Sappho 94

Last updated

P. Berol. 9722, the parchment on which Sappho 94 is preserved. P. Berol. 9722 side1.jpg
P. Berol. 9722, the parchment on which Sappho 94 is preserved.

Sappho 94, sometimes known as Sappho's Confession, [1] is a fragment of a poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho. The poem is written as a conversation between Sappho and a woman who is leaving her, perhaps in order to marry, and describes a series of memories of their time together. It survives on a sixth-century AD scrap of parchment. Scholarship on the poem has focused on whether the initial surviving lines of the poem are spoken by Sappho or the departing woman, and on the interpretation of the eighth stanza, possibly the only mention of homosexual activities in the surviving Sapphic corpus.

Contents

Preservation

The poem was one of a group (Sappho 92–97) [2] preserved on a sixth-century piece of parchment discovered in Egypt. [3] This parchment, P. Berol. 9722, [4] was probably originally part of a book. [5] The parchment is 12 cm high (though the page was originally about twice this height [5] ) and 43.5 cm wide, [6] and consists of a double-page spread with a third page sewn to the right hand side. [5] The page on which Sappho 94 is preserved is 16 cm wide. [5] It is part of the collection of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, which acquired it in 1896, [7] a gift of a Dr Reinhardt, then the German vice-consul in Bushehr. [8] It was first published by Wilhelm Schubart in 1902. [9]

Parts of ten stanzas of the poem are preserved, though only twelve lines are complete. [10] Only two lines of the first stanza of the poem are preserved, showing that at least one line – the first of that stanza – is missing. [11] It is unknown whether the poem originally had further stanzas either before or after the surviving portion. [5] [lower-alpha 1]

Poem

Content

Simeon Solomon, Erinna Taken from Sappho (1865). In the 19th century, the poet Erinna was believed to be a contemporary of Sappho. Here she is shown leaving Sappho, just as the woman in fragment 94 does. Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) - "Erinna Taken from Sappho" (1865).jpg
Simeon Solomon, Erinna Taken from Sappho (1865). In the 19th century, the poet Erinna was believed to be a contemporary of Sappho. Here she is shown leaving Sappho, just as the woman in fragment 94 does.

The poem is composed in stanzas of three lines, the first two glyconic and the third glyconic with dactylic expansion. [12] That is, the first two lines of each stanza are of the form "× × ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯", and the third is in the form "× × ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯", where × is an anceps (a syllable that can be long or short), ˘ is a short syllable, and ¯ is a long syllable. It was part of Book V of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry, [13] which may have contained poems in a number of different metres based on glyconics. [12]

The poem begins in media res , with at least one prior line missing. [14] The first surviving line of the fragment has either Sappho or the woman leaving her saying that they wish to be dead; as it stands, it is not possible to determine with certainty to which speaker the line should be attributed. [3] Most scholars attribute the initial line of the poem to Sappho. On the other hand, Wilhelm Schubart, the first to edit the poem, initially thought that it was spoken by the departing woman; [15] this is a position that has been taken up more recently by scholars such as Stephanie Larson. [14]

The first two surviving stanzas of the poem establish the scene. Sappho describes the woman leaving her "weeping" [16] and saying that she leaves unwillingly. [17] In the third stanza, Sappho replies, telling the departing woman that she should "Go happily and remember me". [18] The woman leaving Sappho is perhaps departing to marry, [3] and the poem might be part of a group of works by Sappho associated with women's preparations for marriage. [19]

The remaining seven stanzas of the poem consist of Sappho recalling the happy times that she has shared with the woman [3] – Dr. Ellen Greene describes the poem from line 12 as painting a picture of "blissful satisfaction". [20] Many commentators have interpreted this as Sappho attempting to console her departing companion; John Rauk, however, argues that the work was not intended as a poem of consolation but as a lament for Sappho's loss of her lover. [21]

Interpretation

The poem is typical of Sappho's work, with its subject and form both characteristically Sapphic. [22] It deals with separation from someone the poet cares about – what Benjamin Acosta-Hughes describes as Sappho's "poetry of separation and longing". [23] This theme is also treated in several other significant fragments of Sappho, including the Ode to Aphrodite, fr. 16, and fr. 31. [22] The form of the poem – structured as a conversation Sappho has had – has parallels in the Ode to Aphrodite, and probably fragments including Sappho 95. [24]

Sappho's linking of love and death in this poem is a common trope of lyric poetry. Along with fragment 94, Sappho herself uses the conceit in fragment 31 ("to myself I seem needing but little to die" [25] ) and fragment 95 ("a longing to die holds me" [26] ). [27] Stephanie Larson compares this longing for death at the absence of a beloved in Sappho to Penelope's longing for death in the Odyssey – though where Penelope has already been separated from her husband for 20 years, Sappho and her beloved are only just about to separate. [28]

The eighth stanza of the poem has been subject of much scholarly debate [3] – along with the identity of the speaker in the first paragraph, Margaret Williamson describes it as one of the two key points of uncertainty in the text. [29] This reads:

and on soft beds
... delicate...
you quenched your desire. [30]

The lines may be the only clear reference to homosexual activity in the preserved fragments of Sappho. [31] Not all commentators agree with this, however; Larson notes that scholars "have made every attempt" to "explain away the overt sexuality" of the lines. [32] One suggestion, originating with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, is that the poem is referring to satisfying the departing woman's desire for sleep. [33]

Sappho 94 has sympotic overtones, containing references to garlands, flowers, sweet oils, and soft beds, all of which are images associated with the symposium – an ancient Greek drinking party, which was accompanied by entertainment, including music and dance. [34] Because of this, Ewen Bowie argues that the poem may have been one of those which was commonly performed at ancient symposia. [35] The same images are also found in the world of female ritual, however. André Lardinois observes that they could describe the activities of a chorus of women culminating in a performance at a holy site ("no holy site... we left uncovered, no grove... dance" [36] ), [37] and Margaret Williamson interprets the final section of the poem as discussing the same kind of religious practice as that in Sappho 2. [38]

Notes

  1. ↑ The first surviving stanza is frequently assumed to be the original first stanza. Anne Pippin Burnett says that this is "simply because critics like to think of them that way". [11]
  2. ↑ All translations of Sappho, unless otherwise attributed, are as given in Rayor & Lardinois 2014.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alcaeus of Mytilene</span> Greek lyric poet

Alcaeus of Mytilene was a lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos who is credited with inventing the Alcaic stanza. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. He was a contemporary of Sappho, with whom he may have exchanged poems. He was born into the aristocratic governing class of Mytilene, the main city of Lesbos, where he was involved in political disputes and feuds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sappho</span> Ancient Greek lyric poet (c. 630–c. 570 BC)

Sappho was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the Ode to Aphrodite is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams formerly attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alcman</span> Ancient Greek lyric poet from Sparta

Alcman was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrian canon of the Nine Lyric Poets. He wrote six books of choral poetry, most of which is now lost; his poetry survives in quotation from other ancient authors and on fragmentary papyri discovered in Egypt. His poetry was composed in the local Doric dialect with Homeric influences. Based on his surviving fragments, his poetry was mostly hymns, and seems to have been composed in long stanzas made up of lines in several different meters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sapphic stanza</span> Four-line stanza form

The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form of four lines. Originally composed in quantitative verse and unrhymed, since the Middle Ages imitations of the form typically feature rhyme and accentual prosody. It is "the longest lived of the Classical lyric strophes in the West".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anacreon</span> 6th century BC Greek lyric poet

Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and erotic poems. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of Nine Lyric Poets. Anacreon wrote all of his poetry in the ancient Ionic dialect. Like all early lyric poetry, it was composed to be sung or recited to the accompaniment of music, usually the lyre. Anacreon's poetry touched on universal themes of love, infatuation, disappointment, revelry, parties, festivals and the observations of everyday people and life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telesilla</span> Ancient Greek poet

Telesilla was an ancient Greek lyric poet from Argos, active in the fifth century BC. She is known for her supposed role in the defence of Argos in 494 BC, which is doubted by modern scholars. Only a few fragments of her poetry survive, several of which reference the gods Apollo and Artemis. The longest surviving fragment, only two lines, is quoted by the grammarian Hephaestion to illustrate the Telesillan metre, named after her. She was apparently famous in antiquity, included by Antipater of Thessalonica in his canon of women poets; in the twentieth century she inspired a poem by the imagist poet H.D.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Praxilla</span> Greek lyric poet of the 5th century BC

Praxilla of Sicyon, was a Greek lyric poet of the 5th century BC, from Sicyon on the Gulf of Corinth. Eusebius dates her floruit to 451/450 BC. Five quotations and three paraphrases from her poems survive. Three of the poems attributed to her are drinking songs, two are religious, and the three paraphrases are all versions of myths. Various social contexts have been suggested for Praxilla based on this range of surviving works, including that her poetry was in fact composed by two different authors; that Praxilla was a hetaira (courtesan); that she was a professional musician; or that the drinking songs derive from a non-elite literary tradition rather than being authored by a single writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erinna</span> Ancient Greek female poet

Erinna was an ancient Greek poet. She is best known for her long poem The Distaff, a 300-line hexameter lament for her childhood friend Baucis, who had died shortly after her marriage. A large fragment of this poem was discovered in 1928 at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Along with The Distaff, three epigrams ascribed to Erinna are known, preserved in the Greek Anthology. Biographical details about Erinna's life are uncertain. She is generally thought to have lived in the first half of the fourth century BC, though some ancient traditions have her as a contemporary of Sappho; Telos is generally considered to be her most likely birthplace, but Tenos, Teos, Rhodes, and Lesbos are all also mentioned by ancient sources as her home.

Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect. These verse forms were taken up and developed by later Greek and Roman poets and some modern European poets.

Sappho 31 is an archaic Greek lyric poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho of the island of Lesbos. The poem is also known as phainetai moi after the opening words of its first line. It is one of Sappho's most famous poems, describing her love for a young woman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 7</span>

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 7 is a papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. It was discovered by Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt in 1897, and published in 1898. It dates to the third century AD. The papyrus is now in the British Library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sappho 16</span> Fragment of a poem by Sappho

Sappho 16 is a fragment of a poem by the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. It is from Book I of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry, and is known from a second-century papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sappho 16 is a love poem – the genre for which Sappho was best known – which praises the beauty of the narrator's beloved, Anactoria, and expresses the speaker's desire for her now that she is absent. It makes the case that the most beautiful thing in the world is whatever one desires, using Helen of Troy's elopement with Paris as a mythological exemplum to support this argument. The poem is at least 20 lines long, though it is uncertain whether the poem ends at line 20 or continues for another stanza.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode to Aphrodite</span> Greek lyric poem by Sappho

The Ode to Aphrodite is a lyric poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho, who wrote in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE, in which the speaker calls on the help of Aphrodite in the pursuit of a beloved. The poem survives in almost complete form, with only two places of uncertainty in the text, preserved through a quotation from Dionysius of Halicarnassus' treatise On Composition and in fragmentary form in a scrap of papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brothers Poem</span> Poem written by Sappho

The Brothers Poem or Brothers Song is a series of lines of verse attributed to the archaic Greek poet Sappho, which had been lost since antiquity until being rediscovered in 2014. Most of its text, apart from its opening lines, survives. It is known only from a papyrus fragment, comprising one of a series of poems attributed to Sappho. It mentions two of her brothers, Charaxos and Larichos; the only known mention of their names in Sappho's writings, though they are known from other sources. These references, and aspects of the language and style, have been used to establish her authorship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midnight poem</span> Poem possibly written by Sappho

The midnight poem is a fragment of Greek lyric poetry preserved by Hephaestion. It is possibly by the archaic Greek poet Sappho, and is fragment 168 B in Eva-Maria Voigt's edition of her works. It is also sometimes known as PMG fr. adesp. 976 – that is, fragment 976 from Denys Page's Poetae Melici Graeci, not attributed to any author. The poem, four lines describing a woman alone at night, is one of the best-known surviving pieces of Greek lyric poetry. Long thought to have been composed by Sappho, it is one of the most frequently translated and adapted of the works ascribed to her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tithonus poem</span> Poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho

The Tithonus poem, also known as the old age poem or the New Sappho, is a poem by the archaic Greek poet Sappho. It is part of fragment 58 in Eva-Maria Voigt's edition of Sappho. The poem is from Book IV of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry. It was first published in 1922, after a fragment of papyrus on which it was partially preserved was discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt; further papyrus fragments published in 2004 almost completed the poem, drawing international media attention. One of very few substantially complete works by Sappho, it deals with the effects of ageing. There is scholarly debate about where the poem ends, as four lines previously thought to have been part of the poem are not found on the 2004 papyrus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1231</span>

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1231 is a papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, first published in 1914 by Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt. The papyrus preserves fragments of the second half of Book I of a Hellenistic edition of the poetry of the archaic poet Sappho.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sappho 2</span> Poem written by Sappho

Sappho 2 is a fragment of a poem by the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. In antiquity it was part of Book I of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry. Sixteen lines of the poem survive, preserved on a potsherd discovered in Egypt and first published in 1937 by Medea Norsa. It is in the form of a hymn to the goddess Aphrodite, summoning her to appear in a temple in an apple grove. The majority of the poem is made up of an extended description of the sacred grove to which Aphrodite is being summoned.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poetry of Sappho</span>

Sappho was an ancient Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos. She wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry, only a small fraction of which survives. Only one poem is known to be complete; in some cases as little as a single word survives. Modern editions of Sappho's poetry are the product of centuries of scholarship, first compiling quotations from surviving ancient works, and from the late 19th century rediscovering her works preserved on fragments of ancient papyri and parchment. Along with the poems which can be attributed with confidence to Sappho, a small number of surviving fragments in her Aeolic dialect may be by either her or her contemporary Alcaeus. Modern editions of Sappho also collect ancient "testimonia" which discuss Sappho's life and works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sappho 96</span>

Sappho 96 is a poem by the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. 37 lines of the fragment are preserved on a 6th-century parchment. The first twenty lines describe an imaginary scene in which an unnamed woman is struck by grief remembering an absent companion, Atthis; the remaining 17 lines, possibly originally a separate poem, reflects more generally on the foolishness of trying to compare human and divine beauty. As with other poems by Sappho such as poem 16 and 94, memory is a major theme.

References

  1. ↑ Larson 2010, p. 175.
  2. ↑ Tsantsanoglou 2020, p. 203.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Rayor & Lardinois 2014, p. 123.
  4. ↑ Campbell 1982, p. 116.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Robbins 1990, p. 112.
  6. ↑ Schubart 1902, p. 196.
  7. ↑ Berliner Papyrusdatenbank
  8. ↑ Schubart 1902, p. 195.
  9. ↑ Tsantsanoglou 2020, pp. 203–204.
  10. ↑ Harris, p. 121.
  11. 1 2 Burnett 1979, p. 20.
  12. 1 2 McEvilly 1971, p. 2.
  13. ↑ Campbell 1982, p. 53.
  14. 1 2 Larson 2010, p. 179.
  15. ↑ Robbins 1990, pp. 112–113.
  16. ↑ Sappho 94.2 [lower-alpha 2]
  17. ↑ Sappho 94.5
  18. ↑ Sappho 94.6–7
  19. ↑ Larson 2010, p. 177.
  20. ↑ Greene 1996, p. 10.
  21. ↑ Rauk 1989, pp. 108–109.
  22. 1 2 McEvilly 1971, p. 3.
  23. ↑ Acosta-Hughes 2010, p. 34.
  24. ↑ McEvilly 1971, pp. 3–4.
  25. ↑ Sappho 31.15-16
  26. ↑ Sappho 95.8
  27. ↑ Lanata 1996, p. 19.
  28. ↑ Larson 2010, pp. 181–182.
  29. ↑ Williamson 1995, p. 56.
  30. ↑ Sappho 94.21–23
  31. ↑ McEvilly 1971, pp. 2–3.
  32. ↑ Larson 2010, p. 194.
  33. ↑ Larson 2010, pp. 194–195.
  34. ↑ Larson 2010, p. 189.
  35. ↑ Bowie 2016, p. 157.
  36. ↑ Sappho 94.25-7
  37. ↑ Lardinois 1994, p. 70.
  38. ↑ Williamson 1995, p. 145.

Works cited

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.