If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho [Paperback]

Sappho (Author), Anne Carson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2003

Of the nine books of lyrics the ancient Greek poet Sappho is said to have composed, only one poem has survived complete. The rest are fragments. In this miraculous new translation, acclaimed poet and classicist Anne Carson presents all of Sappho’s fragments, in Greek and in English, as if on the ragged scraps of papyrus that preserve them, inviting a thrill of discovery and conjecture that can be described only as electric—or, to use Sappho’s words, as “thin fire . . . racing under skin.” By combining the ancient mysteries of Sappho with the contemporary wizardry of one of our most fearless and original poets, If Not, Winter provides a tantalizing window onto the genius of a woman whose lyric power spans millennia.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A classicist at McGill University, Carson has mined Greek literature, and Sappho in particular, to tremendous effect and acclaim in her poetry and essays. Her prose Eros the Bittersweet (1986) discussed Sappho's term "glukupikron" ("sweetbitter") among other Greek concepts, while the poems of Autobiography of Red (1998) reinvented surviving fragments of the Greek poet Stesichoros, to take just two examples. Here, Carson fully channels one of the most iconic yet least transparent Greek poets, whose work comes to us mostly in fragments.In a four-page preface, Carson addresses the fact that very little is known for certain about Sappho, apart from the fact that she lived in the "city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos from about 630 B.C." and "appears to have devoted her life to composing songs." She bases her translation, beautifully presented here with the Greek en face, on a 1971 transcription by the scholar Eva-Maria Voigt, published in Amsterdam, and includes all the fragments published by Voigt in which "at least one word is legible," using "the plainest language I could find, using where possible the same order of words and thoughts as Sappho did." Since Sappho's texts are fragments, it is inevitable that Carson offers some pages that are mostly brackets indicating missing material, suggestively interspersed with the words "youth" or "sinful," for example, or the phrases "as long as you want" or "my darling one." As with Joyce's Homeric "winedark sea," Carson includes compounds like "sweetflowing" or "farshooting" to render complex Greek words. Carson grudgingly allows a lesbian interpretation for some of the poems, noting that "[i]t seems that she knew and loved women as deeply as she did music. Can we leave the matter there?" (About an equal number of poems in this collection are about loving men.) With 26 cogent pages of notes to individual poems, an eight-page "Who's Who" of names mentioned in the poems, four pages of "Testimonia" about Sappho and Carson's get-out-of-the-way-of-the-poems approach to translation, the uninitiated should have no problem entering this rich territory and constructing their own versions of the enigmatic poet.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The lyric poetry of antiquity is often as important to modern poets as it is to translators and classical scholars. Mulroy is a professor of classics (Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), and Carson (classics, McGill Univ.; The Beauty of the Husband) and the late William Matthews (After All: Last Poems) are well-regarded poets. Following Pound's dictum to "make it new," Mulroy and Matthews translate Catullus and Horace into modern American idiom, striving where possible to find cultural equivalents rather than literal translations. At the same time, they try to be true to the shifting tones and rhythms of their originals. The results are fluent, giving some sense of the contemporaneousness that Catullus and Horace would have evoked in their audiences. Carson's translation follows Sappho's diction and form much more closely and includes the Greek original on the facing page. Much of what survives of Sappho are fragments, often just a stray word, phrase, or even a few letters. Like many modern poets, Carson deploys these on the blank page, letting their suggestiveness fill the gaps and create whole lyrics in the imagination of the readers. All three translators aim for a general audience, though Mulroy and Carson also include notes and introductions of value to the more scholarly reader. All three books are recommended for both public and academic libraries. T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (August 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375724516
• ISBN-13: 978-0375724510
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Canadian

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful new translation of an ancient favorite, October 20, 2002

By 

Chess Heart "paxbear" (Canton, OH) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (English and Greek Edition) (Hardcover)

There is precious little known about the ancient Greek Poet, Sappho. Most of us know the obvious, that she was a famous poet and lyricist (meaning, she composed music to be sung with the lyre) and that she lived on the island of Lesbos off the Greek coast in about 630 B.C.. However, almost all other details about her life, such as they are, come from texts written about her by other ancient writers; of the 9 books of lyrics she is reported to have written, none survive today.

Fragments of poetry written by Sappho still exist, but most are damaged or illegible. Hence, here as in other previous works of the poetry of Sappho, the reader is left with only fragments of what clearly must have been delicate and breathtakingly beautiful poetry. As Ms. Carson says in her introduction to her translations, the reader is left with a profound sense of wonder when confronted with the small snippets of Sappho's poetry. For example, all that survives of poem 36 is "I long and seek after". What, we wonder, does the rest of the poem pertain to? What flowing scenes did she paint with her words that we can never know?

I personally am not a Classicist, though I HAVE read through many of the surviving texts of the ancient worlds: Beowulf & The Odyssey, for example, and occasionally I'll attack some texts in Latin and have a go at the translation. However, for the most part, I am not a scholar of ancient times or texts. I'm here to say that one does NOT, even for a second, need to know much about ancient Greek culture, text or times to thoroughly enjoy these translations. Granted, you will find that most poems are little more than bits of a whole (sometimes only a word or two survives), but even these small pieces will cause your imagination to soar.

Ms. Carson has also boldly gone where no translator has gone before (to my knowledge). In previous translations of Sappho's poetry that I've read, the pages are crammed tight with the fragments themselves, explanations and footnotes. In Ms. Carson's book, each page is dedicated to one fragment of Sappho's poetry, regardless of it's length. In this respect, a poem that is only three words long has an entire page dedicated to itself. This is a wonderful touch, as it means that the reader's entire attention can be focused only on that poem, no matter how small, without the distraction of commentary by the author (Ms. Carson puts an extensive appendix at the back where she adds her thoughts and comments on the fragment's origin, word meaning and characters). Opposite the English translations are the original fragments in their original Greek characters. I myself cannot read Greek, but I found it a beautiful and thought-provoking touch to be able to look at what Sappho wrote in her own language. Though I'm not able to read Greek, it made the text more alive to have it there for me to look at and examine.

In conclusion, anyone who enjoys ancient Greek culture, ancient history or simply enjoys reading poetry should not hesitate to add this book to their collection. I'd personally go so far as to say that if you've got a different volume of Sappho's poetry, make some shelf space to add THIS book as well. For the clean, uncluttered page and lyrical, moving translation, I highly recommend this work and highly compliment Ms. Carson on her work.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finding song in the spaces between, January 15, 2005

By 

Raven (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (Paperback)

I happened across this gem in Vancouver, and have been thoroughly delighted (if ashamed at how rusty my sight-reading of Ancient Greek has gotten). "If Not, Winter" is the best presentation of the Sapphic fragments that I've ever read. Careful attention is paid to presentation on the page, with brackets to differentiate between missing parchments and elided quotations. The arrangement is artistic and makes the fragments flow in as close to a lyric format as we're likely to get in English. Although the translator struggles with the classic tension between transparency of the translator through meaning/intent or through presentation exactly as written, I think she strikes a poetically ept balance between them, and gives you the Greek on facing pages in as close to an original representation as possible. It warms my little Classicist heart. Her notation is more complex than the presentation in most Ancient Greek texts, and that took a little getting used to, but the added detail was worthwhile content once I became accustomed to it. Sappho is my favorite lyric poet, and the shining and lucid presentation of her work her only strengthens my opinion of her. I'll be sure to search out Professor Carson's other translations now too.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, March 18, 2003

By 

JCV "runblader" (Adventure, FL United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (English and Greek Edition) (Hardcover)

This work is a treasure, I don't know how we can thank Pof. Carson enough. This is a complete collection of all we have left of the greatest poetess of the ancient age. They are all in fragments and the way Prof. Carson has set them out for us they haunt. The title itself says it all, a fragment, what comes before or after may be lost forever: "If not, winter", but even that small snippet strikes. Over two thousand years and Sappho still touches us.