Stung With Love Read online

  In the 1870s excavation at the oasis of Fayum in the Nile valley uncovered a number of eighth-century-CE manuscripts, and several fragments of Sappho were among them. Subsequent excavations among the nearby refuse heaps of Oxyrhynchus (a Greco-Egyptian provincial capital) turned up a vast quantity of papyrus fragments ranging in date from the first to the tenth centuries CE. Much of this had served as cartonnage which filled the empty space in coffins or had been wadded up to stuff the insides of mummies. One fragment of Sappho, in fact, was recovered from a mummified crocodile.

  Even with the Oxyrhynchus fragments, we had until recently only one complete poem, ‘Subtly bedizened Aphrodite’, cited in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ On Style. In 2004, however, scholars at the University of Cologne determined that a previously unascribed papyrus contained portions of three of Sappho’s poems. One of these provided the missing half of a fragment that had been published in 1922, and the Greek text of a new, nearly complete poem was presented to the world by Martin West, along with a brief introduction and an English translation, in The Times Literary Supplement (no. 5334, 24 June 2005, p. 8). I am optimistic that future papyrus finds and advances in laser-scanning technology will recover even more of the thousands of lines of Sappho that have, perhaps for millennia, been unknown to the world.

  In addition to these two poems, I have translated those fragments or parts of fragments that are best able to stand on their own in English. Containing 78 of the roughly 230 fragments, this edition omits most of those that consist only of a word or phrase and all of those that are so tattered as to be indecipherable. I relied almost entirely on the text of Eva-Maria Voigt1 and note those few instances in which I preferred the text of Lobel–Page2 in the Index of First Lines. For ‘Girls, chase the violet-bosomed Muses’ bright’ I have used West’s Greek text. Translations from Classical authors other than Sappho are also my own. Punctuation and capitalization are editorial, and ellipses are used to indicate a lacuna in the source-text. I confess that, though Sappho’s remains are usually fragments that are themselves fragmentary, I have done my best to create a sense of completeness and, on occasion, translated supplements proposed by scholars.

  In preparation for this project I surveyed dozens of English translations and was disappointed to discover that contemporary editions neglected the formal elements of Sappho’s poems and focused almost exclusively on their content. Since form and content are inseparable, the translator must find not only appropriate words for the original words but an appropriate form for the original form. Sappho did not compose free verse, and free-verse translations, however faithful they may be to her words, betray her poems by their very nature. Translations into the original metres are always interesting but are flawed in their methodology: the Sapphic stanza, for example, belongs to a quantitative (or length-based) metrical system and is not accurately represented by the same metrical scheme in our English qualitative (or stressed-based) system. Furthermore, the Aeolic Greeks grew up hearing the Sapphic stanza and similar rhythms and had associations with them, but, for English speakers, they do not have the same resonance. One wants to translate into a form which helps the reader feel the meaning of a poem. As Sapphic stanzas are still a novelty in English poetry, they would not be helpful to most readers. Since all of Sappho’s poems are song-lyrics, I opted to translate them as English lyric poems. Rhyme, an important part of this tradition, is useful in translating Sappho for two reasons: (1) it is one of the ways English writers indicate that something is song-like; and (2) individual lines within Sappho’s poems had emphatic endings, usually two long syllables, and rhyme preserves the integrity of the line within the stanza in much the same way.

  I wanted my translations to be real poems in their own right which, when read aloud, would replicate the aural pleasure of their originals. Scholars have argued that Sappho’s language is a form of enchantment, and I have tried to weave a similar rich and bewitching texture of sound. To preserve the effect of the Sapphic stanza I have most often used three lines of iambic tetrameter followed by a dimetre. For the Homericizing fragments I have employed the heroic couplet which Dryden’s and Pope’s translations of Classical epic recommended to me. For the brief fragments I chose metres and rhyme schemes which would set a proper tone and give due weight to every precious word. Departing from the numerical order of the scholarly editions, I have gathered the poems and fragments under general headings by subject and/or type. This arrangement facilitates comparison and, I feel, results in a richer reading experience. Out of a desire to prevent notes from cluttering the translations or gathering in a heap at the back of the book, I decided to present essential information in commentaries facing each poem, fragment or group of fragments.

  Sappho continues to amaze readers because she retained the intensity of passion which we associate with the young even into old age. She never grew out of desire, and we can greatly admire her ardour.

  NOTES

  1. Eva-Maria Voigt (ed.), Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta (1971).

  2. Edgar Lobel and Denys Page (eds.), Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (1955).

  Poems and Fragments

  GODDESSES

  This fragment survives on a potsherd (a fragment of broken pottery) inscribed by an unknown hand in the second century BCE. Our text begins with what was probably the second stanza of the original, and Aphrodite, in accordance with convention, would have been invoked in the first. The worshipper, who is not named, calls for divine aid in eucharistic terms. Though ostensibly a kletic hymn (or hymn to summon a deity: see Introduction, p. xxvi), the poem uses colloquial rather than formal language.

  Whereas other kletic hymns summon the deity from habitual haunts, this portion of the poem creates the place that will receive its heavenly visitor. The lush, vivid description of the sanctuary has provoked various interpretations: some scholars argue that Sappho describes a real shrine in a precise cultic environment; others, that the sacred precinct is a metaphor for women’s sexuality. The landscape is distinctly Aphrodisiac: Burnett calls the fragment a ‘portrait in which the goddess’s best-known attributes and parts are rendered as bits of landscape… Gardens, apples, perfumes, roses, field-flowers and horses all serve to remind Aphrodite of herself, as she is worshipped in her various cults’ (1983, p. 263).

  The apple orchards are charien (‘charming’) – a word most often used of personal charm. Apples, the most important fruit in Sappho, symbolize virginity in other songs. She gives us the earliest appearance of libanōtos (‘frankincense’) in Greek literature. The thick roses, which belong to the spring, and the apples, which belong to the autumn, suggest the perennial growing season of the Golden Age. In addition, the floral imagery evokes the blossoming fields where, at least in literature, erotic encounters often take place. Here substance shades into insubstantiality: the roses turn to shadows and the leaves ‘drip slumber’. All of the landscape elements induce not just normal sleep but kōma, a special sleep brought on by supernatural means.

  In the final stanza Aphrodite pours out nectar or wine mixed with nectar for the celebrants – a liquid representing the divine presence among them. This mixture, like Aphrodite’s arrival, integrates the mortal and immortal.

  Leave Crete and sweep to this blest temple

  Where apple-orchard’s elegance

  Is yours, and smouldering altars, ample

  Frankincense.

  Here under boughs a bracing spring

  Percolates, roses without number

  Umber the earth and, rustling,

  The leaves drip slumber.

  Here budding flowers possess a sunny

  Pasture where steeds could graze their fill,

  And the breeze feels as gentle as honey…

  Kypris, here in the present blend

  Your nectar with pure festal glee.

  Fill gilded bowls and pass them round

  Lavishly.

  In these fragments Aphrodite Pandemos (‘of all the people’) influences, for better or worse, the daily li
ves of individuals. ‘Sweet mother, I can’t take shuttle in hand’ is a song based on popular tradition, a refined version of a work-song such as girls sang over the loom while weaving. The shuttle is a tool used for plying the horizontal weft threads through the vertical warp threads on a loom. Throughout Greek and Roman literature weaving is the activity of a female head-of-household in an ideal home. Helen of Troy weaves in an attempt to legitimize her adulterous affair with Paris (Iliad 3.125–9). Penelope weaves a death shroud for her father-in-law Laertes both as a delaying tactic and as confirmation of her loyalty to her husband Odysseus (Odyssey 2.96–102). When the goddess Kalypso tries to replicate a ‘mortal’ domestic home life for Odysseus, she also weaves (Odyssey 5.61–2).

  The tone rapidly fluctuates between torment and tenderness, and a mere four lines convey the girl’s coming of age: the mother and loom on one side, the boy and Aphrodite on the other are playing tug of war, and the girl is torn between them. There are two possible futures for the girl who speaks these lines: she may go on to marry and become a female head-of-household like her mother (and keep on weaving), or, under the influence of Aphrodite, she may give in to her sexual attraction to the boy and be ruined like the flower in ‘A hillside hyacinth shepherds treaded flat’. Desire here is simultaneously violent and tender, and we find a similar bitter-sweetness in ‘That impossible predator’.

  Though ‘luck-bringing’ Hermes is the deity associated with success in games of chance, Sappho invokes Aphrodite in ‘Since I have cast my lot, please, golden-crowned’, thereby suggesting that matters of the heart are comparable to gambling. Aphrodite Kypria (of Cyprus) also wears a golden crown in the fifth and sixth Homeric Hymns, and we are told there that she ‘rules over the walled cities of all sea-surrounded Cyprus’ (6.2).

  Sweet mother, I can’t take shuttle in hand.

  There is a boy, and lust

  Has crushed my spirit – just

  As gentle Aphrodite planned.

  Since I have cast my lot, please, golden-crowned

  Aphrodite, let me win this round!

  This song breaks down into the tripartite structure of a kletic hymn (see Introduction, p. xxvi). Whereas the singer conventionally commemorates a mythic event, Sappho here cites one of a series of past personal visits from Aphrodite.

  In the opening stanza Sappho addresses the goddess and asks for relief in formulaic terms. Aphrodite flies down from Olympus in a chariot drawn by sparrows, which were associated with lasciviousness and fecundity, and their flesh and eggs eaten as aphrodisiacs. Though there are several references to sparrows as a means of conveyance in subsequent Greek literature, swans become the traditional yoke animals of Aphrodite (Venus) in the Roman poets.

  The formal tone then gives way to the familiar. Aphrodite’s smile is particularly striking. Homer characterizes Aphrodite with the epithet philommeidēs (smile-loving), a softened form of the title philommedēs (genital-loving). The focus on her smile here may also be meant to evoke the ‘Archaic Smile’ found on statuary during the Archaic period. In Greek literature gods not infrequently interact with their favourite mortals but Aphrodite exhibits an exceptional familiarity with Sappho – the closest parallel is Athena’s banter with Odysseus in Odyssey 13.

  Most scholars assume that Aphrodite promises to compel the girl to reciprocate Sappho’s ardour. Anne Carson points out that Aphrodite says only that the girl will ‘pursue, give gifts and love’ – Sappho is not specified as the object. Aphrodite may promise only that ‘in the course of time the beloved will naturally and inevitably become a lover, and will almost inevitably suffer rejection at least once’ (‘The Justice of Aphrodite in Sappho Fr. 1’, in Greene 1996, pp. 227–8.)

  In the final stanza Sappho rounds out her allusions to Homeric epic by asking Aphrodite to be her summachos (‘ally in battle’). She thus substitutes her trials in love for those of a hero in battle and elevates matters of the heart to the same level as war.

  Subtly bedizened Aphrodite,

  Deathless daughter of Zeus, Wile-weaver,

  I beg you, Empress, do not smite me

  With anguish and fever

  But come as often, on request,

  (Hearing me, heeding from afar,)

  You left your father’s gleaming feast,

  Yoked team to car,

  And came. Fair sparrows in compact

  Flurries of winged rapidity

  Cleft sky and over a gloomy tract

  Brought you to me –

  And there they were, and you, sublime

  And smiling with immortal mirth,

  Asked what was wrong? why I, this time,

  Called you to earth?

  What was my mad heart dreaming of? –

  ‘Who, Sappho, at a word, must grow

  Again receptive to your love?

  Who wronged you so?

  ‘She who shuns love soon will pursue it,

  She who scorns gifts will send them still:

  That girl will learn love, though she do it

  Against her will.’

  Come to me now. Drive off this brutal

  Distress. Accomplish what my pride

  Demands. Come, please, and in this battle

  Stand at my side.

  The story of Aphrodite’s love for the doomed Adonis is another example of Sappho’s interest in myths which involve erotic female empowerment; others include Dawn and Tithonous, and Artemis’ request for eternal virginity. In his cult, Adonis is an annually renewed, ever-youthful vegetation god, a life–death–rebirth deity whose transformations are tied to the calendar. We hear of two fathers for him, both of whom are eponyms which suggest possible places of origin: Hesiod names Phoenix (for Phoenicia) and Classical sources name Kyprus (for Cyprus). Walter Burkert questions whether Adonis had not from the very beginning come to Greece from the East with Aphrodite (Greek Religion (1985), p. 177). Though this fragment is our earliest evidence for the Adonis cult, annual ritual lamentation for his death and burial in a lettuce bed (which we find in other brief fragments of Sappho) accord well with accounts in subsequent sources. We are told that at the Athenian Adonia women gathered on rooftops and engaged in loud obscenity (Aristophanes, Lysistrata 387–96), and celebrants prepared gardens of fennel and lettuce (regarded as an anaphrodisiac). These plants spring up and wither quickly, and the women may have been lamenting impotence as well as the untimely death of the vegetation god. Beating one’s breast and rending one’s garments were part of ritual lamentation, itself a part of funerary rites in general. Mourners would also cut their hair short and lacerate their cheeks. The ritual context here suggests that the Sapphic community, at least on occasion, served a religious function.

  ‘A full moon shone’ was probably the beginning of a poem that described nocturnal worship. One would love to know which deity the devotees are worshipping: the lunar goddesses Artemis and Hecate? Aphrodite? Lunar imagery is prominent in a number of other songs (see, e.g., ‘Moon and the Pleiades go down’ and ‘Star clusters near the fair moon dim’).

  ‘Kytherea, precious

  Adonis is nearly dead.

  How should we proceed?’

  ‘Come, girls, beat your fists

  Down upon your breasts

  And shred your dresses.’

  A full moon shone,

  And around the shrine

  Stood devotees

  Poised and in place.

  Sappho almost exclusively invokes female deities. Here we meet the Graces (or Kharites, related to our ‘Charity’) who often attend on Aphrodite in art and literature. They were goddesses of grace, mirth, floral adornment and relaxation – in short, the pleasures of life. The Graces have the character of unsuspicious maidens and, in some sources, names and specific prerogatives:

  And the daughter of Okeanos, Eurynome,

  who had a much-praised figure, bore [Zeus]

  three radiant-cheeked Graces: Aglaia (Splendour),

  Euphrosyne (Merriment) and lovely Thalia (Festivity),


  from all of whose glancing eyes limb-loosening love streamed,

  And their gaze shines beautifully from beneath their brows.

  (Hesiod, Theogony 907–11)

  The god Eros himself is described as the ‘Limb-Loosener’ in ‘That impossible predator’, and ‘limb-loosening love’ is central to several of Sappho’s erotic songs. She applies the epithet (or characteristic title) ‘rosy-forearmed’ to Dawn (Eos) in ‘Girls, chase the violet-bosomed Muses’ bright’.

  ‘Now, Dika, weave the aniseed together, flower and stem’ is one of the fragments in which Sappho gives the impression that the listener is overhearing a private conversation. Dika, probably a pet name from ‘Mnasidika’, contributes to the intimate setting. In a brief fragment we learn that ‘Mnasidika is more shapely than plush Gyrinno’ (82a Voigt). Anise or aniseed (Pimpinella anisum) is a sweet-smelling, liquorice-flavoured flowering plant, still used to make Turkish raki, Greek ouzo and for a variety of other purposes. Athenaeus cites this fragment as evidence that ‘the more a thing is bedecked with flowers, the more delightful it is to the gods’ (Scholars at Dinner 15.674e). It is uncertain whether it was performed as solo or choral song but chorus members did wear floral adornments similar to those described here.