In antiquity, Sappho was often called “the Tenth Muse,” but of the nine volumes she is said to have written, only one of her poems has survived intact.
The others are filled with gaps where papyrus has decayed, or are pieced together from lines quoted by other ancient writers. So for us, Sappho is defined nearly as much by the negative spaces between her words as the words themselves. And her poems, which so often bristle with desire for the unattainable, find accidental resonance in the way we read her — in seductive fragments, but rarely an attainable whole.
Every once in a while, another piece of Sappho turns up. This time, an Oxford professor named Dirk Obbink recognized Sappho on a piece of papyrus shown to him by an anonymous collector. In a paper describing the discovery, he writes that the subject matter, as well as the “metre, language and dialect…point indubitably to a poem by Sappho.”
Of the two poems on the papyrus, one is almost too fragmented to read, but it looks like a love poem. It’s addressed to “the Cyprian Queen,” that is, Aphrodite. The other one, which is remarkably legible, mentions Charaxus and Larichos — whom other ancient sources say are her brothers, though they aren’t named in any of Sappho’s other poems (that we have). The one translated here is missing its opening lines, so we don’t know who “you” is.
[…]
But you’re always saying Charaxus is coming
With a full ship. That much, I think, only Zeus
knows, him and all of the gods.
It isn’t right for you to think you know these things.
But send me as a messenger,
to offer many prayers to Queen Hera
That Charaxus might arrive here
with his ship unharmed
And find us safe. As for everything else,
let’s leave it to the gods,
For calm comes suddenly out of a great hurricane.
Those whose luck the Olympian King wants
to turn from pain into something better,
They are blessed and prosperous.
For our part, if Larichos could ever become a man,
noble in stature,
We would be freed from much despair.
Tags: Annalisa Quinn, classics, poems, poetry, sappho
It’s exciting that this has been translated and we’re already seeing it out in the world. Once again the marvels of the modern world make my happy.
I haven’t actually written anything else by Sappho. *shamefaced* I’m going to go and correct that.
So pleased to see this, as I’ve been hearing about it for the past week or so. I used to read Sappho when I couldn’t sleep and found that her words only made the problem worse–the empty spaces you describe are so full of friction and electricity it was like sharing a bed with a bucking bronco.
Yeehaw!
[breathes out quietly: Thank you for this.]
[breathes out quietly] is the perfect reaction (so thank you for that).
Thank you for this, indeed.
This is a lovely translation, thank you. (And now, back to crying about Sappho and the fragmentary nature of ancient texts.)
The paper that introduced the new discoveries, while dense and academic, provides a little assumed or extrapolated context to the content of the poem regarding Sappho’s brothers (the url from which I read it originally seems to have been taken down). Sappho was of a family of noble vintners* – the belief (from that paper at least) was that Charaxus captained or organized mercantile wine ships, but that he had fallen in love with a sex worker in some port and was spending all his earnings on her. Thus Sappho in this poem is offering a prayer to the Gods for her idiot brother to stop thinking with his dick and bring back riches for the family.
As for Larachos, the theory is that the pinnacle of noble masculinity in those days was a life of idle decadence (as opposed to the life of industry and empire commonly associated with ~manly~ wealth these days). She wishes for him to be a trust fund kid. Sappho was the sensible one, it seems.
It’s actually really interesting to read up on traditional family dynamics going back through history. Most all of it revolves around nobility since no one had any real interest in documenting the lives of the peasantry. Royal succession, for example – if I’m remembering right, a traditional nobleman’s first son was his heir, his second son a knight or military officer, and third a clergyman or cardinal. Look out for those second sons.
* You can still get Lesbian wine, incidentally, and it’s predictably good.
I do think that some of the translations going around for the last stanza are overdoing it a bit with the New Historicism, though; things like things like “In our case, if Larichos can just grow up/ to be a man [of leisure and status]” (words in [brackets] not at all in the Greek).
“Noble in stature” is a lovely translation αἴ κε τὰν κεφάλαν ἀέρρη that gets at the aristocratic ethos without overtranslating and hammering the reader over the head with the Pierre Bourdieu hammer.
I love that there are commentors here who can translate αἴ κε τὰν κεφάλαν ἀέρρη.
The fact that a ‘new’ Sappho poem exists for us to read now, goodness, it makes me giddier than anything. “For calm comes suddenly out of a great hurricane.” *tingles*
So, I’m just going to periodically re-read this, and then feel peculiar about education and histories, shy to comment but then comment anyway just to say please DO put things like this up, clearly, but too shy to have an opinion, ever.
"Courtesan" is a very Victorian translation. They were higher-class prostitutes. Some of them not even that high-class. Pseudo-Demosthenes' speech against Neaira gives some idea of the life somebody called a hetaira might lead.
I’ve heard some people suggesting that they could actually be by Alcaeus, sounding a bit more like his work. The Aphrodite fragment does sound very “Sapphic” to me. But I wonder if it is possible that Obbink jumped the gun a bit in his desire to find more Sappho/have an exciting attribution. I’m sure if he did it will eventually get fought out in BMCR or something — although maybe not reported in major newspapers.
There are also some extremely interesting conversations going on about provenance and ethics: yeah, everyone wants more Sappho (or Alcaeus!), but celebrating new discoveries that come from “anonymous private owners” with unprovenanced bits of papyri also just supports a massive black market in antiquities. A very interesting discussion here, for example: http://newsappho.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/discuss…
And Obbink has given some more background in a TLS article: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article137151…
She was a hetaira – her name was Rhodopis. Also she apparently had an affair with Aesop?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodopis_(hetaera)
Thanks for publishing this, and thanks also to all the really awesome commentarati (toastarati?) here, too. I don’t know much about Sappho or ancient Greece and it’s awesome just reading really fun educated conversation about such a specialized topic like it ain’t no thing.
Oh my stars, I had NO idea that her name was pronounced as “Sap-fo”!! Now I’ll have to start identifying as sap-phic.
In Sappho’s own dialect and poems, she’s even Psappho (Ψάπφω)!
Oh my stars, I had NO idea that her name was pronounced as "Sap-fo"!! Now I'll have to start identifying as sap-phic.