Lecture 08 - Guest Lecturer PDF

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Enrica Sciarrino...

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CLAS223 – Sex, Love and Gender Lecture 08 – Sappho (Guest Lecturer) Dr Jennifer Wallace, Cambridge For many years the voice of Sappho has haunted many poets and writers for centuries as Sappho is the poet of desire. “I desire and yearn” fragment 36. But Sappho’s poetry is also an object of desire, the desire for wholeness, authenticity and for an embodied voice. The ambivalence of the fragment “Do I yearn for my virginity? “in Anne Carson’s translation is both the virginity of the body and a virginity of an original text. This circulation of desire occurs between the singer and audience, love and loved object, body and text and the lost past and yearning the present. Fragments of Sappho turned up in Africa in the late 19th century and excavators tried to patch up to try and think about what could have been there. People attempted to fill in the text through fragments, translations, adaptations, recover, ventriloquism and performance. Examples of what might be called the reception of Sappho is between Catullus (Roman), L.E.L (British) and Swinburne (Victorian British). They tried to write to be like Sappho. There are three ways in which we have access to Sappho’s work. This is through being quoted by ancient literary critics the two longest poems are Fragment 1 and Fragment 31. It was quoted by Dionysios of Halicarnassus and because he quoted it as being a fine quality of writing it has been carried through the ages. Despite his poems being repeated orally. Fragment 31 was quoted by the author of the sublime. Other ways Sappho is transmitted is through her fragments being adapted and fictionalised most commonly by Catullus where nine books were circulating in Roman times. He would translate Sappho into Latin and he could read Sappho. The third way is that the fragments were dug up after being wrapped around mummies in ancient Egypt which were found in the excavation. All of Sappho is in some way mediated through Peter Jay and Caroline Lewis (eds) in their book Sappho though English Poetry they attempt to separate adaptations and the literal text. Fragment 1: It stages a scene and is one of the longest Sappho poems we have. Sappho calls upon the goddess Aphrodite and wants to have relief from the aching pain of her love. In order to get Aphrodite to come she has to convince her to come back through “if ever in the past have you heard my distant plea and listened; leaving your fathers golden house you came to me then…” lines 5-8. Sappho stages a scene where she takes on the voice of Aphrodite. “who shall I persuade this time to take you back,” line 18-19. Sappho identifies herself through being voiced through Aphrodite. “who wrongs you, Sappho?” line 20. This identifies her as being wronged and Aphrodite questions who wrongs her. Sappho is a poet who has made writers wonder for years about the nature of her writing because she puts herself in the poem but not through saying ‘I am Sappho, writing this poem,’ instead she is integrated in line 20. Sappho changes tenses throughout the poem but comes back to the present “So come to me now, free me from this aching pain, fulfil everything that my heart desires to be fulfilled: you, yes you, will be my ally.” Line 25-28. Fragment 31: This fragment can be considered more difficult than fragment 1 because of the triangulation of desire that occurs. Anne Carson’s translation stops from over-glossing and seems more awkward than the Mary Barnard which tried to make it more English rather than Carson who makes it more foreign. Fragment 31 calls upon Sappho through indirectly addressing her, she is projected and makes her a lyric in the dative. In terms of Carson, “He seems to me equal…” line 1. It is only further through the poem when you get a first person thought of “when I look at you…” line 7.

The tongue breaks through, Barnard creates the better translation due to the Greeks not having personal pronouns, and it is an impossible break in the text that can not be accounted for so others have come up with different ideas as to why there is a gap before Anne Carson’s translation which is more Greek than Barnard’s translation which allows Sappho to be integrated into the text and that if “my tongue is breaking…” line 11. It is as if Sappho’s tongue breaks and there is a break in the poem. Sappho’s Metre: Sapphics The metre is a form of rhythm. Sappho’s poems have four line verses and the first three lines have 11 syllables and the last line has 5. The idea that there is missing beats on every line which is unique to Sappho because you expect a 12 syllable line for the first three and then a 6 syllable line in the fourth line....