Customer Reviews

Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho (Shambhala Pocket Classics)

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Do I have to introduce Sappho? From Antiquity till now she's a shining star. According to Plato she was the tenth muse and someone called her poetry "as refreshing as a morning breeze".

Is Sappho a lesbian? By many readers Sappho is regarded as such. I'm not saying that this isn't true but to answer that question we should know her better because too little is left of her work to say anything with certainty.

In Antiquity decent women were supposed to work in the kitchen and to raise their children, nothing more. But there were exceptions.

More or less 150 years after Homer's Iliad, Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos, west off the coast of what's modern Turkey. Her poems are vivid and she needs only a few words to describe essential human feelings. For instance she calls solitude: "this icy numbness of being alone".

Sappho excels also in describing nature - something you won't find often in Ancient literature.

"

...

Here ice water babbles through apple branches and roses leave shadow on the ground and bright shaking leaves pour down profound sleep

...". I love this fragment. It has the delicacy of a transparent watercolor painting.

One of her best poems describes her loneliness:

"

The moon has set

And the Pleiades

Midnight

The hour has gone by

I sleep alone.

"

One of the most famous of her poems is 'Seizure'. Feelings are described with a sense of humor in such way that it wouldn't be out of place in a modern comedy. (I give only an excerpt of Barnstone's translation).

" My voice is empty

and can say nothing as my tongue

cracks and slender fire races

under my skin. My eyes are dead

to light, my ears

pound, and sweat pours over me.

I convulse, greener than grass

and feel my mind slip as I go

close to death."

Barnstone's translation is an easy to read modern English and it renders the delicacy and sensitivity of Sappho. Included are extensive notes,

a glossary, and "testimonia" from Sappho's admirers and critics from Plato to Plutarch.

Other reviewers didn't mention two important facts: the book includes the Greek originals and claims to include all of Sappho's known works. The translations are quite readable and seem to be respectful of the originals.

Light

I cannot imagine in the future any girl

who loloks on the light of the sun

who will have your skill and wisdom.

It makes me think of Rachel...