Sappho: Poems and Fragments

Works

P. Sapph. Obbink: the fragment of papyrus on which Sappho's Brothers Poem was discovered

Sappho probably wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry; today, only about 650 survive.[4] She is best known for her lyric poetry, written to be accompanied by music.[4] The Suda also attributes to her epigrams, elegiacs, and iambics; three of these epigrams are extant, but are in fact later Hellenistic poems inspired by Sappho.[48] The iambic and elegiac poems attributed to her in the Suda may also be later imitations.[j][48] Ancient authors claim that she primarily wrote love poetry,[51] and the indirect transmission of her work supports this notion.[52] However, the papyrus tradition suggests that this may not have been the case: a series of papyri published in 2014 contains fragments of ten consecutive poems from an ancient edition of Sappho, of which only two are certainly love poems, while at least three and possibly four are primarily concerned with family.[52]

Ancient editions

It is uncertain when Sappho's poetry was first written down. Some scholars believe that she wrote her own poetry down for future readers; others that if she wrote her works down it was as an aid to reperformance rather than as a work of literature in its own right.[53] In the fifth century BC, Athenian book publishers probably began to produce copies of Lesbian lyric poetry, some including explanatory material and glosses as well as the poems themselves.[54] Some time in the second or third century BC, Alexandrian scholars produced a critical edition of her poetry.[55] There may have been more than one Alexandrian edition – John J. Winkler argues for two, one edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium and another by his pupil Aristarchus of Samothrace.[56] This is not certain – ancient sources tell us that Aristarchus' edition of Alcaeus replaced the edition by Aristophanes, but are silent on whether Sappho's work also went through multiple editions.[57]

The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry may have been based on an Athenian text of her poems, or one from her native Lesbos,[58] and was divided into at least eight books, though the exact number is uncertain.[59] Many modern scholars have followed Denys Page, who conjectured a ninth book in the standard edition;[59] Dimitrios Yatromanolakis doubts this, noting that though ancient sources refer to an eighth book of her poetry, none mention a ninth.[60] The Alexandrian edition of Sappho probably grouped her poems by their metre: ancient sources tell us that each of the first three books contained poems in a single specific metre.[61] Book one of the Alexandrian edition, made up of poems in Sapphic stanzas, seems to have been ordered alphabetically.[62]

Even after the publication of the standard Alexandrian edition, Sappho's poetry continued to circulate in other poetry collections. For instance, the Cologne Papyrus on which the Tithonus poem is preserved was part of a Hellenistic anthology of poetry, which contained poetry arranged by theme, rather than by metre and incipit, as it was in the Alexandrian edition.[63]

Surviving poetry

The earliest surviving manuscripts of Sappho, including the potsherd on which fragment 2 is preserved, date to the third century BC, and thus might predate the Alexandrian edition.[56] The latest surviving copies of her poems transmitted directly from ancient times are written on parchment codex pages from the sixth and seventh centuries AD, and were surely reproduced from ancient papyri now lost.[64] Manuscript copies of her works may have survived a few centuries longer, but around the ninth century her poetry appears to have disappeared,[65] and by the 12th century, John Tzetzes could write that "the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works".[66][67]

According to legend, Sappho's poetry was lost because the church disapproved of her morals.[40] These legends appear to have originated in the Renaissance – around 1550, Jerome Cardan wrote that Gregory Nazianzen had her work publicly destroyed, and at the end of the 16th century Joseph Justus Scaliger claimed that her works were burned in Rome and Constantinople in 1073 on the orders of Pope Gregory VII.[65]

In reality, Sappho's work was probably lost as the demand for it was insufficiently great for it to be copied onto parchment when codices superseded papyrus scrolls as the predominant form of book.[68] A contributing factor to the loss of her poems may have been her Aeolic dialect, considered provincial in a period where the Attic dialect was seen as the true classical Greek,[68] and had become the standard for literary compositions.[69] Consequently, many readers found her dialect difficult to understand: in the second century AD, the Roman author Apuleius specifically remarks on its "strangeness",[70] and several commentaries on the subject demonstrate the difficulties that readers had with it.[71] This was part of a more general decline in interest in the archaic poets;[72] indeed, the surviving papyri suggest that Sappho's poetry survived longer than that of her contemporaries such as Alcaeus.[73]

Only approximately 650 lines of Sappho's poetry still survive, of which just one poem – the Ode to Aphrodite – is complete, and more than half of the original lines survive in around ten more fragments. Many of the surviving fragments of Sappho contain only a single word[4] – for example, fragment 169A is simply a word meaning "wedding gifts" (ἀθρήματα, athremata),[74] and survives as part of a dictionary of rare words.[75] The two major sources of surviving fragments of Sappho are quotations in other ancient works, from a whole poem to as little as a single word, and fragments of papyrus, many of which were rediscovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.[76] Other fragments survive on other materials, including parchment and potsherds.[48] The oldest surviving fragment of Sappho currently known is the Cologne papyrus that contains the Tithonus poem, dating to the third century BC.[77]

Until the last quarter of the 19th century, Sappho's poetry was known only through quotations in the works of other ancient authors. In 1879, the first new discovery of a fragment of Sappho was made at Fayum.[78] By the end of the 19th century, Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt had begun to excavate an ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, leading to the discoveries of many previously unknown fragments of Sappho.[79] Fragments of Sappho continue to be rediscovered. In the 21st century, major discoveries were made in 2004 (the "Tithonus poem" and a new, previously unknown fragment)[80] and 2014 (fragments of nine poems: five already known but with new readings, four, including the "Brothers Poem", not previously known).[81] Additionally, in 2005 a commentary on her poems on a papyrus from the second or third century AD was published.[82]

Style

He seems like a god to me the man who is near you, Listening to your sweet voice and exquisite laughter That makes my heart so wildly beat in my breast. If I but see you for a moment, then all my words Leave me, my tongue is broken and a sudden fire Creeps through my blood. No longer can I see. My ears are full of noise. In all my body I Shudder and sweat. I am pale as the sun-scorched Grass. In my fury I seem like a dead woman, But I would dare...

— Sappho 31, trans. Edward Storer[83]

Sappho worked within a well-developed tradition of poetry from Lesbos, which had evolved its own poetic diction, metres, and conventions.[84] Prior to Sappho and her contemporary Alcaeus, Lesbos was associated with poetry and music through the mythical Orpheus and Arion, and through the seventh-century BC poet Terpander.[85] The Aeolic metrical tradition in which she composed her poetry was distinct from that of the rest of Greece as its lines always contained a fixed number of syllables – in contrast to other traditions that allowed for the substitution of two short syllables for one long or vice versa.[86]

Sappho was one of the first Greek poets to adopt the "lyric 'I'" – to write poetry adopting the viewpoint of a specific person, in contrast to the earlier poets Homer and Hesiod, who present themselves more as "conduits of divine inspiration".[87] Her poetry explores individual identity and personal emotions – desire, jealousy, and love; it also adopts and reinterprets the existing imagery of epic poetry in exploring these themes.[88] Much of her poetry focuses on the lives and experiences of women.[89] Along with the love poetry for which she is best known, her surviving works include poetry focused on the family, epic-influenced narrative, wedding songs, cult hymns, and invective.[90]

With the exception of a few songs, where the performance context can be deduced from the surviving fragments with some degree of confidence, scholars disagree on how and where Sappho's works were performed.[91] They seem to have been composed for a variety of occasions both public and private, and probably encompassed both solo and choral works.[92] Most of her best-preserved fragments, such as the Ode to Aphrodite, are usually thought to be written for solo performance[93] – though some scholars, such as André Lardinois, believe that most or all of her poems were originally composed for choral performances.[94] These works, which Leslie Kurke describes as "private and informal compositions" in contrast to the public ritual nature of cultic hymns and wedding songs,[95] tend to avoid giving details of a specific chronological, geographical, or occasional setting, which Kurke suggests facilitated their reperformance by performers outside Sappho's original context.[96]

Sappho's poetry is known for its clear language and simple thoughts, sharply-drawn images, and use of direct quotation that brings a sense of immediacy.[97] Unexpected word-play is a characteristic feature of her style.[98] An example is from fragment 96: "now she stands out among Lydian women as after sunset the rose-fingered moon exceeds all stars",[99] a variation of the Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered Dawn".[100] Her poetry often uses hyperbole, according to ancient critics "because of its charm":[101] for example, in fragment 111 she writes that "The groom approaches like Ares [...] Much bigger than a big man".[102]

Kurke groups Sappho with those archaic Greek poets from what has been called the "élite" ideological tradition,[k] which valued luxury (habrosyne) and high birth. These elite poets tended to identify themselves with the worlds of Greek myths, gods, and heroes, as well as the wealthy East, especially Lydia.[104] Thus in fragment 2 she has Aphrodite "pour into golden cups nectar lavishly mingled with joys",[105] while in the Tithonus poem she explicitly states that "I love the finer things [habrosyne]".[106][107][l] According to Page duBois, the language, as well as the content, of Sappho's poetry evokes an aristocratic sphere.[109] She contrasts Sappho's "flowery,[...] adorned" style with the "austere, decorous, restrained" style embodied in the works of later classical authors such as Sophocles, Demosthenes, and Pindar.[109]

Music

One of the earliest surviving images of Sappho, from c. 470 BC. She is shown holding a barbitos and plectrum, and turning to listen to Alcaeus.[26]

Sappho's poetry was written to be sung, but its musical content is largely uncertain.[110] As it is unlikely that any system of musical notation existed in Ancient Greece before the fifth century, the original music that accompanied her songs probably did not survive until the classical period,[110] and no ancient musical scores to accompany her poetry survive.[111] Sappho reportedly wrote in the mixolydian mode,[112] which was considered sorrowful; it was commonly used in Greek tragedy, and Aristoxenus believed that the tragedians learned it from Sappho.[113] Aristoxenus attributed to Sappho the invention of this mode, but this is unlikely.[114] While there are no attestations that she used other modes, she presumably varied them depending on the poem's character.[112] When originally sung, each syllable of her text likely corresponded to one note as the use of lengthy melismata developed in the later classical period.[115]

Sappho wrote both songs for solo and choral performance.[115] With Alcaeus, she pioneered a new style of sung monody (single-line melody) that departed from the multi-part choral style that largely defined earlier Greek music.[114] This style afforded her more opportunities to individualize the content of her poems; the historian Plutarch noted that she "speaks words mingled truly with fire, and through her songs, she draws up the heat of her heart".[114] Some scholars theorize that the Tithonus poem was among her works meant for a solo singer.[115] Only fragments of Sappho's choral works are extant; of these, her epithalamia (wedding songs) survive better than her cultic hymns.[114] The later compositions were probably meant for antiphonal performance between either a male and female choir or a soloist and choir.[115]

In Sappho's time, sung poetry was usually accompanied by musical instruments, which usually doubled the voice in unison or played homophonically an octave higher or lower.[112] Her poems mention numerous instruments, including the pektis, a harp of Lydian origin,[m] and lyre.[n][115] Sappho is most closely associated with the barbitos,[114] a lyre-like string instrument that was deep in pitch.[115] Euphorion of Chalcis reports that she referred to it in her poetry,[116] and a fifth-century red-figure vase by either the Dokimasia Painter or Brygos Painter includes Sappho and Alcaeus with barbitoi.[115] Sappho mentions the aulos, a wind instrument with two pipes, in fragment 44 as accompanying the song of the Trojan women at Hector and Andromache's wedding, but not as accompanying her own poetry.[118] Later Greek commentators wrongly believed that she had invented the plectrum.[119]


This content is from Wikipedia. GradeSaver is providing this content as a courtesy until we can offer a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it.