What is the significance of sappho

Princeton: Princeton University Press, He claims that the poetry of Sappho was closely modeled on the public speech genres of women in ancient Greece. Mitchell-Boyask, Robin.

A great resource for someone looking for help in understanding the poetry of Sappho. Some of the links provided do not work regarding biographical information, but the ones that do work are rather good. Great background information is available here as well including information on the social and political conditions in which Sappho lived, information on her home, Lesbos , and a few pictures are presented as well. Plant, I. Norman: University of Oklahoma, This book is rather encyclopedic in content regarding the numerous women included in the text.

Robinson, M. Sappho and Her Influence. Robinson portrays Sappho as a 20th century woman living in the 6th century B. He details what life was like for women on the island of Lesbos and how it differed greatly from that of the rest of the world at that time. He extends her influence to numerous areas such as; art, literature, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, music, and American and French literature.

It is fascinating to see how much Sappho has influenced various cultures around the globe throughout history and how she influenced the culture during the time in which she lived. Weigall, Arthur. Sappho of Lesbos. New York: Stokes Company, Notify me of new posts via email. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address:. Sign me up! Important Women of History. Home Recommended Reading. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading February 19, at pm.

Elisabeth M says:. February 20, at am. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. Email required Address never made public. Name required. Consequences be damned! Sappho reveals that Anactoria is gone and is missed. She compares her, indirectly, to Helen and then evokes her beauty, namely her gait and her sparkling face. But they are also powerful, as she rejects the world of masculine warfare in preference for beauty and desire.

In another well-preserved piece, Fragment 31, Sappho evokes the sensations she experiences as a result of being seated opposite a beautiful woman:.

He seems to me equal in good fortune to the whatever man, who sits on the opposite side to you and listens nearby to your sweet replies and desire-inducing laugh: indeed that gets my heart pounding in my breast.

For just gazing at you for a second, it is impossible for me even to talk; my tongue is broken, all at once a soft flame has stolen beneath my flesh, my eyes see nothing at all, my ears ring, sweat pours down me, a tremor shakes me, I am more greenish than grass, and I believe I am at the very point of death.

The man is god-like because he can be in the presence of the woman and remain unaffected. Sappho, in contrast, is a physical, mental and emotional wreck. The fragmented condition of the piece includes a few words that indicate at least one more stanza followed.

Translating Sappho is no mean feat. Most of the work is in poor condition, pieced together by papyrologists to make readable texts for scholars to work from. Confronted with the Aeolic Greek of the poet, printed neatly on a page, the translator is immediately drawn into emendations, conjectures, broken lines, missing words, incomplete words, hypothetical punctuation and, in short, a philological headache. And, after persisting, the translator is always dissatisfied.

But despite the hurdles and the intellectual heartache, there are rewards in recent discoveries that continue to add more words, more lines, more stanzas and sometimes even new poems to the canon.

In , the discovery of piece of papyrus that completed an existing fragment - thereby making a new poem by Sappho - received international media coverage.

The process of repair resulted in Poem 58 , which deals with the themes of youth and old age. Sappho mourns the passing of her youth, and reminds her audience of the myth of Tithonos , one of the few mortals to be loved by a goddess. Struck by the beauty of the young man, the goddess Eos asks Zeus to permit her to take the young man to live with her eternity.

But Eos forgets to ask that Tithonos be granted a second gift: eternal youth. And so, she is left with a lover she quickly finds hideous and repellent, and Tithonos is left alone, trapped in a never-ending cycle of ageing.

More and more of Sappho is emerging. In , more new fragments were discovered that have assisted in reconstructing existing pieces, and bringing to light four previously unknown pieces.