The blank spaces are fruitful places for meditation on what was once there. Mind like a mountain wind falling on oak treesand you burn meĪnne Carson has chosen to reprint fragments attributed to Sappho, sometimes single words, separated by brackets to indicate lost fragments. We will have to trust her contemporaries and sup upon lines like Eros shook my
The Encyclopedia Britannica suggests that Sappho taught young women the arts of courtesanship, seduction, marriage which may (I speculate here) be one reason why she was so universally adored and admired.Ĭan we all agree that to be a brilliant courtesan requires great intelligence: a deep understanding and acceptance of human nature and desire, and enormous self-control and discipline? Add to this her apparently unparalleled skill as a poet-alas! We do not have enough of her work surviving to adequately judge, but the fragments set us to dreaming and are an undeniable spur to writers and lyricists alike.
She wrote nuptial songs mainly, it seems, for the tenor of the fragments suggest the happy circumstance of a marriage. | Lesbos Island (Greece) - Poetry.Sappho was known and lauded throughout the ancient world for the beauty of her poems accompanied by the lyre. Carson's translation illuminates Sappho's reflections on love, desire, marriage, exile, cushions, bees, old age, shame, time, chickpeas and many other aspects of the human situation."-BOOK JACKET. Brackets and space give the reader a sense of what is absent as well as what is present on the papyrus. In If Not, Winter Carson presents all of Sappho's fragments in Greek and in English. Of the nine books of lyrics Sappho is said to have composed, none of the music is extant and only one poem has survived complete. She was a musical genius who devoted her life to composing and performing songs. Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos from about 630 B.C.
"A bilingual edition of the work of the Greek poet Sappho, in a new translation by Anne Carson. Knopf : distributed by Random House, 2002 If not, winter : fragments of Sappho / translated by Anne Carson Book Bib ID
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