week I heard a talk on Sappho's poetry by a professor from History and Classics at my University. I learned a number of interesting things, including that:

-- Sappho may or may not have been a real person who actually existed; the unreality of other Greek poets, like Homer, is suggested because many of these poets composed at a time when the language was transitioning from an oral language to a more widely written one. Thus, the epic poetry of Homer was likely created by multiple composers, whether at a specific time or over successive generations. Sappho might have been a style, too, of lyric poetry that originated in the oral tradition that became mediated through writing.

-- However, we do seem to know a bit about her purported birthplace, & her supposed family. She (with her fancy headdress) appears on a lot of coins from Lesbos. The invention of playing the lyre with a pick is also attributed to her.

-- If she did exist, she did not die jumping off a cliff, inspired by her unrequited love for a man called Phaon. This scenario apparently appears in plays all the time, even centuries after her time... but in comedies, though, not tragedies. Sappho in love with a man was quite the preposterous scenario, yes. (Unfortunately, this story often gets reproduced by silly people with a heteronormative agenda).

-- New fragments of many Greek lyric poets are constantly being discovered. Apparently poems often show up on mummy-wrappings from Egypt. I guess it was like reusing scraps of newsprint...

-- As much as I like the idea of her poems being a heteroglossia, a collection of many voices singing at different times, I also like the idea that she was real, that she wandered the mountainsides picking sweet clover & plucking her lyre & expressing all this desire.