Sappho

[Dark Muse]

I love Sappho, the first time I read her, I fell in love. Her work is simplistic beuaty. So I thought I would start a thread in honor of her to share her works.

Without Warning

Without warning
as a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart

[ClaesGefvenberg]

I love Sappho, the first time I read her, I fill in love. Her work is simplistic beuaty. So I thought I would start a thread in honor of her to share her works.

Sappho of Lesbos? Yes, I have a book about her somewhere. A very intesting person.

/Claes

[Dark Muse]

Hehe yes, that would be the one. She is my muse.

[quasimodo1]

To Atthis

Though in Sardis now,
she thinks of us constantly

and of the life we shared.
She saw you as a goddess
and above all your dancing gave her deep joy.

Now she shines among Lydian women like
the rose-fingered moon
rising after sundown, erasing all

stars around her, and pouring light equally
across the salt sea
and over densely flowered fields

lucent under dew. Her light spreads
on roses and tender thyme
and the blooming honey-lotus.

Often while she wanders she remem-
bers you, gentle Atthis,
and desire eats away at her heart

for us to come.

--Translated by Willis Barnstone

[Dark Muse]

I have not read that one before. Though I have a book of her work, I haven't read the whole thing yet. That is beautiful.

[JBI]

Translation is important when reading Sappho, as her works were highly closed form (she invented the Sapphic Ode, of course) and highly lyrical, though fragmentary. She really only has 100 works surviving, most fragments of 1 or two lines, and like 1 or two full poems. Still, a very great, and influential poet, whose work seems to be echoed by poets like the American Imagist H.D.

[stlukesguild]

She... and a few other Greek poets are also the closest thing to the poetry one finds in Japan... until the Imagists and later. Her fragmentary works also remind me of the fragments of Holderlin and Mallarme's Tomb for Anatole... his book of poetic fragments responding to the death of his young son... not to forget the later poems of Paul Celan. It is intriguing to notice that what was a tragic loss... the fragmentation of her poems... would later become appreciated in an era that finds almost more meaning in the fragment than in the whole. Surely this is not unlike our appreciation of fragmentary sculpture that would have been seen as an anathema to the original Greek artists.

[stlukesguild]

]
] you will remember
] for we in our youth
did these things

yes many and beautiful things
]
]

]

tr. Anne Carson

[stlukesguild]

]frequently
]for those
I treat well are the ones who most of all
]harm me

]crazy
]
]
]
]you, I want
]to suffer
]in myself I am
aware of this
]
]
]

tr. Anne Carson

[Dark Muse]

Hmm I do not know if it just these particuarly poems, or the translator, but this one just did not seem to have the same flow as the ones I have read in my own book. I like the translations I have better.

[Dark Muse]

All the Sappho poems I have are translated by Mary Barnard

Tell everyone

Now, today I shall
sing beautifully for
my friends' pleasure

[stlukesguild]

I have Barnard's translation as well... which I very much enjoyed. Hers are written in clear, unornamented English... but include a good deal of reconstruction in some cases... providing what is missing from the actual fragmentary texts. Anne Carson... poet and classical scholar... is far more Post-Modern. Her translations revel a great deal in the fragments... and these fragments can often seem quite suggestive. Of course the reality is that while Carson does not include what is not there in Sappho's texts, the resulting fragments put her words into a context that may be just as invented as Barnard's attempts at completion.

[Dark Muse]

That makes sense, I had thought I dected a Post-Modern feeling in the poem you just posted which does not generally please me. Barnard to me just captures the essence and beauty more.

[Dark Muse]

We shall enjoy it

As for him who finds
fault, may silliness
and sorrow take him!

[Dark Muse]

And I said

I shall burn
the fat thigh-bones of
a white she-goat
at her altar