Who Was She?

  I’d always been curious about Sappho, the idea of her, living a few hundred years before Christ, on a small island off Greece, with its own dialect and traditions, a poet and lyricist, that Plato later named “The Tenth Muse,” and she was known, even during her lifetime, as “The Poetess,” elevating her to Homer, whom they called ” The Poet.” Like most of us, I’d heard her name in connection with the term, Lesbian, and the poet, Sappho, as the origin. But when I started reading her poems, I forgot about that and was overwhelmed by their uniqueness and especially, their subjectivity. At that time, Epics, lengthy, third-person retellings of historic or legendary battles, were the subjects of poets, not the outpouring of personal emotions that I was finding in Sappho. I was moved by the simplicity of the first poem I read, “Evening Star”.

Hesperus

you bring

            home everything

       which light of day dispersed:

              home the sheep herds

                home the goat

            home the mother’s darling

Looking it over, I saw the vastness of the star in the universe, then Hesperus, the god who personified it, bringing together from the darkness, all the creatures that had been sent out with the light: the sheep, the goats, and the ultimate home comer of all, the mother’s darling , small and last, but as significant to the mother as the great sky above. With simple language and a few familiar figures, Sappho has opened to the reader the warm feeling of a mother’s love.

  As I went on to finish the collection, it became clear that Sappho’s overwhelming drive was for love–passionate love for women, for men, and above all, her worship of the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite. Poem # 31 expresses the exquisite depth of her desire:

. . . If I meet

you suddenly, I can’t

speak–my tongue is broken;

a thin flame runs under

my skin, seeing nothing,

hearing only my own ears

drumming, I drip with sweat.

trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than

dry grass. At such times

death isn’t far from me

O false as fair

I am forgotten ,then, by thee!

Or haply on another shine

Pretense of love–all faithlessly

The eyes that once looked into mine

0ut! naught I care

For such as can true love betray!

Love on, forsworn, your little day:

Ye are naught to me.

Sappho was probably bisexual, but that didn’t become an issue in her poetry for 2500 years after her death.

It has been verified that she wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry. Three hundred years after her death, scholars in Alexandria compiled her works into 9 volumes, but today, only six hundred and fifty, mostly fragments, survive. The rest were burned by Pope Gregory in 380 A.D. and by Pope Gregory V11 in 1073.

It was not necessarily the homosexual content that caused the disapproval of the Church. Sappho wrote hymns to the pagan goddesses, especially Aphrodite, and these would have been as highly suspect as homosexual relations. During Sappho’s time, it is not clear what the attitude was, but we are clear that same-sex unions were not persecuted or forbidden. In the early Christian period, promiscuity was punished and that is probably part of what brought about the burnings. The focus on lesbianism in Sappho did not occur until the Victorian era, when that became the main interest in her poetry, in spite of textual evidence that she was heterosexual, as well:

Of course, I love you

but if you love me,

marry a young woman!

I couldn’t stand it

to live with a young

man, I being older

We get only a glimpse of Sappho’s relationship with her mother and daughter, Cleis. The few fragments that exist suggest it was close and good-hearted:

It’s no use,

Mother dear, I

can’t finish my

weaving

You may          

blame Aphrodite

soft as she is

She has almost

killed me with

love for that boy

. . . and then a motherly Sappho as she scolds Cleis for inappropriate behavior:

Must I remind you, Cleis

that sounds of grief

are unbecoming in

a poet’s household?

and that they are not

suitable in ours?

. . .and on another gentler subject:

I have a daughter

Cleis, who is

like a golden

flower

I wouldn’t

take all Croesus’

kingdom, with love

thrown in, for her

What struck me as I was learning about Sappho was that I didn’t know who she was on the outside but I knew her almost intimately on the inside. With honesty and heart, she told the world of her passions, her thoughts, her love of life.

Although they are

only breath, words

which I command

are immortal