Aaron Poochigian
Autore di Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments (Penguin Classics)
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Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments of Sappho di Sappho Sappho
Beautiful queer poetry
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cleverlettuce | 6 altre recensioni | Nov 6, 2023 | Sappho of Lesbos: Both her name and that of her native island have long designated homoerotic love between women. But she was more than that. Aristotle called her the tenth muse. As Homer was remembered as the paragon of the epic, she was of the lyric—texts meant to be sung accompanied by the lyre (she also seems to have invented one model of that instrument).
So high was the esteem she was held in that two librarians in Alexandria commissioned a collection of her works, which filled nine volumes. But, unfortunately, those have been lost like the rest of the Great Library. For centuries, the little of her preserved writing was in quotations in surviving books by others. More recently, this has been supplemented by papyrus finds (sometimes used as mummy wrapping).
It remains a fraction of what she created, perhaps ten percent. This book presents, in English translation, what we have. By my count, 479 lines. About one-third of the 150 or so pages in this volume are preface (by Carol Ann Duffy) and introduction by the translator, Aaron Poochigian. The poems and fragments themselves are printed with commentary on each facing page.
I found the editorial matter, both introduction and commentary, helpful. The introduction provides historical context and the various interpretations drawn from the little known of Sappho’s life. While the nineteenth-century suggestion that Sappho ran a boarding school was too much of its time, the reality might not have been far off. Sappho seems to have been entrusted with the care of maidens between puberty and marriage. In addition to matters of grooming and adornment, she instructed them in music and dance. Her lyrics were meant to be performed, whether solo or chorally. A good number of her works that survive are wedding hymns (epithalamia), suggesting that the group played an active role in wedding rituals as each was married off one by one. In the meantime, Sappho and her girls formed romantic attachments among themselves. The poems make clear that the boundaries between companion, teacher, role model, and lover were fluid and were no impediment to marriage (as an affair with a boy would have been).
Poochigian also explains his translation aims. He reports his disappointment that existing translations focus on the content, neglecting formal elements. On the other hand, he feels that attempts to reproduce the original meter of ancient Greek are flawed. Although Sappho didn’t, he opts to use rhyme to convey to English-speaking readers that these were song lyrics and to correspond to the emphatic line-endings Sappho often employed.
The commentary identifies geographical references and the various gods Sappho addresses (I can never keep Greek mythology straight). In the extant poems, Sappho doesn’t address male gods and only rarely refers to them. Most frequently, she appeals to Aphrodite, often addressed as Kypris (Cyprus, the island origin of the love goddess). It also identifies where a given lyric was cited by other antique authors.
And the poems themselves? I was surprised by how well they transcend the vast distance of time and language. They are the words of a woman who achieved a surprising degree of autonomy when I can’t imagine it was easy. She sings of tenderness, longing, jealousy, of the pleasure of memory. One poem I particularly enjoyed is the voice of a woman grown old, whose knees no longer permit her to join the dance. She encourages her girls to “chase the violet-bosomed Muses’ bright gifts and the plangent lyre, lover of hymns.” There is acceptance in her melancholy: “I groan much but to what end? Humans simply cannot be ageless like divinities.”
The poems and fragments are arranged according to theme: Goddesses, Desire and Death-Longing, Her Girls and Family, Troy, Maidens and Marriages, and The Wisdom of Sappho. I found this arrangement sensible. An appendix to this edition (2015) prints the two newest poems recovered. We can only hope that there are more to be discovered, whether in mummy wrappings or ancient trash heaps.… (altro)
So high was the esteem she was held in that two librarians in Alexandria commissioned a collection of her works, which filled nine volumes. But, unfortunately, those have been lost like the rest of the Great Library. For centuries, the little of her preserved writing was in quotations in surviving books by others. More recently, this has been supplemented by papyrus finds (sometimes used as mummy wrapping).
It remains a fraction of what she created, perhaps ten percent. This book presents, in English translation, what we have. By my count, 479 lines. About one-third of the 150 or so pages in this volume are preface (by Carol Ann Duffy) and introduction by the translator, Aaron Poochigian. The poems and fragments themselves are printed with commentary on each facing page.
I found the editorial matter, both introduction and commentary, helpful. The introduction provides historical context and the various interpretations drawn from the little known of Sappho’s life. While the nineteenth-century suggestion that Sappho ran a boarding school was too much of its time, the reality might not have been far off. Sappho seems to have been entrusted with the care of maidens between puberty and marriage. In addition to matters of grooming and adornment, she instructed them in music and dance. Her lyrics were meant to be performed, whether solo or chorally. A good number of her works that survive are wedding hymns (epithalamia), suggesting that the group played an active role in wedding rituals as each was married off one by one. In the meantime, Sappho and her girls formed romantic attachments among themselves. The poems make clear that the boundaries between companion, teacher, role model, and lover were fluid and were no impediment to marriage (as an affair with a boy would have been).
Poochigian also explains his translation aims. He reports his disappointment that existing translations focus on the content, neglecting formal elements. On the other hand, he feels that attempts to reproduce the original meter of ancient Greek are flawed. Although Sappho didn’t, he opts to use rhyme to convey to English-speaking readers that these were song lyrics and to correspond to the emphatic line-endings Sappho often employed.
The commentary identifies geographical references and the various gods Sappho addresses (I can never keep Greek mythology straight). In the extant poems, Sappho doesn’t address male gods and only rarely refers to them. Most frequently, she appeals to Aphrodite, often addressed as Kypris (Cyprus, the island origin of the love goddess). It also identifies where a given lyric was cited by other antique authors.
And the poems themselves? I was surprised by how well they transcend the vast distance of time and language. They are the words of a woman who achieved a surprising degree of autonomy when I can’t imagine it was easy. She sings of tenderness, longing, jealousy, of the pleasure of memory. One poem I particularly enjoyed is the voice of a woman grown old, whose knees no longer permit her to join the dance. She encourages her girls to “chase the violet-bosomed Muses’ bright gifts and the plangent lyre, lover of hymns.” There is acceptance in her melancholy: “I groan much but to what end? Humans simply cannot be ageless like divinities.”
The poems and fragments are arranged according to theme: Goddesses, Desire and Death-Longing, Her Girls and Family, Troy, Maidens and Marriages, and The Wisdom of Sappho. I found this arrangement sensible. An appendix to this edition (2015) prints the two newest poems recovered. We can only hope that there are more to be discovered, whether in mummy wrappings or ancient trash heaps.… (altro)
Segnalato
HenrySt123 | 6 altre recensioni | Oct 13, 2022 | While the title of this collection highlights the erotic attitude of the poems of Sappho, there is a wonderful fragment of a poem entitled "Troy" that presents a mythic narrative. In doing so she veers away from the emphasis of the Homeric epic and focuses on a conventionally 'feminine' theme, a wedding scene. She elevates the wedding to epic magnitude, all the while featuring excellence rather than the morality of good and evil.
Other poems and fragments present themes of goddesses, desire, girls and their family, and marriage. The result in an excellent translation is a delightful selection. Here is a typical quatrain:
Untainted Graces
With wrists like roses,
Please come close,
You daughters of Zeus.
Sappho lived in a time of transition for Greece, after the Homeric era but before the more famous Golden Age of Athens. I, like others, find her language enchanting, and the gathering of poems and fragments by subject lends an order to this collection. Her passion shines through both the millennia and the translation to charm the reader while leaving a bit of sadness that we do not have more of her oeuvre.… (altro)
½Other poems and fragments present themes of goddesses, desire, girls and their family, and marriage. The result in an excellent translation is a delightful selection. Here is a typical quatrain:
Untainted Graces
With wrists like roses,
Please come close,
You daughters of Zeus.
Sappho lived in a time of transition for Greece, after the Homeric era but before the more famous Golden Age of Athens. I, like others, find her language enchanting, and the gathering of poems and fragments by subject lends an order to this collection. Her passion shines through both the millennia and the translation to charm the reader while leaving a bit of sadness that we do not have more of her oeuvre.… (altro)
Segnalato
jwhenderson | 6 altre recensioni | Oct 25, 2020 | This book collects the entire known surviving works of the Greek poet, Sappho, who managed to cause her native island of Lesbos to become permanently associated with female homosexuality and have her own name modified into an adjective. Unfortunately for such an influential woman, her extant works sum to a slim volume of fragments from larger poems. This seems to be a great loss, as what does remain is remarkable.
Sappho famously dealt with the love and life of women as seriously as Homer dealt with the feuds and plots of men and gods and she did so in delightful, vivacious language, if these translations are any kind of reliable guide to the original.
The translator has placed a commentary facing each fragment as well as providing a concise introduction to what is known about Sappho and the society she lived in. These commentaries are often longer than the fragments they annotate, but they do illuminate and are worth the little amount of extra time they take to read. The entire book can be read with attention in an afternoon and if you are a fan of poetry generally, or of Greek literature, I strongly recommend you invest the time to do so.… (altro)
Sappho famously dealt with the love and life of women as seriously as Homer dealt with the feuds and plots of men and gods and she did so in delightful, vivacious language, if these translations are any kind of reliable guide to the original.
The translator has placed a commentary facing each fragment as well as providing a concise introduction to what is known about Sappho and the society she lived in. These commentaries are often longer than the fragments they annotate, but they do illuminate and are worth the little amount of extra time they take to read. The entire book can be read with attention in an afternoon and if you are a fan of poetry generally, or of Greek literature, I strongly recommend you invest the time to do so.… (altro)
Segnalato
Arbieroo | 6 altre recensioni | Jul 17, 2020 | Liste
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