Sappho - critical quotations

M.L West on simplicity

‘sometimes the best vehicle of intensity’

Caroll Ann Duffy on what Sappho conveys

‘startling how much life is conveyed by so little’

Carol Ann Duffy’s 3 word description

‘melodic, intimate, sensual’

Poochigian on what Sappho has

the ‘ability to activate multiple perspectives within the same poem and to elide differences between subject and object’  

Poochigian on Poem 48

‘exquisitely beautiful’

Plato calls Sappho

the ‘tenth’ muse

Nossis (female poet circa 300BC) on Sappho’s charms

‘be inspired by the flower of Sappho’s charms’

what Algernon Charles Swinburne calls Sappho

‘the greatest poet who ever was’

Matthew Barr on respect for Sappho

‘respected as a poet but feared as a role model’

Poochigian on Poem 16

‘Revolutionary’ because ‘she gives a fully human voice to female desire for the first time in western literature’

Freeman on Sappho

‘First and greatest of the women poets’

Ann Carson on what the doorkeeper poem does

‘serves as a metaphor for crossing the threshold into married life’

Carol Ann Duffy on what Sappho wrote about

‘she was one of the first poets to write out of the personal, moving away from the narrative of the gods to the direct and human story of the individual’

Carol Ann Duffy on Sappho’s content

‘lyrics of love and desire, of loss and longing’

Carol Ann Duffy on what Sappho had

‘a poet’s and a woman’s eye for the gorgeous’

Carol Ann Duffy on what Sappho speaks to

‘our humanity’

Carol Ann Duffy on what Sappho shows

‘her openness to desire, her willingness to love, her acceptance of a lover’s suffering’

Caroll Ann Duffy on the effects of love

‘brain and tongue shattered by love’

James Davison on Poem 16

‘has attracted much appreciation’

Freeman on what Poem 1 shows

‘an ‘intensely personal interaction between Sappho and the goddess’   

what Poem 1 contains

‘one of the earliest examples of a Greek magic spell’

what Freeman calls Poem 2

‘a profoundly sensual prayer’

Freeman on Poem 2

‘a song of powerful religious imagery evoking a mystical union of worshippers, the goddess, and natural setting of her outdoor temple’

Athenaeus on gods and flowers

‘the more a thing is bedecked with flowers, the more delightful it is for the gods’

Nossis (female poet, 300BC) on Aphrodite and roses

‘whoever Aphrodite has not loved doesn’t know what sort of blessing her roses are’

in Hesiod’s ‘Theogony’ Eros is described as

‘limb loosening’

Poochigian on Eros

‘both pleasant and painful’

Freeman on Poem 31

‘little else in the literature of the age captures the physical sensations of erotic love’

Poochigian on what Sappho offers in Poem 48

‘erotic emotion and experience expressed in a stylized and ritualized way’

Freeman on what the last stanza of Poem 94 presents

‘the climax of the encounter’  

Lyn Wilson on Poem 94

‘seems designed to give comfort in a way which would be almost maternal if it did not linger over erotic details’

Freeman on Poem 102

‘an amazing openness to youthful female sexuality’ that is perhaps ‘too shocking’ for male ears

Poochigian on desire

both ‘violent and tender’

Poochigian on what characterizes Sappho’s erotic songs

‘a bitter sweetness’

Poochigian on Poem 94

‘thoughts of flowers bind females together’

Freeman on roses

‘especially powerful symbol of female sexuality in classical poetry’

Freeman on the emphasis on bridal virginity

‘as a form of masculine oppression against younger women, lest they dare enjoy their own sexuality and thus reduce their value as commodity to a future husband’

Hyperides, 4th century orator on a woman’s role

‘a woman who leaves her house ought to have reached that stage of life when those who ask who see her don’t ask whose wife she is but whose mother she is’

Segal on Poem 112 + wedding songs more generally?

sees Aphrodite ‘enlisted in the service of social institutions that make for continuity and stability’

Dubois on Poem 16

‘one of the few texts which break the silence of women in antiquity, an instant in which women become more than the object of man’s desire’

Aristophanes, Lysistrata

‘What’s a man but a walking penis?’

lesbiazein was the greek word for

performing oral sex on a man

Aristotle on men

‘men are ashamed to speak of, do and intend shameful things’

Poochigian on

‘more than simply a love song, the poem is a quasi-philosophical treatise on the abstract notion of desire’

Burnett on Poem 22

‘circular Sapphic law according to which beauty demands love and love, in turn, creates the beautiful’ 

Poochigian on what Poem 94 presents

a ‘past conversation framed by a poetic present’

the saying ‘unrivalled, like a Lesbian’ was used

to praise those excellent in song

Lyn Wilson on marriage

‘the young woman moving from the safety of her parents’ home, or the sensual female environment of the Sapphic community, the experience is perhaps more ambivalent than this unqualified festivity would suggest’