I was reading more about Sappho this week and wanted to share her with you if you aren’t familiar. I find her life so interesting, what little we know of it, as well as the mythology of the time.
Most of her life is hearsay as it was mainly transcribed through fragments of her poetry. It’s the mystery surrounding her life, her prolific writing of poetry, and the burning of it that intrigues me so much. She’s like a puzzle with very few pieces that still seem to shine in their sparsity.
Brief History
Sappho lived from 630-570 BC. She lived on the Greek island of Lesbos/Lesvos before she was exiled to Sicily.
She was known for her lyric poetry which was written to be sung along to music and performed. It’s said that she’d written around 10,000 lines of poetry but only around 650 have survived. There is still hope by scholars that more of her poetry will be uncovered in a lost archive buried somewhere.
Since she mostly performed her poetry, she would only write it down to be able to re-perform it. She never intended on writing it down to become literary works/books which has also made them difficult to find.
Something I find so interesting about Sappho’s life is how she was a real person but over years she’s become embedded in mythology in the sense that myths and legends about her have become part of her story.
Kind of like the telephone game where one person whispers something in someones ear and they pass it on, pass it on, pass it on, and by the end the last person hears something completely different than what’s originally told.
Since her life has been deciphered by her poetry there are hurdles- one being the dialect she used was not mainstream and difficult to translate. Another being that sometimes poetry can be quite vague, as well as her becoming victim to religious institutions who burned her poetry so only fragments remain.
Of all of her poetry, only a single poem, Ode to Aphrodite, has survived in its entirety.
Isn’t that wild?
A lot of what remains are one liners and bits and pieces from longer poems.
But that’s the part that provokes the roving of your imagination.
All you need is one line and off you go.
Imagine what she’s thinking about in 600BC. Imagine the world in 600BC. Not necessarily the people but the physical planet.
How beautiful it must’ve been before plastic, the industrial revolution, and more (and more) people.
If Greece is stunning today, just imagine the shades of blue and green back then and the amount of stars in the sky. She also mentions the color purple quite a bit in flowers and robes.
One of her poem fragments-
Moon
Stars around the beautiful moon
conceal their luminous form
when in her fullness she shines
on the earth
in silver
Think of this woman in 600BC on a Greek island looking at the same moon we see today. It’s probably glimmering over the Aegean Sea as she’s perched somewhere with her papyrus.
The same moon we’re going to see tonight.
To the ancient moon we’re one and the same as Sappho.
The moon rises to see the poetess, blinks, and here we are pointing phones at it.
We’re just a drop in the sea of time.
I wonder how the rest of that poem went after “in silver”.
Legend has it
Through translations of Sappho’s poems about women it became a popular belief in later years that she was a lesbian. Apparently the first known, hence the terms sapphic and lesbian coming from Sappho and her isle of Lesbos.
This is why, in 1073, Pope Gregory VII ordered Sappho’s poetry to be burned.
Along with her relationships with women, the various legends surrounding her include being married to Cercylas, a wealthy man from the island of Andros, her relationship with a contemporary poet, Alcaeus, as well as her leap to her death from a Leucadian rock into the sea over her love of Phaon, a young sailor.
This is where I think her life blurs into mythology.
Phaon’s legend is that he was an old ferryman who transported Aphrodite in his boat. He did not accept payment from her so she gifted him with an ointment to rub on his skin to give him youth and great physical beauty. This is when Sappho allegedly fell in love with him. He eventually rejected her, which is when she threw herself from the cliff.
Painting
That brings me to this fun coincidence - During the pandemic, you may remember the Getty Museum in LA hosting a challenge of recreating paintings while you’re stuck at home in quarantine. A lot of them were quite amusing, poking fun at being stuck inside and using household items.
Anyway, I decided to partake in the challenge and I recreated Sappho’s Death at Sunset.
In the painting she’s on the Leucadian cliffs, cliffs on the island of Leucadia (Lefkada) Greece. In the photo I’m not far from our own cliffs of Leucadia here in northern San Diego.
I didn’t realize that until this week and I thought it was the strangest coincidence to be at (or close to) two Leucadian cliffs.
Everything really is connected, even through time.
Poem Fragments
A few of my favorite fragments from her poetry:
In the wind I hear
the poems lost in time.
Happiness
Wealth without virtue is is no harmless neighbor
but by mixing both you are on the peak of joy.
This one I find interesting because it refers to her being old (likely in exile) with her young daughter Kleis, which contradicts the painting of her leaping to her death over Phaon.
Old Age
In pity
and
trembling
old age now
covers my flesh.
Yet there is chasing and floating
after a young woman.
Pick up your lyre
and sing to us
of one with violets
on her robe, especially
wandering
As Long As There Is Breath
You might wish
a little
to be carried off
Someone
sweeter
you also know
forgot
and would say
yes
I shall love as long as there is breath in me
and care
I say I have been a strong lover
hurt
bitter
and know this
no matter
I shall love
No oblivion
Someone, I tell you, in another time,
will remember us.
Me. It’s me. <3
x,
Courtney
Stay tuned for next week- if all goes well I should have an autumnal video recipe.