Sappho & her not-so-elusive sexuality

A discussion of fragmentation, translation and loss

Hi all, and welcome back to rumblewrites. In celebration of Pride, this post is dedicated to Sappho. Specifically, it discusses the fragmented nature of her surviving poetry, and the problems this has caused for the translation and interpretation of both her work and her life.

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Who was Sappho?

Not her. While this image is commonly associated with Sappho, the truth is we have no idea what she looked like.

Sappho (c. 630BCE – c. 570BCE) was a lyric poet, originating from the Greek island of Lesbos. She is the first recorded female author in Western literature and was heralded by the ancient world as one of the greatest poets of all time.

Little is known about her personal life, and her poetic work survives only as fragments of ancient papyrus [I can never read this word without thinking of Ryan Gosling, thank you SNL]. It is believed that her poems were originally stored across 9 volumes in the library of Alexandria, potentially reaching over 10,000 lines of verse. However, by the 9th century, most of her work had been lost.

This selection of papyri showcases the fragmented nature of her surviving work.

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Implications of loss on translation & interpretation

There is an element of loss in all acts of translation. It is impossible to convey every aspect of a text in a second language, so translators must choose which elements to prioritise. This is further complicated by the multi-faceted nature of poems, in which metre, rhyme, structure and language are all active choices. For Sappho, there is yet another layer: the gaps. Should we reconstruct her poems in an attempt to recover an imagined “original”, or do we preserve its now-fragmented form? Neither recapture her voice, and both have different implications for our understanding of her work.

Interestingly, most scholars, even those who have chosen to preserve this fragmentation, have taken a more creative approach to translation. This becomes particularly apparent when we consider scholarly interpretations of Sappho’s sexuality.

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Fragment 31

Let’s take a look at an example:

φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν
ἔμμεν᾽ ὤνηρ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι
ἰσδάνει καὶ πλάσιον ἆδυ φωνεί-
σας ὐπακούει

καὶ γελαίσας ἰμέροεν, τό μ᾽ ἦ μὰν
καρδίαν ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόαισεν·
ὠς γὰρ ἔς σ᾽ ἴδω βρόχε᾽, ὤς με φώναι-
σ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἒν ἔτ᾽ εἴκει,

ἀλλ᾽ ἄκαν μὲν γλῶσσα ^†ἔαγε^†, λέπτον
δ᾽ αὔτικα χρῶι πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμηκεν,
ὀππάτεσσι δ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἒν ὄρημμ᾽, ἐπιρρόμ-
βεισι δ᾽ ἄκουαι,

^†έκαδε μ᾽ ἴδρως ψῦχρος κακχέεται^†, τρόμος δὲ
παῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας
ἔμμι, τεθνάκην δ᾽ ὀλίγω ᾽πιδεύης
φαίνομ᾽ ἔμ᾽ αὔται·

ἀλλὰ πὰν τόλματον ἐπεὶ ^†καὶ πένητα^†

That man seems to me to be equal to the gods
who is sitting opposite you
and hears you nearby
speaking sweetly

and laughing delightfully, which indeed
makes my heart flutter in my breast;
for when I look at you even for a short time,
it is no longer possible for me to speak

but it is as if my tongue is broken
and immediately a subtle fire has run over my skin,
I cannot see anything with my eyes,
and my ears are buzzing

a cold sweat comes over me, trembling
seizes me all over, I am paler
than grass, and I seem nearly
to have died.

but everything must be dared/endured, since (?even a poor man) ...

- Rayor, Diane; Lardinois, André, Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Fragment 31 is one of Sappho’s most famous poems. It has survived in an unusually complete state, and before the 19th century, was one of very few found fragments.

It is a poem about alienation. The speaker articulates a feeling of exclusion, both from others and from themselves. There is a distinction between the self who desires, and the self who notices. However, due to the choices of the translator, certain elements are not carried across from the original. Most notably, gender: it is not apparent here that both the speaker and her intended lover are female.

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Sappho & sexuality

Sappho’s sexuality has become possibly the most famous thing about her, but it remains an incredibly controversial topic. Before we get into why, let’s start with a bit of background on sex and sexuality in ancient Greece:

It is a common misconception that sex and sexuality were open concepts in Greece. True, it was more open than in later periods, but it had its fair share of shittiness too: most notably, the sexual abuse of slaves. But even among free-born men, same-sex courtship was highly regulated: older men pursued younger boys, following elaborate social protocols. This was called pederasty and occurred primarily in the elite social classes as a means of introducing younger boys to elite culture. It remains unclear whether this was merely a social transaction, or a genuine expression of individual sexual preference, or both.

Beazley 320395: black-figure amphora, found in Vulci. Exchange of gifts (inc a stag and a cockerel) between older and younger men. Position of couple in the middle is ‘intercrural’ (between the thighs).

Even less is known about female same-sex relationships. However, we do know that Lesbos, the island on which Sappho was born and lived, was heavily associated with.. wait for it.. blowjobs. The verb ‘lesbiazein’ (‘to act like someone from Lesbos’) refers specifically to the act of fellatio. Sappho herself was therefore seen as an over-sexed predator of men, even in the ancient world. Despite many of her poems openly expressing her desire for other women, scholars have used this stereotype, alongside their own prejudices, as a means of denying her sexuality. This was especially the case during the 19th century, when classics was becoming a more formal discipline, and ideas of sex in general were very conservative.

Below are the main theories about Sappho’s sexuality:

• She was a schoolmistress teaching students about love. I cannot disprove this, but I will say that it doesn’t explain the heavily romantic, and often sexual, nature of her poetry. Or, indeed, why she so often invokes Aphrodite and Eros - the goddess and god of romantic love.

• She was writing from a male perspective. While it is an accepted fact that fiction writers use a narrative voice that is not their own, the intimate nature of poetry leads many to mistakenly attribute the words and meaning to their author. It is not, therefore, inherently wrong to suggest that Sappho may not have been writing as herself. However, we can argue against this point: Sappho was regarded as one of the best poets of her time, so if she intended to capture a male voice, she would have written the kind of derogatory, sex-fulled poems of her male counterparts. But she didn’t, or rather, she chose not to. This interpretation reads as misogynistic to me, as though Sappho’s poetic and technical skill were so unlike her gender, that she must be in some way subverting it. Or that hyper-sexuality is un-lady-like, so her voice must be in some way masculine.

• She was bisexual. There is an ancient Greek myth that Sappho, after enjoying various affairs with women, fell deeply in love with a man named Phaon, and threw herself off the Leucadian Rock to rid herself of this passion. Firstly, this is just a myth, there is no real evidence here. But if we do take it seriously, it raises yet another question of interpretation: was this the consequence of a hyper-sexual lifestyle, or the story of a brutal man who destroyed her?

• Sappho liked women. Her poems defy the masculine view of the world, and she writes instead about one woman’s passionate love for, and attraction to, another. In some cases, they even name her explicitly, and we are therefore led to believe that, for at least huge parts of the surviving texts, Sappho was writing as herself.

This final theory is, for me and many others, the most likely. The study of history, and even more so of the classics, is a study of gaps, uncertainties, and contradictions. Sappho’s work reflects this beautifully. And yet, we have seen that translation and interpretation are highly subjective, and the fragmented nature of her surviving poems has left room for more creative reception. It is important to remember that good history means putting forward the best argument, and to me, that is that Sappho was gay. To deny her this in the name of “uncertainty”, or because modern labels “should not be applied to classical figures”, is to deny her agency and representation. This is covert misogyny and homophobia.

Sappho reminds us that words matter. So, let’s return to her voice, and to the verses which prove that desire between women can be, and is, as intense as heterosexual desire:

ρος δηὖτέ μ' ὀ λυσιμέλης δόνει,
γλυκύπικρον ἀμάχανον ὄρπετον

Once more Love stirs me up, the limb-loosener,
a creature bitter-sweet, baffling.

- Love Shook My Senses. Lesbian Love Poems, ed. Gillian Spraggs (The Women’s Press, 1998).

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