Sappho Flashcards

Aphrodite, goddess of the embroidered throne

Kletic hymn, monodic, prayer structure (invocation, hypomnesia, entreaty)

“goddess of the embroidered throne,/ Daughter of Zeus, weaver of wiles,/ Queen” - invocation

“Do not overpower my heart with anguish, with affliction”

“Yoking your chariot:/ Swift, beautiful sparrows”

“my despairing heart”

“Who, Sappho, is hurting you now?”

“If she does not love you now,/ she will love you soon/ even if she does not want to”

“Release me from this great distress”

“Be my ally.”

Come to me, leave Crete behind!

kletic hymn, ‘locus amoenus’ (trope of classical poetry, pleasant place)

“Come to this holy temple”

“charming grove/ Of apple trees”

“altars/ Smoking with insence.”

“the cold water sings/ Through the branches of the apple trees”

“shadows of roses”

sleep flows down/ From the trembling leaves”

“Flourishes with/ The flowers of Spring/ And the breezes blow gently”

“Cyrpian Aphrodite!/ Come and pour, gracefully/ Into these golden wine cups/ Nectar mixed with our festivities.”

SCHOLARSHIP: “a portrait in which the goddess’ best-known attributes and parts are rendered as a landscape” - Anne Burnett

Cypris

Invective poem (aggressive)

“Cypris, may she find you to be/ The most bitter.”

“may Doricha not boast,/ Anymore,/ About the second time,/ He returned to his/ Long-lost love.”

Sappho mocks her brother Charaxus, who engages in relations with an Egyptian prostitute twice.

The most beautiful sight in the whole world

Homeric inspiration - repurposing the male sphere to convey her love for another woman - radical, subverts Homer’s ideas of war

Priamel - runs through a set of alternatives that act as foil to true subject of poem

“according to some,/ A group of cavalry,/ Others say infantry,/ And still others a fleet of ships.”

“I think it is the one you love.”

“Helen, the most beautiful woman on earth,/ Abandoned her husband,/ The most excellent of all men,/ And sailed to Troy!

Without a thought for her daughter,/ Or her dear parents,/ [….] led her astray".”

“Now I am thinking about Anactoria”

“I would rather see her lovely walk,/ And her gleaming face,/ Thank look at all the chariots of the Lydians/ And the foot soldiers with their weapons!”

Paratactic composition

SCHOLARSHIP: “[Loeb 16 demonstrates] the circular Sapphic law to which beauty demands love, and love, in turn, creates the beautiful.” - Anne Burnett

“an instant in which women become more than the object of a man’s desire…” - Page DuBois

“I am fascinated by the way she takes on Homer, and subverts him” - Charlotte Higgins

Come, Queen Hera

kletic hymn, has some features of a propempticon (bon voyage poem)

“Let your charming form appear. Come beside me!”

“The sons of Atreus, those famous kings,/ Also prayed to you.”

“could not complete their journey/ Until they had called on you, Hera”

“Come then goddess/ And help me as you helped in the past.”

I call upon you, Abanthis

“Take up your lyre and sing of Gongyla/ While desire again circles you, my darling.”

“her dress aroused you”

“For the holy queen, Cyprian Aphrodite,/ Once found fault with the way/ I prayed.”

SCHOLARSHIP: “one of the first instances of the ‘active female gaze’” - Jane Snyder

May the maidens sing

Epithalamium (song/poem celebrating marriage), maidens sing outside newly married couple’s bedroom

“May the maidens sing All night long”

“May they sing of your delights And of your bride, adorned with violets”

“So that we can stay awake With the clear-voiced nightingale”

He is as blessed as the gods

Written in Aeolic dialect, monody, physical symptoms of desire

“He seems to me equal to a god That man who sits facing you”

“your sweet voice… your charming laughter, Which for me, honestly strikes terror into the heart in my breast”

“When I see you, Even for a moment, I can no longer speak”

“My tongue breaks”

“A delicate fire runs beneath my skin”

“I see nothing with my eyes but There is a buzzing in my ears”

“sweat pours over me And a tremor Seizes me all over”

“And I am greener Than grass” (illness not jealousy)

“And I think that I am On the point of death”

Around the beautiful moon

very poetic and lyrical - familiar trope, epithalamium

“Around the beautiful moon,/ the stars hide away their/ gleaming brilliance,/ whenever the moonlight/ shines over the land”

Embroidered sandals

“Embroidered sandals covered her feet,/ Beautiful Lydian workmanship”

Love shook my soul

Natural imagery, love as powerful, violent, chaotic - contrasts usual floral descriptions of nature

“Love shook my soul,/ Like a wind buffeting oak trees/ On a mountain”

You came, just what I was looking for

“You came, just what I was looking for,/ You soothed my soul which was/ Burning with desire.”

I used to love you, Atthis

“But that was a long time ago!”

“I thought you were like/ A clumsy little girl.”

A handsome man is only good to look at

Gnomic poem, man is subject (unusual), good conduct through love

“A handsome man is only good to look at,/ A good man will become handsome.”

When you die

“And no one will ever remember you/ And no one will long for you,/ Afterwards.”

“Because you have no share/ Of the roses from the Pierian muses”

“You will wander/ Among the dim shades.”

Put garlands around your lovely hair, O Dika!

“Bind the stems of anise with your soft hands”

“The blessed Graces favour/ The beautifully floral/ Over the ungarlanded.”

Honestly, I want to die

“Weeping, she was leaving me”

“Go, farewell, and remember me/ For you know that we both looked after you.”

“I want to remind you [….] That we had good times.”

“Remember all the wreaths/ You placed around your head,/ Violets, roses, crocuses”

“You anointed yourself/ As if you were a queen”

“And on a soft bed [….]/ You satisfied your desire […./ And there was no [….]/ Or sacred space [….]/ From which we stayed away./ No grove [….] no dance.”

SCHOLARSHIP: “Erotic emotion and experience are expressed in stylised and ritualised ways.” - Aaron Poochigian

Positive love, but negative/ painful when it is over

Gongyla

“‘Lord,’ I said,/ ‘I take no pleasure from living!/ A certain longing to die grips me,/ I long to see the banks of Acheron/ Dewy and covered with lotus.”

Often she turned her thoughts here

“She honoured you as if you were a goddess”

“she stands out among Lydian women! Like the rosy-fingered moon/ Among all the stars after sunset!”

“The light spreads over the salty sea/ And the flowery fields!”

“beautiful dew” ; “roses and/ The tender chervil/ And the flowering melilot/ Bloom.”

“the longing consumes her flighty soul!”

My mother said

Sappho as authority in fashion, Sappho as teacher

“In her day, it was all the rage for/ A woman to tie up her hair with a purple headband”

“if her hair was/ More yellow than a flaming torch,/ Then she should wear garlands/ Of flowers in bloom”

Sweet mother!

“I cannot weave my web,/ I am smitten by a boy/ Because of slender Aphrodite”

Love as overwhelming, can’t do anything, even the most virtuous, when you’re in love

Hesperus!

“Bring back everything which/ The shining Dawn scattered!”

“You bring back/ The child, to its mother!”

Just like the sweet apple

“reddening at the highest height”

“missed by the apple pickers -/ No, they did not completely miss you!/ They just couldn’t reach.”

Just like the hyacinth

“Just like the hyacinth on a mountain,/ Trodden by the feet of shepherds,/ And on the ground, a purple flower [….]”

The doorkeeper

Humorous, innuendo, hyperbole, choral - performed at weddings

“size twenty-seven feet”

“His sandals are made from five hides,/ Ten shoemakers toiled over them.”

Raise the roof

Choral celebration for weddings

“Lift it higher, carpenters,/ Hymenaeus!”

“The bridegroom is coming,/ Like Ares,/ Bigger by far than the biggest man.” - innuendo, hyperbole

Lucky bridegroom

Marriage for love - uncommon

“your marriage/ Has worked out well for you, Just as you had dreamed that it would”

“You have the girl of your dreams”

“Honey-sweet, love is poured/ Over your beautiful face”

“Aphrodite has honoured you/ Above all others.”

Virginity

can be interpreted as humorous but also has a sad feeling to it

“Virginity, virginity, where have you gone?”

“You left me behind/ I will come to you no more,/ No more will I come.”

If you care about me

“If you care about me,/ Find the bed of a younger woman.”

“For I never want to be the older one/ In a relationship”

Love which loosens the limbs

Physical symptoms of love/ desire

“Love which loosens the limbs/ Once again shakes me!”

“Bitter-sweet, invincible creature that he is.”

I have a beautiful daughter

“I have a beautiful daughter,/ Who resembles the sight of golden flowers/ And I lover her more than all of Lydia”

I want to say something

“But a sense of shame holds me back.”

“If you had a desire to say/ Something noble or beautiful,/ And your tongue was not about to/ Spit out some hurtful remark,/ Then a look of shame/ Would not be in your eyes/ And you would have spoken/ Properly.”

Neither the honey

“Neither the honey/ Nor the bee/ Is for me.”

SCHOLARSHIP: “The rejection of the honey and the bees is a renunciation of all things aphrodisiac” - Carson

dichotomy - love is both sweet and painful, Sappho doesn’t want either

In the Greek, entirely alliterative - like a tongue twister

Wealth without virtue

“Wealth without virtue can be a harmful neighbour/ A blend of the two, however, is the height of happiness.”

Educational poem, discusses virtue

Now, for my companions

Dedicated to students/ fellow poets?

“Now for my companions,/ I will sing these songs beautifully”

SCHOLARSHIP: “the symposium was a crucial place for quite semi -public training of the next generation of your own sex.” - Edith Hall - argued that this was sung at female symposiums

Gone are the moon and the Pleiades

“And, in the middle of the night,/ Time passes/ And I sleep alone”

“Sapphos main themes are love, desire, longing, loss.” - Peggy Reynolds

Schoenbaechler on Marriage - "For Sappho, being a girl gives a marriage a different perspective"

Stahle - "Sappho does not picture love relations as dominance...desire is mutual"

“Private and specific become universal and generic” - Poochigian

“Sappho represents access to a woman's voice.’”- Ellen Greene

“Throughout most of the greek and roman world, there was less tolerance for same sex relations between women” - Philip Freeman