{"id":9299,"date":"2015-03-27T15:22:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-27T19:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=9299"},"modified":"2016-05-23T11:00:05","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T15:00:05","slug":"the-blackbird-singing-sapfo-of-lesvos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=9299","title":{"rendered":"The Blackbird Singing: Sapf\u00f3 of L\u00e9svos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Come my holy lyre, become my voice, sing!<\/em><\/p>\n

— Sapf\u00f3, Fragment 118<\/p>\n

Introduction:<\/strong> I read, write and celebrate poetry. As I said in a previous entry<\/a>, I grew up in a culture where poetry was not precious and hermetic, but a vital way of expression that belonged to all. Poems were set to music and sung, poets were bards that could fuel revolutions.<\/p>\n

The article below first appeared<\/a> in Stone Telling<\/em> issue 2 (Dec. 2010). It had a slightly longer title and contained a few lines of Hellenic text that WordPress won’t reproduce. I’ve rendered Hellenic (Greek) words as they are pronounced by native speakers to convey as accurate an aural impression as possible. Thus, Sapf\u00f3, not Sappho \u2013 and the p is voiced; L\u00e9svos, not Lesbos; Afrodh\u00edti, not Aphrodite, where dh=th as in \u201cthe\u201d and i=ee as in \u201ctree\u201d. The very imperfect translations are mine.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

\"Sappho<\/a>When I was four, I taught myself to read \u2013 I had to suss out the activity that drew my adored, adoring father\u2019s attention away from me. My parents, bowing to the inevitable, gave me access to their entire library. About four years later, I was poring over the essays of poet and firebrand journalist K\u00f3stas V\u00e1rnalis. In one of them, he ridiculed the vapidity and reactionism of contemporary popular love songs, in which the woman was always a mute, passive object of obsession. As a salutary contrast, he juxtaposed these \u201cimmortal words from a divine voice\u201d:<\/p>\n

The Moon has set and the Pleiades,
\nmidnight, time passes,
\nand I lie alone.<\/em><\/p>\n

The language was an archaic dialect from two and a half millennia ago and I was too young to have sexual needs, so the subtext sailed right over my head. But the naked yearning pierced my solar plexus.\u00a0\u00a0 And that was my first encounter with the Blackbird of L\u00e9svos, the Tenth Muse, Sapf\u00f3.<\/p>\n

Sapf\u00f3 (in Aeolian dialect, Ps\u00e1pfa) was born around 620 BC in L\u00e9svos, one of the three large Aegean islands that hug the coast of Asia Minor. From an aristocratic family, she lived her life there except for a stint of political exile in Sicily \u2013 a common fate for Hellenes, who have politics in their blood.\u00a0\u00a0 Sapf\u00f3\u2019s contemporaries unanimously (and, oddly for Mediterranean men, ungrudgingly) hailed her as the greatest lyric poet in the Hellenic-speaking world. Level-headed S\u00f3lon, the Athenian lawgiver, is said to have declared upon hearing one of her songs, \u201cI just want to learn it, then die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of Sapf\u00f3\u2019s nine collections, a single poem has come down to us intact and her music is totally lost, although she\u2019s credited with inventing the Mixolydian mode (today\u2019s Locrian, used in both classical and jazz music). Some of her lines survived as quotes in literary textbooks of Greek or Roman writers. The rest are literally fragments \u2013 one potsherd and papyrus shreds from mummy wrappings or, most abundantly, from the rubbish heaps of Ox\u00edrynhos (\u201cSharpsnouted\u201d), a Hellenistic city in Upper Egypt. Yet the shards of her poems, often not even whole sentences, have cast a long shadow over poetry.<\/p>\n

The few, uncertain facts of Sapf\u00f3\u2019s life come mostly from her own poetry, although her exile is mentioned on the Parian Marble, a chronological stela that haphazardly covers a millennium of history. Hellenic, Roman and Byzantine sources also give stray biographical facts but their accuracy is questionable.<\/p>\n

Here are the tenuous gleanings from these sources: Sapf\u00f3\u2019s father, possibly called Skamandhr\u00f3nimos, died when she was a child. She had three brothers and felt protective of the youngest. She had an adored daughter whom she named after her mother Kle\u00eds, \u201cGlory of Deeds\u201d (Fragment 132 reads, I have a beautiful child whose face is like golden flowers, my beloved Kle\u00eds, whom I would not exchange for all of Lydia\u2026<\/em>). Her husband was said to be a rich sea-merchant, Kerk\u00edlas of \u00c1ndhros, but this is widely considered a pun since it can be translated as \u201cPrick from the isle of Man\u201d \u2013 though \u00c1ndhros is real enough: the Cycladic island closest to the mainland, it has a formidable maritime tradition.<\/p>\n

\"Sappho<\/a>A far likelier lover for Sapf\u00f3 was her friend and rival Alka\u00edos, a fellow aristocrat and poet to whose political party she belonged. His faction ended up the loser during the power struggle between the older families and the upstarts headed by Pittak\u00f3s (Pittak\u00f3s prevailed, ruled well, and is remembered as one of the Seven Sages of ancient Hell\u00e1s, the originator of the Golden Rule). After returning from the Sicilian exile precipitated by her political actions, Sapf\u00f3 founded a th\u00edassos (band) of well-born young women whose social and literary prominence bred rival imitators. Subsequent generations have variously interpreted it as a finishing school, a cult of lay priestesses, an artists\u2019 salon, a separatist lesbian enclave \u2013 or a circle of friends who were also colleagues in poetry and whose bonds included the physical, a configuration akin to similar groups of aristocratic and\/or creative men of many cultures and eras, from Macedonian het\u00e9roi to Shogunate courtiers.<\/p>\n

Sapf\u00f3 was said to be small and dark. Even her admirer Alk\u00e1ios called her violet-tressed \u2013 but in Hellenic folk and literary tradition the blackbird is the equal of the nightingale. Finally, dating from the Hellenistic era there\u2019s a tradition that Sapf\u00f3 fell into a postmenopausal frenzy of unrequited love for F\u00e1on, a much younger boatman. She reputedly trailed him slavishly and finally flung herself off the cliffs of Lefk\u00e1s, an island in the Ionian sea. However, F\u00e1on means \u201cShining\u201d and he\u2019s linked to Afrodh\u00edti (\u201cFoamrisen\u201d) in her destructive aspect: he\u2019s a version of Adonis. That, coupled with the fact that Sapf\u00f3 considered Afrodh\u00edti her patron god and wrote poems lamenting the wavering of inspiration with age, puts a rather different complexion on the story.<\/p>\n

Whether Sapf\u00f3 was l\u00e9svian by inclination as well as by birth has been a thorny thicket of assumptions and taboos. The time gap, the paucity of information and the physical and linguistic inaccessibility of her poetry have resulted in Sapf\u00f3 being different things to different people, depending on her audience\u2019s individual and collective context. But the issue is also hard to untangle because Sapf\u00f3 lived in a time and place that not only differed radically from that of her explicators but was also unique within Hellenic culture of the early classical era.<\/p>\n

Unlike the starkness of most of Hell\u00e1s, L\u00e9svos is green and rich. L\u00e9svians were considered passionate, sensual and fond of beauty. Social strata were shallow and fluid in a merchant maritime culture where rulers ate the same austere food as farmers and all citizens were active in politics. Aristocrats of both genders seem to have been casually bisexual and polyamorous, though they took care to maintain inheritances and lines. Unlike Athenians, they allowed their women education and did not confine them to the house; unlike Spartans, they did not subjugate them to state purposes. Female activities extended beyond \u201cKinder, K\u00fcche und Kirche\u201d and the fact that they were exiled implies at least indirect participation in civic affairs. These liberties were disapprovingly ascribed to the influence of the nearby Lydians and Carians. If classical Hell\u00e1s is equated with medieval France, L\u00e9svos was its Languedoc, which bred powerful queens, courts of love \u2013 and troubadours.<\/p>\n

\"Sappho<\/a>And so we come to the crux: Sapf\u00f3\u2019s ability as a maker (which is the literal meaning of \u201cpoet\u201d in Hellenic). Her poetry is as easily recognizable as Minoan frescoes. There are several extrinsic reasons for this. She is one of the very few poets who wrote in Aeolian, an older relative of Dorian whose relationship to Ionian-derived Athenian is that of a soft Southern accent to Californian. Aeolian dropped initial aitches, frequently changed \u201ce\u201d and \u201ci\u201d to \u201ca\u201d and \u201ct\u201d to \u201cp\u201d and pushed word stress to earlier syllables. Moon in Ionian is Sel\u00edni, in Aeolian it\u2019s S\u00e9lana. Whereas Ionian is a fast-flowing river, Aeolian is long, deep seaswells.<\/p>\n

Sapf\u00f3 also used a unique meter in much of her poetry, the Sapphic stanza. This consists of three eleven-syllable lines plus a fourth line of five additional syllables known as the Adonic line, a fitting term for a devotee of Afrodh\u00edti. This meter was also used by Alka\u00edos, Catullus, Horace and such more recent luminaries as Swinburne and Ginsberg.<\/p>\n

Sapf\u00f3 wrote several types of poems, many for public performance: epics, epithalamia, hymns, odes, elegies, dirges. Despite the common assumption that all her poetry is personal, she did not avoid large canvases: two of her larger fragments describe back stories in the Iliad. Besides, to argue that all the poems are \u201cpersonal\u201d devalues her craft. In any case, Hellenes did not put firewalls between the personal and the political: they were always aware they represented their family, clan and city-state. Many of Sapf\u00f3\u2019s poems are first-person and address the listener directly, which gives them a startling immediacy. Sometimes this is is a god \u2013 usually Afrodh\u00edti, who is treated as a confidante and ally. More often it\u2019s a beloved friend or a lover. Some of these are men; most are women.<\/p>\n

It is safe to say that Sapf\u00f3 invented the language of desire for the Western world. There is nothing coy or demure about her declarations, they\u2019re as frank and fierce as those of a torch singer. Yet even when impassioned, her words are precise, concrete and minutely calibrated. The phrases and images she was the first to use are now so embedded in the vocabulary of love that she has become the submerged bedrock from which such poems and songs spring. When singers moan I\u2019m on fire, You make me weak in the knees, I hunger for your touch,<\/em> it\u2019s Sapf\u00f3 they\u2019re echoing:<\/p>\n

Love shook my mind like the wind bends the mountain oaks.<\/em><\/p>\n

I simply want to die now that she left me.<\/em><\/p>\n

You came \u2013 it\u2019s good you did, I sickened for you.<\/em>
\n You cooled my thoughts that burned with longing.<\/em><\/p>\n

And of course there\u2019s that cry of anguish, Fragment 31:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Sapfo-Like-a-God.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

As a god he seems to me \u2013 that man across from you,
\nwho attends you when you whisper to him and laugh softly.
\nBut me \u2013 my heart tears in my breast, and as soon as I see you
\nI lose my voice and my words fade. My tongue is crushed
\nand a slow fire goes through my body, my eyes darken,
\nmy ears ring, I sweat, tremble and turn paler than grass.
\nI\u2019m near death but must dare everything, poor as I am.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sappho_bust\"<\/a>Poetry is essentially untranslatable. Sapf\u00f3\u2019s even more so, given its fragmentation, dialect, meter and boldness. Fellow poets down the centuries tried to shoehorn her work into acceptable content and style norms for their era while acknowledging her incandescence. The task eluded even Hellenes. The first good translation into contemporary Hellenic was by Sot\u00edris Kak\u00edsis in 1979; it became the basis of a song cycle. And I keep hoping for someone with the chops of Olga Broumas to do it for English.<\/p>\n

More surprising is the dearth of novels based on Sapf\u00f3, considering what rich material she would make. Only five 20th century Anglophone novels have her as their focus. None of them captures her or her era and all have dated badly (although one of them, The Other Sappho<\/em> by Ellen Frye, at least rings authentic in its settings and song snatches because Frye spent time in Hell\u00e1s translating its folksongs).<\/p>\n

In Hellenic culture, women were thought to be less disciplined than men in their erotic desire. Pragmatic and prone to compartmentalizing, Hellenes feared passionate love as an emotion that could breach boundaries, bring disorder and upheaval. They counted it among the god-inflicted illnesses (rage, ecstasy, panic) that could drive humans mad, make them forget customs and obligations. So Sapf\u00f3 stands out not only because of her gender, the gender of most of her love objects and her directness (each amazing on its own). She also stands out because she unapologetically embraced this divine madness \u2013 and single-handedly raised it to an art as honed and prominent as the vaunted epic.<\/p>\n

When Hellenes said The Poet<\/em> and used a masculine suffix, they meant Homer; when they used a feminine suffix, they meant Sapf\u00f3. Sapf\u00f3 is quicksilver, saffron and wild silk; seabreeze and crackling flame. To hear her, even in pieces, is to drink starlight, glimpse the elusive blackbird that ushers the dawn.<\/p>\n

Further reading\/listening<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Carson, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho<\/em><\/p>\n

Marguirite Johnson, Sappho<\/em><\/p>\n

Margaret Reynolds, The Sappho Companion<\/em><\/p>\n

Sot\u00edris Kak\u00edsis, Sapf\u00f3, the Poems<\/em><\/p>\n

Al\u00e9ka Kanell\u00eddhou sings Sapf\u00f3; music by Sp\u00edros Vlass\u00f3poulos, translation by Sot\u00edris Kak\u00edsis<\/p>\n

Images:<\/strong> 1st, The cover of Mary Barnard\u2019s Sapf\u00f3 translation (a Fayum portrait); 2nd, Sapf\u00f3 and Alka\u00edos; Red-figured vessel from Akragas, Sicily, 470 BC; 3rd, the papyrus that bears Sapf\u00f3’s Fragment 98; 4th, Sapf\u00f3, Roman copy of a Hellenistic work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Come my holy lyre, become my voice, sing! — Sapf\u00f3, Fragment 118 Introduction: I read, write and celebrate poetry. As I said in a previous entry, I grew up in a culture where poetry was not precious and hermetic, but a vital way of expression that belonged to all. Poems were set to music and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-poetry","category-writing-and-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}