Love & Relationships: Sappho

Loeb 1: goddess of embroidered throne / overwhelm my heart with anguish, with affliction / Leaving you father’s golden chambers, yoking your chariot / swift beautiful sparrows / 5 / Who, Sappho, is hurting you now? / By my ally

Invokation of Aphrodite, ________, daughter of Zeus (patronym) & weaver of wiles

Sappho asks that Aph. not _______ but to come to her if she has ever before (close bond, connection to divinity)

Humour in sudden shift from _______ to _______ (close-packed wings whirling - emph. small)

Here, Aph smiling asks her ‘what was I suffering? ending the list of __ questions with _______

Then moves into tricolon of erotic revenge (the girl will love her even if she does not want to…)

Finishes with a final plea of help and ____

Loeb 2: Crete behind! Come to this holy temple / through the branches of the apple trees…shadow of roses…trembling leaves…breeze blows gently / the cold water sings / gracefully into their wine cups

Another invokation of Aphrodite asking her to leave _______ (where there is a grove of apple trees - connection to female sexuality)

Seductive imagery of Lesbos to entice goddess of desire and beauty eg. ______ (sensory experience, vivid)

Also meta element with _____

Ends with final plea again and to pour nectar _______

Acts a snapshot of time, freeze beauty forever

Loeb 15: Cypris, Charaxes, Doricha, second

third invocation of Aphrodite - called *_____,* wishes that her brother (_____) return and not be with boastful

_____ (believed to be Egyptian prostitute) - ____ time he’s returned to his long-lost love

Loeb 16: the most beautiful sight in the whole world / the most excellent of men and sailed to Troy / Anactoria / her lovely walk and her gleaming face / foot-soldiers with their weapons / who is not here with me

Begins with _________ that sets up the priamel (cavalry, infantry, ships? - tricolon set of military) → one that you love

First uses Helen as example who abandoned her husband _______ (suggestion that this was for love) - alignment to Sappho who will do anything for one she loved (active, autonomy, alignment to soldiers)

However, pathos for family (without a thought for…dear parents) + reference to Sappho’s love of _____ who she states she would rather look upon ___________ than all the chariots of Lydians and ______

Sees Helen and Anactoria as object to be viewed rather than active (connection strengthened as _______ seeing Sappho instead as abandoned family)

Loeb 17: the sons of Atreus, those famour kings, also prayed to you / many victories at Troy, then on the sea, then they set out from here / Zeus the defender…Dionysus, Tyone’s charming son / as you helped in the past

Invokation again but of Hera, states that ________ which aligns Sappho to Homeric / Epic heroes (emph. through use of patronymic)

Then lists their exploits in summary __________ (from here sees connection to Lesbos - kleos for self + alternative myth, not in Homer)

Then links back to their reason for calling to Hera - could not complete journey until they called on Hera (as well as _________)

Ends with a final plea & reference to how she’s helped her before - _______

Loeb 22: Abanthis / for her dress aroused you, as you gazed at it / katagogis / beautiful clothes, poetry or song  

Calls upon _____ to take up the lyre and sing of Gongyla

Then A becomes object of both Sappho and Gongyla in ________ (you references Gongyla) who watch her as she sings

Appears to be private matter (but dress = _____ = public cloak, external poetry reading = for the people)

\+ highlights ________ as tools for seduction

Loeb 24a: you will remember what we did when we were young / memory / universal / Homeric

__________ - use of ____, ____ = forms connection with audience - a ____ motif (uses myth through memory), opens up dialogue of communication

Unfinished euphemism in ‘many beautiful things \[…\]’

Loeb 30: may the maidens sing / all night long, / may they sing of your delights, your bride, adorned with violets, bachelor friends, nocturnal bird, nightingale

epithalamium - self-referential with _____ (meta) + bride described with ____ (symbol of femininity) - so that we may stay awake (wake the __) with the clear-voiced ______ ( so shows party throughout the night, more meta elements)

Loeb 31: hearing your sweet voice, close to him and your charming laughter / strikes fear in (my) chest / my tongue breaks…see nothing with my eyes but there is a buzzing in my ears / sweat pours over me / I think I am on the point of death

First verse focuses on man who sits opposite the beloved - Sappho compares him to a god in how he can manage to be fine when _______ / contrast to Sappho for whom hearing the laughter _______

Second verse sees paradoxical inability to speak while she sings

Further references to illness with ______ (+ delicate fire under her skin) in third verse

Fourth / fifth verse sees same idea (further introspective experience that moves away from the beloved) with _____ and finishes with ______ (orgasmic)

Universal due to lack of names

Loeb 39: embroidered sandals covered her feet, beautiful Lydian workmanship / eastern

‘_________’

* _____ luxury
* embroidered = expensive
* (Lesbos - closer to Turkey, hybrid culture and influence)

Loeb 47: Love shook my soul, like a wind buffeting oak trees on a mountain, elemental

‘__________’ - comparison to _____ & destructive god (personified)

Loeb 34: gleaming brilliance, whenever the moonlight shines over the land, natural

Beautiful moon => stars hide away ______ (beloved?) _________ - a beloved who is watched from afar, shows Sappho take role of observer again & makes other women dull + moon= femininity (Selene), fascination with _____ beauty

Loeb 49: I used to love you, Atthis, but that was a long time ago! I thought you were like a clumsy little girl, memory, infantilising

‘__________’

* In the past (_____)
* Personalised (not universal but does just mean Athenian woman)
* Use of memory sees Sappho as observer even on her own love
* Then _______ (youth= can become refined)
* Changability of love from object to lover (131)

Loeb 50: A handsome man is only good to look at, a good man will become handsome / kindness

‘_____’

* cares about personality
* _____ makes one attractive - moral fibre
* Platonic idea of a good mind making for a fit body

Loeb 57: what farm girl in her farming clothes, charms your mind does she even know how to pull up her ragged dress over her ankles? / ankles / aesthetic

‘________’

* Farmer emphasised through repetition+ ragged = opposite of Sappho
* _____ = can be attractive, but this girl does not understand (no understanding of _____)
* Jealousy & bitterness through derogatory tone

Loeb 32: Who gave their works and made me honoured / muses

______

* _____ + works = ability to be a poet (almost double motivation)
* honoured - compliment to self

Loeb 48: you came just what I was looking for, you soothed my soul which was burning with desire / feel / universal / Dido

________

* (‘look’ also means ____ - physical, sexual)
* _____ through lack of name
* burning = destructive and fatal force of love (____)
* Reciprocation shown here in sexual gratification

Loeb 51: I do not know what I’m going to do, I am in two minds / consciousness, reciprocity

‘______’

* divided ___ (Cat. 85)
* awareness of struggle but confusion
* about liking 2 people, confessing?
* _____ (always watches but never engages)

Loeb 52: I do not think I can touch the sky with my hands / restrained / hapax legomena

_______

* highlights unattainability (_____)
* thoughts on self (so not actual truth)
* isolation
* no context so confusion due to framentary nature
* hands = ____ (only appears once)

Loeb 55: no-one will ever long for you / roses of Pierian muses / performance /  you will be laid out and no-one will remember you / you will wander among the dim shades

Discusses memorialisation after death - to ignorant woman (Plutarch),

Use of poetry to create memory (Sappho is remembered) + create desire (___________)

____ = symbolise performance garlands + nature as symbol for poetry (has no share = does not take part in __ )

When you die, ______ (die = flown from our midst = left choral group) - Sappho’s bitter response to being abandoned, ‘_____’ - no purpose

Loeb 81: garlands, favour the beautifully floral over the ungarlanded, bind stems of anise with your soft hands

put ____ around your lovely hair = nature, beauty (blessed Graces ______)

\+ performance element

Dika = personalised & shows feminine beauty of subject with ______

Loeb 94: I mean this, I do not want to leave you / that we had good times / or sacred space \[…\] from which we stayed away \[…\] No grove \[…\] no dance / violets, roses, crocuses / on a soft bed \[…\] you satisfied your desire

Abandonment poem: honestly I want to die (destructive), weeping (mutual!) she was leaving me

* mutuality also seen in ‘________’

Direct speech personalises, reliable conversation & vivid

If you forget, I want to remind you (_______ - euphemism?) = issue with memory

Wreath → Garland → perfume → ______ = activities of choral group (wants the reminder of performance)

* girl abandons choral group again
* idea that chorus are singing this now
* ‘we’ - royal we? or we as chorus ie. chorus looked after one another + meta element to sing of singing

Also sexual element in flowers _____ (on head + in garlands) and separation of the body (around your head, around your lovely neck) + _____

Loeb 95: the banks of the Acheron, Persephone, I take no pleasure from living! A certain longing to die grips me, Gongyla

“Lord” I said (male? chthonic = extreme grief)

I take no pleasure from living - desperation + I long to see ______ (river of grief - forget previous life)

* Aestheticised with ‘dewey and covered with lotus ’ = beauty of nature (so connected with 94 & 96)
* represent premarital female sexuality (____) - ‘’ = no control, overwhelmed, desire = abandoned? + begins with ‘____’


* hetairai? theasos? (sets up homoromantic context) - first person shows lyric (+ glyconic meter)

Loeb 96: Sardis / she liked your songs best of all / The light spreads over the salty sea and the flowery fields / the beautiful dew falls / she paces up and down

Abandonment poem (_____ - far away, separation)

She honoured you as if a goddess + ________ (divine status of poets)

Like rosy-fingered moon (Homeric epithet in romantic context = subversive)

Simile continues with ‘among all the stars after sunset! ____________’

Sensory experience (____, flowers, bloom here doesn’t mean flower but to let out their smell)

Choral song?

* ‘we’ in previous section
* meta element to sing of dancing here → ‘________’ (as she remembers Atthis - desire)
* performance

Loeb 98a: purple headband / hair more yellow than flaming torch / should wear garlands of flowers in bloom

continuity / community

Mother talks of fashion trend -

Use of colour with ___ & _____ - focus on aesthetic in the needs to match)

* added feminisation with _________

Time jump to now - decorated headband from Sardis = _____ of aesthetic and luxury

Connection between women and _____

Loeb 102: sweet mother! I cannot weave my web, I am smitten by a boy because of slender Aphrodite / female duties / opposition

______

* Male-centred
* Inability to function due to love (web - loom = ______ ) -
* Cannot function in society
* Sees _____ rather than allyship with Aphrodite here

Loeb 104a: 62, Hesperus, you bring back the child to its mother / the shining Dawn scattered

Epithalamium (like Cat. ___ - chorus sing of +ve’s and -ve’s of marriage)

Positive here (could have negative later but fragmentary nature means we don’t know)

_____ invocation in how he brings back (repeated for each object):

* the sheep
* the goats
* ____ (ie. to sleep)

He’s bringing back everything which _______

Loeb 105a: reddening at the highest height of the highest branch / female / curated / completely miss you! They just couldn’t reach / enjoyment

Just like the sweet apple __________

* like = simile
* Apple = symbol of ___ sexuality (Paris)
* Apple trees not wild = ____ space by women,
* Missed by the apple pickers = represent men (they did not ________)
* Destruction of female sexuality
* But a need to be used or will be destroyed by nature anyways (at least brings _____ to men)

Loeb 105c: just like the hyacinth on a mountain, trodden by the feet of the shepherds, and on the ground, a purple flower / thoughtless / teenage / identity

‘_________’

Again, destructive male desire +

Focus not on shepherds (_____ destruction),

Mountain = _____ space (wild, not civilised - men should not be here),

Movement to just purple flower (loss of _____, only aesthetic (purple) physical body remains)

Loeb 110: the doorkeeper has size 27 feet, his sandals are made from 5 hides, 10 shoe-makers toiled over them / bawdy / Homeric

___________

* Sexual euphemism with feet (feet or noses often)
* dangerous size (harmful to women)
* ____ humour
* focus on man outside (mystery of inside wedding chamber)
* ____ motif (link to war - violence)
* But for older women and men = humorous

Loeb 111: Raise the roof, Hymnaeus! Lift it higher, Hymnaeus! / Ares / size / then bigger by far than the biggest man 

‘__________’

* Domestic sphere needs 'breaking' (exclamatory remark repeated)
* Then the bridegroom is coming like ____ = Homeric, violent, love and war aligned,


* ___- difference between immortals and mortals,


* __________ = superlative layered over comparative = unnatural innuendo


* Female perspective of fear

Loeb 112: worked out well for you / you have the girl of your dreams / you look beautiful / Aphrodite above all others

Focuses on chorus compliment the man’s wife and her beauty and how the marriage has ______

‘just as you dreamed that it would ______’ -

* dream repeated twice for emphasis
* you = focalisation of groom → into speech “_____”
* honey-sweet - consumption, sweetness

Presents the bride’s beauty as the sole reason for the groom’s happiness and desire

Sees the publicisation of the intimate moment through the quoted speech

And ends with the groom honoured by ______ (because he has someone everyone else desires)

Loeb 114: Virginity, virginity, where have you gone? You left me behind. // I will come to you no more, no more will I come / unconsenting / abandonment / chiastic / marriage

‘_________________’

Questioning where her virginity has gone (highlights _____ departure),

* Repeated twice = despair,
* Left behind (___ again)

Virginity responds - will never return

* Personification of virginity removes her agency
* ______ structure for emphasis
* Static/inert = lack of control in ______

(fear was seen as attractive in marriage - subversion)

Loeb 118: come my divine lyre, speak to me, find your voice! / invokation / vehicle / personification

‘________’

* _____ of lyre


* Key part in creative process rather than simply ____ for creativity


* _____ gives it autonomy (‘speak’ & ‘voice’)


* like Homer (self-aggradisation)

Loeb 121: if you care about me, find the bed of a younger woman / For I never want to be the older one in a relationship / αμμιν

Tells the audience _______ as narrator ______

____ alludes to chorus singing (women as a whole)

Loeb 130: Love which loosens the limbs once again shakes me! / bittersweet, invincible creature that is control

‘________’

* happened before
* Reference to illness (31)

‘_______’

* Despairing tone
* Has no. ____
* Unbeatable

Loeb 131: Atthis, the thought of me now repulses you and you run off to Andromeda / abandonment / Sappho / lover

‘_____’

* _____ motif
* ring comp. of names (personalised)

‘Thought’ (how does she know?)

* repulse = run off (makes ____ seem the reason that she left - most important factor)
* Atthis (pursuing now) - movement from beloved to active _____

Loeb 132: I have a beautiful daughter, who resembles the sight of golden flowers

golden / sight / more than all of Lydia, more even than… / community

‘___________’

* Talks of her beauty (important value to Sappho + society…)
* Comparison = luxury + femininity but ephemeral…
* But ‘____’ of flowers = aesthetic + experience
* Loves her ________ (priority of family over luxury)
* Female ______ element again (mother in 98a/102)

Loeb 137: Men who don’t want to say anything shameful / I want to say something but a sense of shame holds me back / spit out some hurtful remark

Aristotle quotes this poem and said it was a dialogue between Sappho & Alcaeus (stated that it was a commentary on _____)

Alcaeus is quoted in the poem saying ________

* Uses αιδως (shame) + personified through ‘hold back’

Sappho states that ‘noble or beautiful’ poetry would not cause shame,

And that if his tongue was not about to ‘_______’ (aggressive + sees fear of public opinion) → then Sappho wouldn’t be able to see shame in his eyes

* the physical showing the feelings
* αιδως again in same form)
* must be close to see his eyes properly…

**//** Nagy - Alcaeus pretending to be Sappho (uses Alcaeic meter )

Loeb 146: Neither the honey nor the bee are for me / proverb / love

‘________’

* ____ expressing one who denies the good with the bad out of fear for the bad
* Metaphor for ____?
* Because sweet but causes harm too - like 130 ‘bittersweet’ love

Loeb 148: wealth without virtue can be a harmful neighbour / a blend of the two however is the height of happiness / Plato

States that ‘____’ but ‘_____’

Can still have luxury but virtue must be present also

* ____’s republic (harmony of aesthetic beauty and virtue in body and mind)

Loeb 160: Now, for my companions, I will sing these song beautifully / hetairai / voice

‘____________’

* ____ sees homosocial context
* Comp. to attitude towards male companions such as Alcaeus
* As well as commentary on poetic _____ (beautiful)
* Poetic exchange (connection)

Loeb 164: Gone are the moon / Pleiades / And in the middle of the night / insomnia / time passes / and I lie / alone

________ (beloved perhaps) and the _____ (stars)

(If knows they’re gone, was there when they were - awake for long time)

________ (______, sick with love), _____ (snapshot of moment, slows time)

____ (εγω emphasises self) _____(abandonment theme cont.)