May 31, 1991
Bob Sluss
Great Books
The Evergreen State College
There existed a moment in history so unlike any other, because of its stage in human development, that it would never be repeated. Two strange elements- the beginning of Classical Greek society and the discovery of the ego-combined to make an opportunity for a very special woman to flourish. She was the poet Psappha (Sappho). Living in the sixth century BCE, she was full of passion, and she was the first person who spoke of it. But this passion got her into trouble through the following ages. A combination of a cultural depression (of sorts) three hundred years after her birth, and a changing world conception of accepted morals led to mis-guided and intentionally harmful images of Psappha. This included the facts about her life, her sexuality, and her poems.
The beginnings of classical Greece were not a start which needs the later development in order to be prominent. The seventh and sixth centuries BCE stood by themselves, in their twisted state of democracy and aristocracy not yet solidified. They showed an amazing burst of creativity and intellectual activity. They created the first tyrants. Their times produced such religious importants as Jeremiah and Nebuchadneezer. In Rome Tarquinius Priscus was ruling, and Amasis was on the throne in Egypt. The nearby state of Lydia was well formed, flourishing, and luxurious, with an effective and efficient army. Laws were first being written down by Draco, Solon was remaking Athens. Modern thought was beginning with such people as Thales (a philosopher), Anaximander (the creator of prose), Domocedes (the first physician), and Pythagoras (the founder of some crucial math theories).
But even just looking at Lesbos, we see difference. It was cosmopolitan, unlike Athens (which was still a bunch of farms). Lesbos was a merchant island, trading her still-famous wines around the world. Lesbos was not a military community either, focusing only on war. J. Symonds writes:
For a certain space of time the Aeolians occupied the very foreground of Greek literature, and blazed out with a brilliance... that has never been surpassed. There seems to have been something passionate in their temperament. Lesbos, the center of Aeolian culture, was the island of overmastering passions. The energies which the Ionians divided between pleasure, politics, trade, legislation, science and the arts, and which the Dorians turned to war and statecraft, were restrained by the Aeolians [to] the sphere of individual emotions, ready to burst forth volcanically.[1]Nor was Lesbos as influenced by the Dorians when they invaded and settled in the preceding 500 years (causing the Greek Dark Ages). Being so far east from the rest of Greece, they were not as hard hit, nor as devastated. The Lesbians remained more civilised during the Dark Ages; they were recovering from less of a blow when Psappha flourished. Women on Lesbos lived differently than anywhere else in the ancient world. They had freedoms unrivalled until the present day. They were not only allowed, but encouraged to be educated and to pursue literary paths. Psappha's school of girls was not unusual, she herself even speaks of rivals.
Psappha, as she pronounced her name in the melodious Aeolian she spoke, was not merely a poet; she was "the poetess," as Homer was "the poet." But she was not really a poet; a more appropriate label would be a songwriter. These songs of hers are all we have left of her, although we have very few of even these. They have become unspoken poems, now, because the music she sang them to is gone, as is any definitive pronunciation guide of her dialect.
All information about her, her family, and her life is also guesswork, some inferred from her poetry, the rest from unreliable scraps of sources which are believed to be referring to Psappha. What is read from her poems is often hopeful conjecture from the shred of a papyrus.
It is fairly accepted that her father's name was Skamandronymous, although the Suda Lexicon (an unreliable and confused Byzantine Encyclopedia) offers alternatives such as Simon, Eunominos, Eurygyos, Ekrytos, Semos, Skamos, or Euarchos.2 Her mother was given as Kleis. She also had two brothers, Charaxos and Larichos, a "public cup-bearer" in Mitylene. There is also a rumor of a third brother Eurygyos, who may or may not have existed. Charaxos went into the wine-trading business at one point, and Psappha chides him in one poem for spending vast amounts of money to free the courtesan Doricha/Rhodopis whom he met on his travels. Doricha was a slave, who reportedly lived with Aesop (who wrote Aesop's Fables). Psappha had a husband named Kerkylas, from Andros, and a daughter named Kleis. She was of noble birth, and her family had a lot of money. Psappha was born in Eresos (another city on Lesbos), but at a young age, her family moved to Mitylene, the largest city on Lesbos. The year of her birth is listed as anywhere from 650-600 BCE, or the 41st or 42nd Olympiads.
Psappha's family was politically important; she was exiled twice by tyrants in her life. Myrsilos ordered the first exile sometime during her adolescence, to the country town of Pyrrha (on Lesbos). This was only a short exile. Psappha was later exiled to Syracuse for about a year by Pittakos.
Psappha lived in a circle of young women who boarded with her. She taught them poetry and singing and lyre-playing, and her home acted as a sort of finishing school. Girls would come at ages near 12-15, spend a few years with Psappha, and then marry (and leave). They all composed songs to be sung at each others' weddings, as per the wedding custom of the day. These songs were sexually explicit at times. Barnard's 27 is pretty clear in its intentions:
It is time now
FIRST For you who are so
VOICE pretty and charming
to share in games that the pink-ankled Graces play, and
gold Aphrodite
O never!
SECOND I shall be a
VOICE virgin always
There are a handful of names which come up in the fragments; those seen to be her companions (because of the affectionate way of which they are spoken) are Anaktoria, Atthis, Gongyla, Mika, Telesippa, and Angora. Atthis was apparently allied also with Psappha's enemies,[13] Gorgo and Andromeda.[14]
Psappha was plagued by a life-long belief that she was physically unattractive. The Greek standard of beauty was the tall, blue-eyed Hellene. Psappha inherited her mother's lineage of the indigenous peoples (versus the invader Dorian and Ionic). She is described as small and dark, actually the sort of olive-skin one now associates with Greek lineage. We know she lived long, for she says of herself that she had "a thousand wrinkles."[17]
Infinitely more knowledge about Psappha was better documented in the past, but age and the Christian Church have helped us to lose nearly all. Many documents have worn to dust, disintegrating with passing years. Others, in good condition, were burned at a number of significant purges. The first was in 380 CE, when Gregory, Bishop of Constantine ordered all extant works by and about Psappha be burned. Obviously he didn't posses every copy, so some survived. In 391, a "mob of Christian zealots partially destroyed the library in Alexandria."[3] However, Pope Gregory VII "completed the devout work in 1073 with a roaring bonfire in Rome."[4] Most remaining pieces of her work, or work about her, were inadvertently destroyed by the Church in April 1024 when, in the course of the Fourth Crusade, Venetian Knights destroyed Constantinople.[5] Some of her works, written on papyrus, were torn into vertical shreds and used as mummy wrappings in Egypt, leaving us bits at the beginning, middle, or end of a line, often as little as one character. Of the approximately 500 poems she wrote, we have about 700 lines.
The Church was opposed to Psappha largely because she propagated "moral laxity" 6 and "made the love of each other more attractive than the love God."[7] I would suspect they also had an objection to her highly debated sexuality.
If the reports of Psappha having a husband and child are true, and if -rightly, I believe-the sentiment in her poems has an erotic element, then Psappha was bisexual. Most modern scholars, having relieved themselves of homophobia, [8] agree that there was a sexual element to Psappha's poetry. Homosexual relations were commonplace in ancient Greece,[9] so the Greek people wouldn't have had any sort of stigma about her sexual preference.
The debate around Psappha's intent in the sexually suggestive lyrics is centered on trying to interpret the little fragments we have. J. M. Edmonds and a Mr. Wilamowitz are two of Psappha's most ardent followers. They took it upon themselves to "restore" her poems where letters, words, or even entire lines were missing, so that they could then interpret them in the "proper" manner. They attempted to explain away her sexual desire for other women. They, and others throughout history who want to "rescue" her (apparently from herself), do not really improve Psappha or clarify her. In their zealousness to defend her honor and "purity", they deliberately misinterpret her poetry; they declare she was a head of a thaisos, a priestess in a pure cult to Aphrodite; that her songs were ritual, epithalamia (songs written for the express purpose of a public ceremony or temple ritual celebrating a deity).[1]0 There is no basis for this in her poetry, in either the style nor the content. One poem that clearly does not have formal intentions is Barnard's 39:
He is more than a hero
He is a god in my eyes-
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you-
who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing
laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. 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
Denys Page, who co-produced with Edgar Loebel the most authoritative version of Psappha's works, argues that the poems lend no credence to the inference that her poems were ritualised, and that only very few of her poems may be rightly labeled epithalamia.[11] The "defenders" are not helping to clarify Psappha or her poetry, they are instead creating more confusion and misinformation.
Interestingly, regardless of how Psappha's character has been portrayed through the years, her actual poems have always received high literary regard.
A theory about Psappha which arose and then died in the last four hundred years is that of two Psapphas. Her defenders from the French and English past, unable to bear the concept that she wasn't pure and beautiful were in a difficult spot since they couldn't explain away her blatant "impurities," so they ascribed them to someone else. They also tried to force meaning to her poems (or lack of meaning, where appropriate) that would defend her honor. The first Psappha was the one leading the thaisos, she was not a virgin, obviously, since she had a child, but the cult was pure. This cult did not focus on the sexual part of Aphrodite, and was virginal, until the girls left for marriage. The poetry containing lust for other women was then written by the courtesan Psappha who lived also on the island of Lesbos. She was a lowly goatherdess who could sing and pluck the lyre a bit.
This theory of two Psapphas was largely debated, but has, in the last 50 years, been dismissed by all prominent scholars who study Psappha. However, there is one woman, Ellen Frye-not a professional scholar, but a woman who has spent a number of years in Greece, and has studied Psappha-who believes there is evidence locked up somewhere in a museum in Greece which points to the existence of this other Psappha, named Lykaina.
In her novel, The Other Sappho, she describes Lykaina and Psappha. In her introduction, Frye speaks of a trip to Lesbos during which she encountered some native goatherders who told her this story. She went to a local museum where her story was confirmed by the curator. Unable to access these finds in the museum, however, Frye went ahead and made up the story in which she adds a surprising twist to the culture of Greece in the sixth century. Frye not only believes that Psappha and Lykaina were gay, but she suggests that all women were separatist Lesbians, dealing with men only to create children, but not living with or loving them. I doubt this is true to any more extent than it is true today.
Plato at one point called Psappha the "Tenth Muse," summing up, I believe, the atmosphere towards Psappha in ancient times. She was admired by Solon and later Athens. She is liberally quoted and referred to in works surviving from that period, and done so in such a way that it is obvious that those writers had at hand a full set of Psappha's songs. She was also popular in Roman times. Her likeness is found on such common items as scale-weights. A vast amount of coins from Mitylene dating for hundreds of years after Psappha's death have been found, and her family names were often used there as well.
There was a certain point in Athens' history when the morale of the city was so low that the subjects of their comedies could no longer be current politics. They instead took "safe" figures from the past to ridicule. Psappha became one of these "stock figures" of the Middle Comedy.[15] This was not done, I believe, out of particular malice to Psappha, but because she happened to lend herself conveniently to their needs, being both Greek and dead. At any rate, this gave rise to many of the insane myths about her. The most well-known one is the story about Phaon.
Phaon was a boatman who was so kind that he ferried people from Chion to the mainland for free. Aphrodite came down, dressed as an old hag, and he was kind to her, so she gave him a potion/lotion which would make him eternally young and make women fall in love with him. Psappha was the first to fall victim to this, and because her love was unrequited, she committed suicide by hurling herself off the Leukadian Cliff, located in Western Greece. This is a ridiculous assertion. The Leukadian Cliff is 300 miles, as the crow flies, 425 for a boat trip, from Psappha's home of Lesbos (which is located off the coast of Asia minor, south from the Hellespont), an enormous distance to travel in those days. One of Psappha's own poems points away from this theory as well. Barnard's 99 says:
Must I remind you, Cleis
That sounds of Grief
are unbecoming in
a poet's household?
and that they are not
suitable in ours?
This, as Barnard proposes in her "Footnote to the Translations," could very well be implying that Psappha is dying at the time she wrote the poem to her daughter. This means she died at home, and slowly (she knew it was coming), completely incompatible with the suddenness and privacy of a suicide. We also know she died very old, for, as I said above, she had a thousand wrinkles. It seems unlikely that anyone living to be so extremely wrinkled would suddenly fall in lust/love with a boatman and go passionately to commit suicide.
Psappha's works were divided into nine books, possibly to honor the nine muses. The first book contained 1320 lines, so by extension it seems she wrote an immense volume, more than 500 poems. She is credited with inventing certain metrical styles, and with inventing the pectis, or quill-a sort of ancient guitar pick, but for the lyre.[12] As to the content, most of the surviving songs deal with love. Many are wedding songs, probably written for her young companions when they left Psappha to get married. Psappha had chosen Aphrodite as her protecting goddess, as one can observe by merely reading her poems. Aphrodite's name is mentioned more frequently than any other name. This is not surprising considering most of the poems (we have) are about love, and that Psappha seems to have been a passionate person in general. She gives us the first western examples of ecstasy.[16]
Seven hundred lines of Psappha's poems exist today. Many of those lines are just single words or phrases. There are two complete poems, and nine or ten others that are fairly lengthy, but not complete. About 90 more snippets exist which are long enough to construct an image or stanza. These 100 make up probably 600 or so of the total lines we have. Willis Barnstone and Mary Barnard are the only two I could find who had all 100 (or more) poems. Guy Davenport translates some 213 items, however, here is a sample of a few: "The dress." "here/ /again" "Handbag." I do not consider these critiquable poems, only fragments. Denys Page and Edgar Loebel translated all fragments, but unfortunately the text is in Latin, so I am excluding that version (even if it is the most authoritative), as it is more scholarly inclined.
Translation is difficult for any medium, but it is especially difficult when the work is poetry, more so if it is Greek poetry, ancient Greek poetry. Psappha wrote in vernacular Aeolian, in a meter that confused me. I discerned that it had twelve syllables, a very rigid form and stress guide, along with other technical things. I shy from reproducing an explanation here because I don't understand it, so I doubt I could explain it. At any rate, it is very complex and, like Homer, perfectly attuned to the Greek language. This makes translation very challenging, more so to English since it does not conform nearly as well as other languages to the contortions of strict poetic verse. To attempt to convey also the exact meaning of the poem's words, and to do so in the style of the poet is unthinkably impossible. This whole process is worsened by the fact that in the Greek language, words, when used in differently or in a different manner imply much more meaning than just a word. This means that one word in Greek must often be translated by a number of words, or even phrases in English. These nuances are part of what makes each poem so special, and they can't be translated, except to destroy the beauty of the poem itself by making a very lengthy exposition of an originally two line poem.
Some translators attempt to be flowery and romantic, believing that is Psappha's style. Barnard took a stand alone and rendered her poems stark and brief, the beauty coming from their inherent images and the conciseness with which they were translated. Barnstone took a more middle ground, but leaning on the shorter side. These differences are sometimes so great that I did not recognise two translations of the same poem as being the same. Other times, the error is even worse, changing the meaning of the poem itself. Not all poems transform this way in the hands of different translators. I have chosen a few of my favorites, that I could find in more than one translation, to illustrate some differences.
One delightful little poem is Barnard's 84, "If you are squeamish/Don't prod the/beach rubble."[18] Very self-explanatory, it uses an interesting metaphor, but not a surprising one for Psappha, since her home of Mitylene is a harbor, therefore containing a beach (at which she undoubtedly spent time). Two other translations I found are Guy Davenport, "Don't stir/The trash."[19] and Barnstone, "Don't stir up the small/heaps of beach jetsam."[20] I find it interesting that in the poem, Barnard's is the longest, since her poems are always shorter than any others. I think Barnard is attempting to convey more of Psappha's meaning, for she includes the line about squeamishness, which the Barnstone leaves unsaid for the reader to discover. Davenport throws out Psappha's metaphor altogether, going for a very small, unpoetic version.[21]
Another short piece to which I am rather attached is Barnstone, "Like a mountain whirlwind/punishing the oak trees/love shattered my heart."[22] Barnard writes, "Without warning/As a whirlwind/swoops on an oak/Love shakes my heart."[23] These two are pretty closely worded, the differences between words like shakes or shatters, punishing or swoops are negligible. They do not change the meaning, nor does the addition (or lack) of mountain. I like this one because, again, the comparison is so unusual, but so apt. For me, love most often occurs that way, a sudden whirling thud!, and then the realisation and its consequences.
Another poem which only Barnstone and Barnard give in their books is the former's, "No more. Do not try/to bend a hard heart."[24] and the latter's, "I said, Sappho/Enough! Why/try to move/a hard heart?"[25] There is a slight discrepancy here. In Barnstone's, it appears that Psappha is speaking, but in Barnard's someone is speaking to Psappha. Barnstone's also holds, for me, some element of remorse at having such a hard heart. I can't place it, it is maybe the plea for "no more." Barnard's use of "I said" (implying a repeat on the part of the speaker), and of the exclamation point lend a harsher, more exasperated tone to the poem.
My next poem brings up a problem in the varying translations. Barnstone and Barnard agree in the meaning of the poem, but the third, Davenport, is again the dissenter. Barnstone translates, "I do not have a rancorous spirit/but the simple heart of a child."[26] Barnard's is very close: "Really, Gorgo,/My disposition/is not at all/spiteful: I have/a childlike heart."[27] Davenport says, "As good natured as a little girl,/I don't snap and pout and rage."[28] The first two both are excusing spiteful or rancorous attitude by saying it is really just immaturity, childlike behavior. But Davenport reverses the "accusation" and "explanation," making it sound as if Psappha is merely describing someone's (her) nature, comparing it to that of a sweet child. His isn't a defense or rationale, and it changes what Psappha is trying to say. I can't say which is the right meaning, what Psappha intended. It seems more likely to me that the other two are right, just because they somehow "fit" in with Psappha. After reading all her poems, all these translations, numerous times, I have an inner feeling for her and her voice, thus, I feel that some translations are more hers. A note on the Barnard translation: she adds the "Really, Gorgo," which no others has. The only Greek I have of that is in Barnstone's Sappho, which, as far as I can tell with my knowledge of part of the Greek alphabet, has no word "Gorgo." This makes sense, since he does not include that in his English version. So, does Barnard use a different Greek text, or does she add her own embellishments (since she before had a name where no others did)?
One poem I find most beautiful, one of the two complete ones (or believed to be complete, anyway), I have six translations of. They seem to divide themselves into pairs, which is how I will present them. The two I like best are, again, Barnstone's and Barnard's, respectively:
Like a sweet apple reddening on the high
tip of the topmost branch and forgotten
by the pickers-no, beyond their reach.
Like a hyacinth crushed in the mountains
by shepherds; lying trampled on the earth
yet blooming purple.[29]
FIRST Like a quince-apple
VOICE ripening on a top
branch in a tree top
not once noticed bySECOND Like a hyacinth in
harvesters or if
not unnoticed, not reached
by shepherds until
only a purple stain
remains on the ground [30]
These two, when compared to forthcoming versions, are the most clear
and "Psapphic." They don't seem to be trying to hide the subject-virginity's
praise and loss. The next two are by, respectively, Davenport and Anne
Burnett:
She was like that sweetest apple,
That ripened highest on the tree,
That harvesters couldn't reach,
And pretend they forgot.
[ ]
Like the mountain hyacinth trod underfoot
By shepherd men, its flower purple on the ground.[31]
like a sweet apple that ripens on the branch
high in the crown of the tree. Forgotten by pickers?
Oh no, but far beyond their reach.
just as the upland hyacinth is crushed
beneath shepherds' feet, purple blossom on the ground[32]
These two are clear also in their intentions, but don't have quite
the right feel, to me. The last two, however, are rather disturbing in
the obvious disregard for the true subject. They try to play down what
the metaphor represents. These are by A. R. Burn and Dante Rossetti, respectively:
As the apple ripens, up on the tree so high,
High on the topmost twig-and the pickers have passed it by-
No not that; but they could not reach it if they should try!
As the bluebells grow on the hills, till the shepherds' trampling feet
Beat them down, and bright on the ground is the bloom so sweet...[33]
I.
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
A-top the topmost twig,-which the pluckers forgot, somehow,-
Forgot it not, nay! but got it not, for none could get it till now.
II.
Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found,
Which the passing feet of shepherds for ever tear and wound,
Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.[34]
Burn neglects even the color of the flower, which is quite a crucial
word, and obviously in the Greek text (for all other translators include
it). The reference to purple is a big clue to the stain of the loss of
virginity. These last two also seem more flowery. Their purpose is more
towards a "beautiful" poem than any underlying meanings. Regarding Psappha's
poem (I shall choose to look at Barnstone's and Barnard's for the purpose
of analysation), I again like the metaphor. I think there is an implied
description of what may happen to many pretty country "apples," in that
they are, once "deflowered," trampled on many times by shepherds up in
the mountains. I feel she was making some suggestion of the life of an
unlucky girl.
There is a little phrase which we have that is absolutely delightful, and I wish to share it. Barnstone translates, "I begin with words of air/yet they are good to hear."[35] Barnard writes, "Although they are/Only breath, words/which I command/are immortal."[36] When I first read this I was shocked at the realisation. I had never thought of words as air, which they are, literally. It was quite an interesting twist. The variance in translations I cannot account for, except to suggest that maybe part of the words are missing which form the second half in English, and the two both "restored" them differently (or were working from differently restored texts).
Another phrase, even shorter, is Barnard's 61:
Pain penetrates
Me drop
by drop
Barnstone translates it in his "Fragments" chapter as, "Because of
my pain."[37] Barnard's rendering was more compelling to me. The form enhanced
my reaction, because the poem seemed to illustrate those drops in each
line. About the difference in these translations, I offer what I offered
above, and the idea that the Greek has so much more implied in each word
that it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, especially in a fragment
with so little context like this.
A poem I like for a comment at the end is Barnard's 83:
I have no embroidered
headband from Sardis to
give you, Cleis, such as
I wore
and my mother
always said that in her
day a purple ribbon
looped in the hair was thought
to be the high style indeed
but we were dark:
a girl
whose hair is yellower than
torchlight should wear no
headdress but fresh flowers
I like the reference to wearing flowers in the hair of a blond head,
because I used to wear flowers in my hair. This poem also gives evidence
to Psappha's dark coloring, inherited form her mother, which her lovely
Kleis did not inherit. I think that, though Psappha was slightly jealous
of her daughter's more standardised beauty, although this did not diminish
her love, which she proclaims in Barnard's 17:
I have a small
daughter called
Cleis, who is
like a golden
flower
I wouldn't
take all Croesus'
kingdom with love
thrown in, for her
This mystery woman with her mystery poems has plagued us throughout history. Psappha is unique in that, while being loved for excellence in poetry, she is simultaneously condemned for what is in her poems. Those who love her are either forced to hate her because of who she was or change her to make her acceptable. She has never been who history thought she was. I don't believe she was the matronly type, as the French thought, nor the prostitute, as the Germans thought.[38] She was not pure, she was not purely evil. I think Psappha was a woman, feeling and breathing like any woman. I think she was an extraordinary poet, one of the best ever to have lived. Her poetry knows no time boundaries. Even in twice mutilated form (first the Greek text, then by translation into English) it speaks clear and honest. I wish only that the sands of Egypt will give up more of her precious treasures.
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