from “Anactoria”

SAPPHO

Sappho, a Greek poet who lived over 600 years before the birth of Christ, is the most renowned woman writer of antiquity. Her poems, extant now primarily in fragments, were among the most accomplished of her day. These lyrics (so-called because she accompanied her recitals with a lyre) made her famous in her lifetime—so much so that statues of her were erected, an ancient Greek coin bore her face, and even two centuries after her death, Plato called her the tenth muse.

Today Sappho is still recognized as one of the major contributors to the development of first-person voice in Greek verse. Hers is the voice of the individual, abandoning the standard topic of feuds among the gods to address instead the barebones reality of visceral love and longing, as when she writes “Again desire, / —which loosens limbs and is so bitter and sweet, / makes my body quiver. / You are irresistible.” The level of physicality in Sappho’s verse suggests an advancement in Greek thinking: that it might not be Fate that dictates the course of human life so much as the exigencies of the emotive self.

Yet Sappho’s modern fame is more a result of her association with lesbianism than of her role in the evolution of verse. The term lesbian is derived from the name of the Greek isle Lesbos, where Sappho founded a school of women with whom she had sexual relations and to whom she wrote much of her exquisite and sensual verse. Her predilection is summarized in the eminently quotable lines “Lovely girls / for you / my feelings / will never change”; the evidence that she acted on her predilection can be found in lines such as “With the noble oils of flowers / you annointed yourself / and on softest beds fulfilled your desire / for me.” Lesbian desire as explicit as this would not be articulated again for centuries.

The poem below demonstrates why Sappho’s name is still known to us today. For indeed she was justified when she wrote to one of her lovers, “Take this to heart: In the future / we will be remembered . . .”

He who sits in your presence,
Listening close to your sweet speech and laughter,
Is, in my esteem, yet luckier than the gods.
The thought makes my heart aflutter in my breast.
For even seeing you but briefly,
I lose what words I had;
My tongue finds not a sound;
My eyes fail to see, my ears set to ring;
A fire runs beneath my skin;
Sweat pores from me and a trembling takes my body whole.
I am paler than summer-burned grass, and, in my madness
I fear that I too may die.
And yet, I’ll dare it. Just a little more!

—translated by Henry Thaston Wharton,
modified by Jack Murnighan