{"id":8710,"date":"2023-08-28T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/?p=8710"},"modified":"2023-08-26T18:45:03","modified_gmt":"2023-08-26T22:45:03","slug":"the-eternal-wisdom-of-sappho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/the-eternal-wisdom-of-sappho\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eternal Wisdom of Sappho"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><div id=\"tdi_1\" class=\"tdc-row\"><div class=\"vc_row tdi_2  wpb_row td-pb-row\" >\n<style scoped>\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n.tdi_2,\r\n                .tdi_2 .tdc-columns{\r\n                    min-height: 0;\r\n                }.tdi_2,\r\n\t\t\t\t.tdi_2 .tdc-columns{\r\n\t\t\t\t    display: block;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_2 .tdc-columns{\r\n\t\t\t\t    width: 100%;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_2:before,\r\n\t\t\t\t.tdi_2:after{\r\n\t\t\t\t    display: table;\r\n\t\t\t\t}\n<\/style><div class=\"vc_column tdi_4  wpb_column vc_column_container tdc-column td-pb-span12\">\n<style scoped>\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n.tdi_4{\r\n                    vertical-align: baseline;\r\n                }.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper,\r\n\t\t\t\t.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper > .tdc-elements{\r\n\t\t\t\t    display: block;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper > .tdc-elements{\r\n\t\t\t\t    width: 100%;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper > .vc_row_inner{\r\n\t\t\t\t    width: auto;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper{\r\n\t\t\t\t    width: auto;\r\n\t\t\t\t    height: auto;\r\n\t\t\t\t}\n<\/style><div class=\"wpb_wrapper\" ><div class=\"wpb_wrapper td_block_empty_space td_block_wrap vc_empty_space tdi_6 \"  style=\"height: 32px\"><\/div>[vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Feature Image:<\/strong><br \/>\nSappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864), by Simeon Solomon<\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text]<div class=\"wpb_wrapper td_block_separator td_block_wrap vc_separator tdi_8  td_separator_solid td_separator_center\"><span style=\"border-color:#EBEBEB;border-width:1px;width:100%;\"><\/span>\n<style scoped>\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n.td_block_separator{\r\n                  width: 100%;\r\n                  align-items: center;\r\n                  margin-bottom: 38px;\r\n                  padding-bottom: 10px;\r\n                }.td_block_separator span{\r\n                  position: relative;\r\n                  display: block;\r\n                  margin: 0 auto;\r\n                  width: 100%;\r\n                  height: 1px;\r\n                  border-top: 1px solid #EBEBEB;\r\n                }.td_separator_align_left span{\r\n                  margin-left: 0;\r\n                }.td_separator_align_right span{\r\n                  margin-right: 0;\r\n                }.td_separator_dashed span{\r\n                  border-top-style: dashed;\r\n                }.td_separator_dotted span{\r\n                  border-top-style: dotted;\r\n                }.td_separator_double span{\r\n                  height: 3px;\r\n                  border-bottom: 1px solid #EBEBEB;\r\n                }.td_separator_shadow > span{\r\n                  position: relative;\r\n                  height: 20px;\r\n                  overflow: hidden;\r\n                  border: 0;\r\n                  color: #EBEBEB;\r\n                }.td_separator_shadow > span > span{\r\n                  position: absolute;\r\n                  top: -30px;\r\n                  left: 0;\r\n                  right: 0;\r\n                  margin: 0 auto;\r\n                  height: 13px;\r\n                  width: 98%;\r\n                  border-radius: 100%;\r\n                }html :where([style*='border-width']){\r\n                    border-style: none;\r\n                }\n<\/style><\/div>[vc_column_text]<span class=\"dropcap dropcap2\">A<\/span>ccording to the Ancient Greek poet Alcaeus of Mytilene, \u201cNo man sings like a Lesbian singer.\u201d A very progressive statement for 600 B.C., but he was actually speaking of the magic and beauty of the lyric poets of the island of Lesbos and, more particularly, of his contemporary Sappho. Possibly the most heralded singer-songwriter of pre-Christian times, Sappho is mainly remembered today for her love of the ladies, as so little of her poetry survives. Yet for a woman who literally gave her name to a euphemism for female gayness, she wrote an awful lot of lust poems about men as well and even apparently threw herself off a cliff because a man didn\u2019t love her. All this complication leads me to Sappho\u2019s unexpected heyday, the 19th century, where this magical Greek poet by necessity became all these things and more.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start with who Sappho was. As someone who lived around six hundred years before Christ, she didn\u2019t leave a lot of personal information, but we know that she wrote lyric poetry that was intended to be sung with accompanying music and that her work was so popular that she was christened the \u201cTenth Muse.\u201d Much of what we know about Sappho is inferred from her poems, as the earliest biography of her wasn\u2019t written until nearly 800 years after her death. Most of her poetry is now lost, however, with only fragments and one complete poem, the famous \u201cOde to Aphrodite,\u201d surviving. But such was the power of her reputation and the lines that were discovered that she remained in the canon for centuries. Then along came the Victorians, for whom she would personify all aspects of womanhood. Do you want a talented poetess whose work has transcended centuries? Do you want a decadent lover, whose queerness knows no shame? Do you fancy a suicidal, spurned tragic heroine? A love witch with incantations for her errant lovers? There is a Sappho for every occasion\u2014but how many of them were figments of the 19th century imagination?<\/p>\n<p>The Victorians loved the classical period. Painters joyously placed wistful figures on cold marble benches, draped in flimsy fabric. In Sappho, they found the perfect subject onto which they could project all the ideas of the civilized intellect that the homogenous \u201cclassics\u201d evoke. In Sappho at Mytilene (1876), Pierre Coomans shows bevies of classical beauties listening to Sappho while offering her laurel crowns. Similarly, John William Godward\u2019s 1904 Sappho of Lesbos shows a buxom woman wrapped in diaphanous fabrics, sensibly sitting on a fur rug\u2014I\u2019m guessing marble is a tad cold, especially first thing in the morning. In Lawrence Alma-Tadema\u2019s 1881 Sappho and Alcaeus, the painter, well-known for his classical scenes, places the two poets together, with Sappho leaning forward in contemplation as she listens to her contemporary\u2019s song. These images are like corporate portraits: Sappho at work as an intellectual, among her peers who respect and celebrate her. It\u2019s unsurprising that poets such as Felicia Hemans, Katherine Bradley, and Edith Cooper (who wrote under the male pseudonym Michael Fields) wrote in praise of their sister poetess.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=&#8221;8713&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; add_caption=&#8221;yes&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221;][vc_column_text]Not that there weren\u2019t scores of male poets who also aligned themselves with Sappho. Most famous among them was Algernon Swinburne, whose extremely florid verse envisaged \u201cthe Lesbians kissing across their smitten \/ Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Possibly what Swinburne was imagining in \u201cSapphics\u201d (1866) was an 1864 painting by Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene. In this work, Sappho is not kissing her beloved Erinna across her smitten lute; she has instead sensibly put her instrument to one side. No one wants a lute awkwardly poked in their ribcage during an embrace.<\/p>\n<p>Solomon in turn was apparently inspired by Swinburne\u2019s earlier poems about the life and loves of Sappho, including<br \/>\nof her fellow poet Erinna. In Sappho\u2019s own poem \u201cOde to Aphrodite,\u201d the poet calls upon the goddess to make the girl she desires fall in love with her. In return Aphrodite recites an incantation, some love magic that will win her heart: \u201cShe who shuns love soon will pursue it, \/ She who scorns gifts will send them still: \/ That girl will learn love, though she do it \/ Against her will.\u201d In Solomon\u2019s painting, it\u2019s noticeable that Sappho seems far more enamored of Erinna, leaning in, eyes closed. Erinna, by contrast, just sort of sits there, not really getting involved. It is tempting to think that Sappho was calling for help from Aphrodite because Erinna was just not that into her. Here, however, we encounter the main problem with Erinna and Sappho\u2019s relationship: They never met. Erinna played very hard to get by being born a few centuries after Sappho\u2019s death. Sappho undoubtedly sang to Aphrodite about the love of a girl, or possibly a few girls, but who they were remains unknown.<\/p>\n<p>Another problem with the well-known Lesbian is that she also wrote about her love of boys. In my favorite of her fragments, she foreshadows Charli XCX\u2019s 2017 lyrical ballad \u201cBoys,\u201d telling her mother she can\u2019t possibly do any weaving today as she is busy thinking \u2019bout boys \u2026<\/p>\n<p><em>I can\u2019t take the shuttle in hand, <\/em><br \/>\n<em>There is a boy, and lust<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Has crushed my spirit \u2026<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=&#8221;8712&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; add_caption=&#8221;yes&#8221; alignment=&#8221;center&#8221;][vc_column_text]This bisexuality could well have come from some overzealous translators correcting Sappho\u2019s \u201cmistake\u201d of putting girl where she obviously meant boy. There is a fair amount of back and forth in the translations, as some poems could be interpreted as a boy speaking of his love of a girl, and some feature boy lust that leaves you too weak to weave. All of these could be said to have a narrator who is not Sappho but a character. But when Sappho names herself in the poem, such as in \u201cOde of Aphrodite,\u201d there is no mistaking that she is asking for the love of a girl. Then the obvious conclusion is that Sappho fell in lust with everyone. No wonder she had no energy for weaving.<\/p>\n<p>All this rampant queerness startled some of her more conservative translators and readers, and so another myth of Sappho came to take the artistic world by storm: that of a tragic leap to her death. According to legend, Sappho fell in love with Phaon, a boatman who had been made young and beautiful by a magical ointment given to him by Aphrodite. His newly found hotness turned him into a very unpleasant chap indeed, and when he mistreated Sappho, she threw herself off the Leucadian cliffs to cure herself of her love for him.<\/p>\n<p>But this is rather spurious, as Phaon was entirely mythical. For Sappho to die for his love would be a bit like me falling into despair because Sherlock Holmes won\u2019t call me back. Yet the idea of the poetic, lovelorn Sappho atop a cliff became a recurring theme for such artists as Charles Mengin. In his Sappho (1877), the poet is so distraught in love that her boobs have fallen out of her frock. Similarly, Miquel Carbonel Selva\u2019s The Death of Sappho (1881) shows the poet casting aside her lyre and preparing to plunge into the tumultuous seas below. Charles Lenoir goes a step further in his 1896 painting, showing the drowning Sappho sinking beneath the water, clutching her lyre, completely naked. Unrequited love seems to make all your clothes fall off.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite take on this motif must be Lawrence Koe\u2019s 1888 masterpiece of Sappho, naked on a rock, clutching her lyre. It\u2019s hard to work out if she\u2019s dead, mad, or just having a bit of a tough day, but there are shades of Ophelia about her. While we have no proof that Sappho hurled herself off a cliff for the love of a feckless man, there are shades of that torment in her poems, such as \u201cIn all honesty, I want to die,\u201d where Sappho and her lover say that despite everything they have been through, they can\u2019t help but remember the good times, and it is hard to say goodbye to that.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The poetry of Sappho, more than 2,500 years old, has a magic that is eternal. This fact was apparent to Sappho herself, who says to us in a fragment:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI declare \/ That later on, \/ Even in an age unlike our own, \/ Someone will remember who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For previous eras, she spoke openly about love in all the different shades and flavors, how she loved those that did not love her, how she was parted from those she loved and learned to love again. The reason the Victorians were drawn to her work was partly because of the discovery of more fragments in archaeological digs, but it was also that her free discussion of love chimed with the decadent aesthetic period. Feel your feelings and love your loves!<\/p>\n<p>Yet the myth of the suicidal Sappho also serves as a warning against such behavior: Too much love will be the death of you. A woman in full pursuit of a lover will never be successful; let that be a warning to you. Despite that, the Victorians made her beautiful and uncompromising even in death.<\/p>\n<p>When I see the paintings of Sappho sitting on a marble bench looking thoughtful, I don\u2019t believe she is having the intellectual thoughts the artist probably intended. Instead I imagine her thinking one her poems: \u201cMay you bed down, \/ Head to breast, upon \/ The flesh \/ Of a plush \/ Companion.\u201d Our girl Sappho spoke the eternal truth that everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.[\/vc_column_text][vc_cta h2=&#8221;Subscribe!&#8221; txt_align=&#8221;center&#8221; style=&#8221;flat&#8221; color=&#8221;grey&#8221; add_button=&#8221;bottom&#8221; btn_title=&#8221;Subscribe Today!&#8221; btn_style=&#8221;flat&#8221; btn_color=&#8221;mulled-wine&#8221; btn_align=&#8221;center&#8221; btn_button_block=&#8221;true&#8221; btn_link=&#8221;url:https%3A%2F%2Fenchantedlivingmag.com%2Fcollections%2Fsubscribe|target:_blank|rel:nofollow&#8221;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><i><img data-dominant-color=\"426373\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #426373;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-8379 size-medium aligncenter not-transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-231x300.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"231\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-231x300.webp 231w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-789x1024.webp 789w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-768x997.webp 768w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-1183x1536.webp 1183w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-1577x2048.webp 1577w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-696x904.webp 696w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-1068x1387.webp 1068w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-1920x2493.webp 1920w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-323x420.webp 323w, https:\/\/enchantedlivingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/EL63_FinalWebVersion-1-scaled.webp 1971w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 231px) 100vw, 231px\" \/>Enchanted Living<\/i><\/em> is a quarterly print magazine that celebrates all things enchanted.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Subscribe now and begin with our Summer Witch issue!<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<p>[\/vc_cta]<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[vc_column_text] Feature Image: Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864), by Simeon Solomon [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]According to the Ancient Greek poet Alcaeus of Mytilene, \u201cNo man sings like a Lesbian singer.\u201d A very progressive statement for 600 B.C., but he was actually speaking of the magic and beauty of the lyric poets of the island [...]","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":8711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[82,80,129,91],"tags":[2045,2044,2048,401,2047,1621,2046,2043,275,2049],"class_list":{"0":"post-8710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-essays","8":"category-fiction","9":"category-mythology","10":"category-writing","11":"tag-19th-century-fascination","12":"tag-ancient-greek-poet","13":"tag-bisexuality","14":"tag-enchanted-living-magazine","15":"tag-eternal-wisdom","16":"tag-kirsty-stonell-walker","17":"tag-lyrical-magic","18":"tag-sappho","19":"tag-summer-issue","20":"tag-tragic-myths"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Eternal Wisdom of Sappho &#8211; Enchanted Living Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Discover the enigmatic allure of Sappho, the ancient Greek poet, through the lens of 19th-century fascination. 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