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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..291c1ae --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #60906 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60906) diff --git a/old/60906-0.txt b/old/60906-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 07e1f26..0000000 --- a/old/60906-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1373 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sappho, by Thomas George Tucker - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Sappho - -Author: Thomas George Tucker - -Release Date: December 12, 2019 [EBook #60906] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAPPHO *** - - - - -Produced by Turgut Dincer, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - -SAPPHO - - - - - A Lecture delivered before - the Classical Association - of Victoria, 1913. - - - - - SAPPHO - - - T. G. TUCKER, - LITT.D. (CAMB.), HON. LITT.D. (DUBLIN) - - Professor of Classical Philology in the University of - Melbourne - - - MELBOURNE - THOMAS C. LOTHIAN - 1914 - - _PRINTED IN ENGLAND_ - - - - - COPYRIGHT. - _First Edition, May 1914._ - - - - -SAPPHO - - -It is hardly possible to realise and judge of Sappho without realising -her environment. The picture must have its background, and the -background is Lesbos about the year 600 B.C. One may well regret never -to have seen the island now called Mytilini, but known in ancient times -as Lesbos. There are, however, descriptions not a few, and with these -we must perforce be satisfied. On the map it lies there in the Ægean -Sea, a sort of triangle with rounded edges, pierced deeply on the south -by two deep lochs or fiords, while toward each of its three angles it -rises into mountains of from two to three thousand feet in height. One -way it stretches some thirty-five miles, the other some twenty-five. - -It is twenty-five centuries ago since this island was the home of -Sappho, of Alcæus, and of a whole school of the most finished lyric -poetry and music ever heard in Greece. From its northern shore, across -only seven miles of laughing sea, the poetess might every day look upon -the Troad, the land of Homeric legend; and in the North-East distance, -over the broadening strait, rose the storied crest of “many-fountained -Ida.” The air was clear with that translucency of which Athens also -boasted, and in which the Athenian poet rightly or wrongly found one -cause of the Athenian intellectual brilliancy. The climate was, and -still is, famous for its mildness and salubrity. The Lesbian soil was, -and still is, rich in corn and oil and wine, in figs and olives, in -building-wood and tinted marble. It was eminently a land of flowers and -aromatic plants, of the rose and the iris, the myrtle and the violet, -and the Lesbians would seem to have loved and cultivated flowers much -as they are loved and cultivated in Japan. - -Such was the land. The Greeks who inhabited it belonged apparently to -that Achæan-Æolian branch which was the first to cross from Europe -to the north-west Ægæan and to oust, or plant colonies among, the -older nameless--perhaps “Pelasgian”--occupants. This is not the place -to discuss the tribal or even racial differences which once existed -between Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greeks. Their divergence of -character was great; it was of the first significance as exhibited in -war, in social life, in art. The fact that each division spoke the -Greek tongue, though with various accents and idioms, is no longer held -as proof that their racial origin and capacity were the same. Between -the Greek of Lesbos and the Greek of Sparta there were differences in -temper, in adaptability, and in taste, as great as those between the -English-speaking Irishman, with his nimble sympathies and his ready -eloquence and wit, and the slower if surer Saxon of Mid-lothian. If -we touch upon this question here, it is merely because it casts some -measure of light upon those social and literary characteristics of the -Lesbians in which Sappho fortunately shared. Almost beyond a doubt -the Æolian Greeks who first made Lesbos their home were the nearest of -kin to those fair-haired Achæans who, in the _Iliad_, followed their -feudal lords to the siege of Troy. Socially a distinguishing mark of -these people was the liberty and high position enjoyed by the women in -the household, by the Penelopes as well as by the Helens. This fact -has hardly been sufficiently considered in dealing with that peculiar -position of Sappho and her coterie, concerning which something will be -said later on. Artistically their distinguishing mark, as represented -first in Homer, was their clear, open-eyed, original observation -of essentials, their veracity of description, their dislike of the -indefinite and the mystic. This too is clearly reflected in the work of -Sappho and her compatriots. - -We must not, it is true, make too much of this racial derivation and -its consequences. The population of Lesbos doubtless became mixed; the -lapse of centuries, the passing away of the feudal relation, increasing -ease and wealth in a softening climate, long intercourse with the trade -and culture of the neighbouring Asiatic coast--all these had their -inevitable effects. Nevertheless, among it all, the frank genius of -earliest Greece is still discernible in the classic poetry of Lesbos. - -The island naturally possessed its characteristic speech. The dialect -of Lesbos was strongly marked. It is altogether unsafe to specify at -this distance of time the particular qualities of softness or sonority -which belonged to Greek dialects; but, if one may venture where doubt -must always be so great, it would not be unreasonable to speak of -Lesbian Greek as perhaps the most “singable” of them all. In several -ways it is peculiarly like Italian. The aspirate is gone, the double -consonants are brought out with an Italian clarity unique in Greece, -the vowels are firm and musical. And here we must remember that a -local Greek dialect must never be looked upon as a provincial _patois_ -simply because it is not Attic. Neither Attic nor any other one speech -possessed a pre-eminence in Greece in the year 600 B.C. The poet of -every little independent Grecian state was free to compose in his own -idiom, with no more hesitation or self-consciousness than would have -occurred to a Provençal troubadour, an early _trouvère_ of Normandy, -or a Sicilian poet before the age of Dante. The half-doubts of Burns -when writing his native Scots would find no sympathy in Sappho or -Alcæus. No poetry that profoundly stirs the heart was ever written with -effort in an alien speech. Burns perhaps had some reason to be tempted -to write in English. The Lesbian singers had no temptation to write in -anything but Lesbian. Sappho may indeed be called the Burns of Greece, -but if her dialect, like his, was local, it was at the same time the -genuine and recognised language of the most cultured men and women of -her people. - -Having thus spoken of Lesbos, its people, and its language, we may -proceed to the social and ethical surroundings into which Sappho was -born. The island contained, after the usual Greek fashion, perhaps -half-a-dozen little communities independent of each other. All -these had their “little summer wars” and their little revolutions; -but it is with Mitylene, the chief and largest town, that the life -of Sappho is identified. The history of such a town at this period -may be compared to that of an Italian city in the later thirteenth -century. It was the history of a struggle between a despotism, or an -oligarchy of aristocrats, and the rights of the citizens. The _grandi_ -and _popolari_ of Florence in the time of Dante find their analogues -in the conflicts of nobles like Alcæus and his brother Antimenidas -against the champions of the common folk of Mitylene. There were also -feuds less immediately explainable, just as there were feuds of Guelfs -and Ghibellines, of Blacks and Whites. We need not inquire into the -usurpations of Melanchrus and Myrsilus or the dictatorship of Pittacus. -Men carried to power by favour of one party might drive their opponents -into banishment, just as Dante was exiled to Verona and Ravenna. Among -those who thus left their country for a space were the poet Alcæus and -his greater contemporary Sappho. Particularly haughty and turbulent -were the nobly born, and these often elected to roam abroad and serve -as _condottieri_ in foreign armies rather than condescend to obey the -rule of the commons at home. It may be mentioned in passing that the -brother of the poet Alcæus took service under King Nebuchadnezzar, and -in his wars killed a Goliath, who “lacked but a hand’s-breath of five -cubits.” - -Yet these are after all but surface incidents, of which history -often makes too much. As in modern times, the little wars and little -revolutions caused but an inconsiderable suspension of social and -industrial life. Commerce and art went on very much as before. The -vines of Lesbos were pruned, the ships of Lesbos went trading down the -coast, the poets and musicians of Lesbos played and sang. We know that -while Guelfs were quarrelling with Ghibellines and Florentines were -fighting with Pisans or Genoese, the festive processions went with song -across the Arno, Giotto’s tower rose from the ground, Guido Cavalcanti -composed his sonnets, and Dante, for all that he must fight in the -front ranks at Campaldino, found time and hearers for his _Donne ch’ -avete intelletto d’amore_. So it was at Mitylene. We need not therefore -picture Sappho and her society of maidens as living perpetually among -war’s alarms or fluttering in daily expectation of battle, murder, and -sudden death. Life in Lesbos must have been passing cheerful, as life -goes. - -When we proceed next to speak of the lively enthusiasm of this Lesbian -folk for beauty in all its forms, and in especial for the beauty of -music and poetry, we must guard against a misconception. Under all -the love of art which ruled in Lesbos, amid all its eager cultivation -of the Muses and the Graces, this isle of Greece “where burning -Sappho loved and sung” carried on its daily work as strenuously as -any Greeks were wont. Its farmers and fishermen, its quarriers and -vine-dressers, laboured like others in sun or cold. There was no doubt -plenty of envy, hatred, and malice, and no little that was coarse and -gross. Nevertheless the love of art and beauty and the spontaneous -appreciation of them penetrated far deeper into a Greek people -than it does with us. It was not an artificial outgrowth, a dainty -efflorescence of leisure and luxury. It was no private possession of -the _virtuoso_, or sequestered playground of the amateur. Even now the -popular songs of the village Greeks are in literary grace and thought -of a higher quality than many songs familiar to our drawing-rooms. -Life without song and dance upon the sward was unimaginable in old -Hellas. - -The special pride of Lesbos was in its music and poetry. In the -language of the legend, when that magic singer Orpheus had been torn to -pieces in Thrace, his head--with, as some say, his lyre--was carried -“down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.” On the coins of Mitylene, -as on the flag of Ireland, may be seen a harp. The first great name -in the musical history of Greece is that of the Lesbian Terpander. -It is not indeed a probable story that he was the first to increase -the strings of the lyre from four to seven, but it is practically -certain that he both improved that instrument and invented new forms -of composition to embody a lyrical idea. Another world-known poet and -musician who shed glory on Lesbos was Arion. Of him in later days the -story grew that, when he was thrown overboard by pirates, a dolphin, -which had been charmed by his melodies, bore him upon its back safe to -the Tarentine shore. - -In Lesbos, as in every part of Greece, there were abundant demands upon -musician and poet. Every occasion of worship, festivity, and grief -required its song. The gods were hymned by groups at their altars -and by white-robed maidens in processions; at weddings the hymeneal -chorus was chanted along the street, and the epithalamion before the -doors of the bridal home; at every banquet were sung lively catches and -jocund songs of Bacchus; every season--spring, summer, harvest--had -its popular ditty, exultant or pathetic; almost every occupation, of -herdsman, boatman, gardener, was beguiled with melody; at the coming -of the first swallow, as on the old English Mayday, the children sang -the “swallow-song” from house to house. And let it be remembered that -the Greeks had none of our modern tolerance for a song of which the -words were nought and the tune everything. To them the thought, the -sentiment, was first; the melody was simply its proper vehicle. Italian -opera, when not a word is intelligible, would have seemed to them a -strange anomaly. To them _mousikê_ was the “art of the Muses,” and this -meant literature no less than minstrelsy. The poet, unless, like Burns, -he wrote his verses to existing tunes, was his own composer. In either -case he was poet first and foremost. - -Now for generations the songs for special purposes had been shaping -themselves on special lines. To use a phrase of Aristotle, experience -had found out the right species to fit the case. There were sundry -recognised stanzas and metres for a processional, a hymeneal, or a -dirge. In most cases, therefore, the task of a new poet was to write -new words; the melody would, as in the case of Burns, almost find -itself. Nevertheless the complete poet could not dispense with an -elaborate training in music. To invent beautiful variations of existing -tunes was part of his glory; he must at least write words which should -sing themselves to the melody he selected. “Melodies” is the word, -for the Greeks knew practically nothing of harmonies. Their songs were -sung in unison, or simply with an octave interval when men sang with -women or with boys. The accompanying instrument was generally the -lyre, or one of many stringed instruments akin thereto; sometimes it -was the so-called flute, which was in truth a clarinet. Whatever their -musical deficiencies, it has been maintained by competent authorities -that in nicety of ear for pitch and time the training of the Greeks -incomparably surpassed the modern. Be that as it may, it must never be -left out of sight that, when a Lesbian wrote a song, it was in the -first place as perfect a poem as he could create, and in the second -it was meant to be sung, not merely to be read. Shelley’s _Ode to a -Skylark_ is consummate literature. Yet we may doubt if it could ever -be sung, and assuredly it was not written to that end. On the other -hand, the songs of Moore are often but sickly stuff to read, but they -lend themselves perfectly to those touching Irish airs, to which, by -the way, the Lesbians seem to have been akin in a peculiar tone of -plaintiveness. A Greek lyric aimed at combining the literary _mousikê_ -of Shelley’s _Ode_ with the songful _mousikê_ of Moore. It is in the -perfection of this combination that Sappho excels all women who have -ever written verse. - -Where song was for generations so abundant, it follows that there was -floating about among the people many an old ballad or favourite ditty -whose author had been long forgotten. Numbers of these _Volkslieder_, -or snatches of them, lay, sometimes with consciousness and sometimes -unrealised, in the memory of every child of Lesbos. The artistic poet -did not scorn them; he feared no charge of plagiarism if he adopted -and adapted them; he often acted as Burns acted with the ballads of -Scotland; he took them, gave them that marvellous and inexplicable -touch of finality which only genius can impart, and so made them his -for ever. This also did Sappho do, and her verses, when she deals with -well-worn themes, are beyond question often fed with the hints of older -nameless songsters. - -There is one department of lyric verse in which Lesbos stood supreme, -and Sappho supreme in Lesbos. It is the poetry, not of religion or -marriage, of the banquet or the seasons, but of personal emotion; the -verse of the “lyric cry,” which tells of the writer’s own passion, its -waves of joy and sorrow, love and hate. It is the monody, the verse -sung, not by a gathered company, but from the one overflowing heart, -the song best represented at Rome by Catullus, and in modern times by -Burns or Heine. For most of her poems in this kind there is no reason -to suppose that Sappho relied upon any promptings but those of her own -soul. She took the floating rhythms of the ballads, modified them, and -into their mould she poured verse which, as George Sand said of her own -writings, came from “the real blood of her heart and the real flame of -her thought.” - -And here at length we come to the poetess herself. Into this land, -devoted to poetry, to music, to flowers, and so regardful of loveliness -that a public “prize of beauty” was annually competed for in the -temple of Hera, was Sappho--or Psappha, as she apparently called -herself--born in the latter part of the seventh century before Christ. -Our ancient authorities are sufficiently in agreement as to her date, -and we may lay it down that she was in her prime about the year 600 -B.C., or nearly a hundred and fifty years before that great period of -Athenian literary culture which is represented by Æschylus, Sophocles -and Euripides. The ascertainable facts of her career are miserably -few, and concerning those matters which are in debate as to her life -and character the present exponent must be permitted to express simply -his own views, premising that they have been formed with all due and -deliberate care. - -Whether the names of her parents were or were not Scamandronymus and -Clêis is an unimportant question. We may simply remark that both -those names are of aristocratic colour, and both are more or less -authenticated. Whether again she was born at Mitylene itself, or at the -smaller town of Eresos, is of little moment, since we know that at any -rate Mitylene was the scene of her life’s work. That she belonged to -the ranks of the well-born, and that good looks were in the family, is -proved by the choice of her brother Larichus as cup-bearer of Mitylene, -an office which was bestowed only on handsome and noble youth. That -at least one member of the family possessed considerable means is -known from the rather romantic history of a second brother, Charaxus. -This young man sailed away in his ship, laden with the famous Lesbian -wine--the _innocentis pocula Lesbii_ of Horace--as far as Egypt. -There he traded in that merchandise at the Pan-Grecian free-town of -Naucratis, which had been established in the Delta under a permission -somewhat similar to that by which settlement was first allowed in -the treaty-ports of China. Here, however, he fell in love with the -world-famed _demi-mondaine_ whose name, Doricha, is less familiar than -her sobriquet Rhodôpis--“complexion of a rose”--and his gains were -spent in chivalrously ransoming that lady from a degrading slavery. It -is of interest to know, though the verses are not preserved to us, that -his poetess sister reproved him sharply for this conduct. Her “love of -love” did not blind her to the claims of family honour and dignity. -It is gratifying to learn that at a later time she expresses her -reconciliation to her brother in a poem which, like those of Herondas -and Bacchylides, has but recently been disgorged, though in a sadly -mutilated state, by the omnivorous sands of Egypt. Sappho herself is -said to have married a wealthy islander of Andros, and to have had at -least one daughter, whose name, according to Greek custom, was the name -of the grandmother, Clêis. It is apparently this Clêis whom she is -addressing in a fragment which we may venture to translate thus---- - - “I have a maid, a bonny maid, - As dainty as the golden flowers, - My darling Clêis. Were I paid - All Lydia, and the lovely bowers - Of Cyprus, ’twould not buy my maid.” - -An inscription on the Parian marbles informs us that, at some uncertain -date, Sappho fled, or was driven, into banishment to Sicily. There -is nothing unlikely in the circumstance, and it is worth noting that -more than 500 years later, in the days of Cicero, Verres, the governor -of that island, appropriated a bronze statue of Sappho, wrought by a -Grecian master and greatly prized at Syracuse. - -As _Aberglaube_ which has gathered about Sappho’s history, there are -two strange legends, or rather there is one strange legend in two -parts, which must here be told briefly. - -The story goes that once upon a time Aphrodite, goddess of love, -disguised as an aged woman, was gallantly ferried across to Lesbos by -a young waterman of the name of Phaon. In reward she bestowed upon him -marvellous beauty and irresistible charm. Of him, the fable tells, -Sappho became enamoured to the point of frenzy, and, unable to win his -heart, she resolved to attempt the last and most desperate cure known -for her disease. Away in the Ionian Sea was the jutting rock of Leucas, -and it was believed that those who cast themselves down from that -cliff into the sea either ended their miseries in death or rose from -the waters cured of their malady. What became of Sappho when she took -that “lover’s leap” may be found narrated by Hephæstion. It is given in -Addison’s 233rd _Spectator_. “Many who were present related that they -saw her fall into the sea, from whence she never rose again; there were -others who affirmed that she never came to the bottom of her leap, but -that she was changed into a swan as she fell, and that they saw her -hovering in the air under that shape. But whether or no the whiteness -and fluttering of her garments might not deceive those who looked upon -her, or whether she might not really be metamorphosed into that musical -and melancholy bird, is still a doubt among the Lesbians.” Well, let -us share the Lesbian doubt, and a little more. Suffice it to say that, -though this story, which has been elaborated by the fancy of Ovid, -appears to have been known in some shape to Menander and other comic -poets of Athens, there is absolutely no trace of the name of Phaon or -of anything connected with him in any fragment of Sappho. Nor was there -likely to be, seeing that he is in all probability but another _avatar_ -of the mythical youth Adonis. More interesting is it to observe that -the rock of desperation is called “Sappho’s Leap” unto this day. -Unfortunately we do not know when or by whom it was so baptized. - -Of Sappho’s personal appearance we have no certain knowledge. More -than four centuries later a philosopher named Maximus Tyrius says that -she was considered beautiful, “though” short and dark, and hence is -prompted Swinburne’s assumption-- - - “The small dark body’s Lesbian loveliness - That held the fire eternal.” - -If this be true, she was sufficiently unlike the conventional ideal of -Lesbian beauty. Her contemporary Alcæus speaks of her “sweet smile,” -and Anacreon, in the next generation, of her “sweet voice.” Later -writers of epigrams, who can hardly have known much about the matter, -call her “bright-eyed,” or “the pride of the lovely-haired Lesbians,” -but those are as likely as not mere descriptive guesses of the kind -in which poetical fancy may pardonably indulge. If we meet with the -untranslatable adjective _kalê_ applied to her by Plato, we have to -remember that it is a stock epithet of admiration for a writer of -charm and genius, and in such cases contains no reference whatever to -beauty of person. - -What we really know best of Sappho’s life is that she was acknowledged -the choicest spirit of her time in music and poetry, and that, -whether as friendly guide or professional teacher or something of -both, she gathered about her what may be variously called a coterie, -academy, conservatorium, or club, of young women, not only from Lesbos -itself but from other islands, and even from Miletus and the distant -Pamphylia. Sometimes they were called her “companions,” sometimes her -“disciples.” One of them, Erinna of Telos, herself became famous, but -unhappily survives for us as a lyrist only in an inconsiderable line or -two. - -Sappho appears to have taught these damsels music and also the art of -poetry, so far as that art is teachable. She appears, moreover, to -have taught them whatever charms and graces of bearing and behaviour -were most desired by women, whether in their social life or in -their frequent appearances in religious or secular processions and -ceremonies. There exists a short fragment in which she derides the -rusticity of the woman who has no idea how to hold up her train about -her ankles. In another place she bids one of her maidens-- - - “Take sprigs of anise fair - With soft hands twined, - And round thy bonny hair - A chaplet bind; - The Muse with smiles will bless - Thy blossoms gay, - While from the garlandless - She turns away.” - -It has often been observed that the relations of Sappho with the young -women Erinna and Atthis and Anactoria resembled those of Socrates -with the young men Alcibiades and Charmides and Phædrus. But it has -apparently not been also pointed out as a parallel that, three -centuries later, there similarly gathered about the _maître_ Philêtas, -in the isle of Cos, a school of young poets, among whom were no less -persons than Theocritus, Asclepiades and Aratus. - -The peculiarity of Sappho’s coterie lay to the general mind in the fact -that it was a club of women. And here we must handle with brief and -gentle touch, but with no false reserve, a topic which no discourse -on Sappho can shrink from facing. The reputation of Sappho and her -comrades has long been made to suffer from what is probably, and almost -certainly, a cruel injustice. Partly through the social depravity of -the later Greek and Roman, partly through taking too seriously the -scurrilous humours of the comic dramatists of Athens, many ancients -and most moderns have formed concerning that Lesbian school a notion -which in all likelihood does bitter wrong to Sappho, wrong to art, -and wrong to human nature. At Athens, as among all the Ionian Greeks, -and later on among Greeks almost everywhere, a woman of character was -kept in a seclusion suggestive of the oriental. The woman most to be -praised, Pericles declared, was “she of whom least is said among men -whether for good or evil.” This, as we have seen, was not the way of -the older Æolian Lesbos, where woman still enjoyed much of the Homeric -freedom and independence to go and come and live her life. What more -natural than for Athenians to imagine that the famous coterie of Sappho -consisted of women of the same class as the brilliant Aspasia? Their -very talent was proof enough, for the Athenian housekeeper who passed -for wife made no pretensions to literature and art. What more natural -also than for an Athenian playwright, like him of the _Ecclesiazusæ_, -or “_Women in Parliament_,” to find scandalous comedy in the -_Précieuses_ of Lesbos? Again, the poems of Sappho are nearly all poems -of love, and to the ordinary Greek, especially of a later date, it was -unseemly for modest women to acknowledge so positive a passion. An -Elizabeth Barrett Browning would have received no countenance from the -Athenian Mrs. Grundy. The truth seems to be that Lesbos in the year 600 -B.C. was in this respect socially and ethically almost as different -from the Athens of two hundred years later as the emancipated young -woman of America is different from the dragon-guarded Spanish maiden of -Madrid. - -We may pass by other considerations which might be urged, but it is -no surprise that the false notion of Sappho, constructed by decadent -Greeks and refined upon by the vice of the Romans, should do her -special harm in the days when paganism gave way to Christianity. Among -the many works destroyed by the unco’ guid in the early Byzantine days -were the poems of Sappho--destroyed the more savagely because that -particular pagan, who so passionately invoked the Queen of love, was a -woman, and woman’s ideal place was then the cloister. Unhappily certain -moderns, who are anything but unco’ guid, have carried on the wrong in -a different way, and, for example, the title _Sapho_ of Daudet’s sketch -of _mœurs Parisiennes_ is a choice which may pardonably stir the ire of -any Hellenist. - -The few fragments of Sappho which have been preserved are not those -which have been spared by the saints or which have been culled for -special innocence. They simply happen to be quoted here and there by -ancient critics, grammarians, and even lexicographers, to illustrate -some æsthetic doctrine, the use of some word, or even some peculiarity -of grammar. And no understanding man or woman can read them without -feeling that what we find is sheer poetry, sound and true, free -from dross in either form or thought. Says Sappho herself, “I love -daintiness, and for me love possesses the brightness and beauty of the -sun.” To Alcæus, her fellow-countryman and acquaintance, she was the -“violet-weaving, pure, sweetly-smiling Sappho.” To Plato, who judged -even art by ethical standards, she is “beautiful and wise.” Her reply -to her fellow-poet, when he was too bashful to say something which was -in his mind, was this-- - - “Had your desire been right and good, - Your tongue perplex’d with no bad thought, - With frank eye unabashed you would - Have spoken of the thing you ought.” - -To some lover she says--if she is speaking in her own person-- - - “As friends we’ll part: - Win thee a younger bride; - Too old, I lack the heart - To keep thee at my side.” - -Nay, we may go further and say that, after reading and re-reading -and translating and commenting on her poems, so far as we possess -them, we find her verse full indeed of warmth and colour, full of -poignant feeling, but never riotous, always sane, always controlled -by the truest sense of art. Obedience to the central Greek motto -μηδὲν ἄγαν--“nothing too much”--was never better exemplified. The -Greeks would never have set her on such a pedestal if she had been -the poetical mænad who seems to exist in the mind of Swinburne, when -he writes of her, in that vicious exaggeration of phrase which he too -often affects, as-- - - “Love’s priestess, mad with pain and joy of song, - Song’s priestess, mad with joy and pain of love.” - -No writer so lacking in _sophrosyne_ could assert, as Swinburne -elsewhere in his finer and truer style makes her assert-- - - “I Sappho shall be one ... - ... with all high things for ever.” - -There is not a line of Sappho of which you do not feel that, glow as -it may with feeling, it is constructed with such art as--unconscious -though it may possibly be--can only be sustained in a mind of perfect -sanity. - -There is something else which is too often strangely overlooked in -judging a poet from his writings alone. It is particularly liable to be -forgotten when the writings which have been preserved are but fragments -severed from their context. The poet is not always writing in his -own person; he is not always revealing his own feelings. He is often -dramatising; and his verses then utter the sentiments and passions -suited to the character concerned. No one will accept a passage culled -from Shakespeare as proof of the ethical views of Shakespeare himself. -It may express only the whim of Falstaff, or the snarl of Shylock, or -the banter of Benedick, or the melancholy humour of Hamlet. Allowing -for all the difference between lyric poetry and dramatic, the lyrist -also has his passages in which he is speaking for another. He may be -actually writing _for_ another. _In Memoriam_ doubtless represents the -heart of Tennyson himself. But suppose posterity to retain but a few -fragments of his other works. What shall we say of those who might take -the isolated words “I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead” as -a proof of the settled pessimism of our poet? We know that the speaker -was Mariana. We do not always know who is the speaker in the fragments -of Sappho. But, even if we did know, there still remains not a verse -which betrays the too much, or which passes beyond the pathetic into -the reckless, the hysterical, still less the dissolute. - -Behind Sappho, as behind Burns before he wrote “Green grow the rushes -O” or “Auld Lang Syne,” lay a mass of popular ballads and a wealth -of lyrical ideas to be seized upon and shaped when the perfect mood -arrived. When she sings-- - - “Sunk is the moon; - The Pleiades are set; - ’Tis midnight; soon - The hour is past; and yet - I lie alone”-- - -it is probable that she is setting one such prehistoric lyrical idea to -new words or recasting one such vagrom ditty. It is practically certain -that she is doing so in that quatrain which begins “Sweet mother mine, -I cannot ply my loom.” That thought is embodied in English folksong -also--“O mother, put my wheel away; I cannot spin to-night”--as well as -in German and other tongues. - -Let us then sweep aside from the memory of Sappho the myths of Phaon -and the Leucadian leap, and the calumnies of Athenian worldlings in -the comic theatre; let us reject all that Swinburnian hyperbole which -makes her “mad” in any sense whatever; and let us simply take her upon -the strength of the “few passages, but roses” which are left to us, -and upon the word of Alcæus that she was the “violet-weaving, pure, -sweetly-smiling Sappho.” - -Her life as teacher and æsthetic guide in Lesbos evidently did not pass -without a cloud. Her talent, like talent everywhere, found jealous -rivals and detractors. A certain Andromeda seems to have caused her -special vexation by luring away her favourite pupil Atthis. There -were also, then as now, rich but uncultured women who had little love -for art and its votaries, particularly if these latter were all too -charming. To one such woman Sappho, who, like a true Æolian, looked -with horror on a life without poetry and a death unhonoured by song, -writes-- - - “When thou art dead, thou shalt lie, with none to remember or mourn, - For ever and aye; for thy head no Pierian roses adorn; - But e’en in the nether abodes thou shalt herd thee, unnoted, forlorn, - With the dead whom the great dead scorn.” - -Her work as poetess, though of everlasting value for what it touches in -universal humanity, naturally bears many marks of her country and her -time. Besides her songs of personal emotion, she wrote in several of -the various forms of occasional verse which we found reason to mention -as existing in Lesbos. Of her wedding songs and epithalamia we possess -a number of short fragments. Among them is one in the accepted amœbæan -or antiphonic style, in which a band of girls mock the men with failure -to win some dainty maiden, and the men reply with a taunt at the -neglected bloom of the unprofitable virgin. Say the maids-- - - “On the top of the topmost spray - The pippin blushes red, - Forgot by the gatherers--nay! - Was it “forgot” we said? - ’Twas too far overhead!” - -Reply the men-- - - “The hyacinth so sweet - On the hills where the herdsmen go - Is trampled ’neath their feet, - And its purple bloom laid low--” - -and there unhappily the record deserts us. - -The writing of Sappho was thus in no way dissociated from the -surrounding life of Lesbos. Similarly the Lesbian love of bright -and beautiful things--of gold, of roses, of sweet odours and sweet -sounds--pervades all that is left of her. The Queen of Love sits on a -richly-coloured throne; she dispenses the “nectar” of love in “beakers -of gold”; she wears a “golden coronal”; the Graces have “rosy arms”; -verses are the “rose-wreath of the Muses”; the blessed goddesses shower -grace upon those who approach them with garlands on their heads. If -maidens dance around the altar, they may dance most pleasantly on the -tender grass flecked with flowers. It is sweet to lie in the garden of -the Nymphs, where-- - - “Through apple-boughs, with purling sound, - Cool waters creep; - From quivering leaves descends around - The dew of sleep.” - -Sweet among sounds is that of the “harbinger of spring, the -nightingale, whose voice is all desire.” Sappho does in very truth, as -she declares, love daintiness. Above all, she loves love. Love is the -“nectar” in the lines-- - - “Come, Cyprian Queen, and, debonair, - In golden cups the nectar bear, - Wherein all festal joy must share - Or be no joy.” - -But there is nothing morbid, nothing of the hot-house, about all this. -It is simply the frank, naïve, half-physical, half-mental, enjoyment -of the youth of the world, as fresh and healthy as the love of the -_trouvères_, or of Chaucer, for the daisy, and of the balladist for -the season when the “shaws be sheen and leaves be large and long.” - -Unhappily of the nine books of Sappho there have survived only one -complete poem, one or two considerable fragments, and a number of -scraps and lines. So far as we possess even these we have to thank -ancient critics, such as Aristotle, Dionysius, and Longinus, writers -of miscellanies, such as Plutarch and Athenæus, or grammarians like -Hephæstion. We have also to thank those modern scholars, and particular -Bergk, who have acutely and patiently gleaned the scattered remnants -from the pages of these ancient authorities. Scanty as they are, we can -gather from them as profound a conviction of their creator’s genius -as we gather from some fragmentary torso of an ancient masterpiece of -sculpture. We may grieve that a torso of Praxiteles is so mutilated; -nevertheless the art of the master speaks in every recognisable line -of it. According to the old proverbs, “Hercules may be known from his -foot” and “a lion from his toe-nail.” What remains of Sappho is enough -to make us fully comprehend the splendour of her poetic reputation in -ancient times. That reputation was unique. To the Greeks “the poet” -meant Homer; “the poetess” meant Sappho. The story goes that Solon, -the Athenian sage and legislator who was her contemporary, hearing -his nephew sing one of Sappho’s odes, demanded to be taught it, “So -that I may not die without learning it.” Plato consents to praise her, -and that, when Plato speaks of a poet, is praise from Sir Hubert. To -Aristotle she ranks with Homer and Archilochus. Strabo, the geographer, -calls her “a marvellous being,” whom “no woman could pretend to rival -in the very least in the matter of poetry.” Plutarch avers that “her -utterances are veritably mingled with fire,” and that “the warmth of -her heart comes forth from her in her songs.” He confesses also that -their dainty charm shamed him to put by the wine-cup. To one writer of -epigrams, said to be Plato himself, she is the “Tenth Muse”; to others -she is the “pride of Greece” or the “flower of the Graces.” It is -recorded that Mitylene stamped her effigy upon its coins. If imitation -is the sincerest flattery, she was flattered abundantly. The most -genuine lyric poet of Rome, Catullus, and its most skilful artificer of -odes, Horace, both freely copied her. They did more than imitate; they -plagiarised, they translated, sometimes almost word for word. There -is scarcely an intelligible fragment left of Sappho which has not been -borrowed or adapted by some modern poet, in English, French, or German. - -There is one mutilated ode of hers which no one can translate. It is -quoted by Longinus as showing with what vivid terseness she can portray -the tumultuous and conflicting sensations of a lover in that bright -fierce south. Ambrose Philips makes it wordy; Boileau makes it formal. -It displays all the grand Greek directness, but a directness clothed -in the grand Greek charm of perfect rhythmical expression. We can -preserve, if we will, the directness, but the charm of its medium will -inevitably vanish. - -In effect, lamentably stripped of its native verbal charm, it may be -rendered-- - - “Blest as the gods, methinks, is he - Who sitteth face to face with thee - And hears thy sweet voice nigh, - Thy winsome laugh, whereat my heart - Doth in my bosom throb and start; - One glimpse of thee, and I - Am speechless, tongue-tied; subtle flame - Steals in a moment through my frame; - My ears ring; to mine eye - All’s dark; a cold sweat breaks; all o’er - I tremble, pale as death; nay more, - I seem almost to die.” - -When after this we read in the _Phèdre_ of Racine these four lines-- - - Je le vis, je rougis, je palis à sa vue, - Un trouble s’éleva dans mon âme éperdue; - Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler, - Je sentais tout mon cœur et transir et brûler: - -we recognise their source. We recognise, also, if it were not already -confessed, the source of this of Tennyson in his _Fatima_: - - “Last night, when some one spoke his name, - From my swift blood, that went and came, - A thousand little shafts of flame - Were shivered in my narrow frame.” - -If this physical perturbation seems strange to the more reticent man of -northern blood, it was in no way strange to Theocritus, to Catullus, or -to Lucretius. Once more, according to the German proverb, “he who would -comprehend the poet must travel in the poet’s land.” - -And here we are confronted with a supreme difficulty. While mere fact -is readily translatable, and thought is approximately translatable, -the literary quality, which is warm with the pressure and pulsation of -a writer’s mood and rhythmic with his emotional state, is hopelessly -untranslatable. It can be suggested, but it cannot be reproduced. The -translation is too often like the bare, cold photograph of a scene of -which the emotional effect is largely due to colour and atmosphere. The -simpler and more direct the words of the original, the more impossible -is translation. In the original the words, though simple and direct, -are poetical, beautiful in quality and association. They contain in -their own nature hints of pathos, sparks of fire, which any so-called -synonym would lack. They are musical in themselves and musical in -their combinations. They flow easily, sweetly, touchingly through the -ear into the heart. The translator may seek high and low in his own -language for words and combinations of the same _timbre_, the same -ethical or emotional influence, the same gracious and touching music. -He will generally seek in vain. In his own language there may exist -words approximately answering in meaning, but, even if they are fairly -simple and direct, they are often commonplace, sullied with “ignoble -use,” harsh in sound, without distinction or charm. He may require a -whole phrase to convey the same tone and effect; he becomes diffuse, -where terseness is a special virtue of his original. Let a foreigner -study to render this-- - - “Had we never loved sae kindly, - Had we never loved sae blindly, - Never met, or never parted, - We had ne’er been broken-hearted.” - -Or this---- - - “Take, O take those lips away, - That so sweetly were forsworn, - And those eyes, the break of day, - Lights that do mislead the morn! - But my kisses bring again, - Seals of love, but sealed in vain.” - -Is it to be imagined that he could create precisely the effect of -either of these stanzas in French or Italian? Is not much of that -effect inseparable from the words? - -Take a perfectly simple stanza of Heine-- - - “Du bist wie eine Blume - So hold und schön und rein: - Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmuth - Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.” - -Near as English is to German, incomparably more easy as it is to render -German into English than Greek into English, it may be declared that no -English rendering of this verse conveys, or ever will convey, exactly -the impression of the German original. - -In respect of mere musical sound, what other words could run precisely -like those of Coleridge at the opening of _Kubla Khan_, or like -Shelley’s “I arise from dreams of thee”? The case is exactly the same -when we turn to a Greek lyric. Alcæus writes four words which mean -simply “I felt the coming of the flowery spring”; but no juxtaposition -of English words yet attempted to that effect can recall to the student -of Greek the impression of - - ἦρος ἀνθεμόεντος ἐπάϊον ἐρχομένοιο. - -It is necessarily so with Sappho. She is an embodiment of the typical -Greek genius, which demanded the terse and clear, yet fine and noble, -expression of a natural thought, free, as Addison well says, from -“those little conceits and turns of wit with which many of our modern -lyrics are so miserably infected.” True Greek art detests pointless -elaboration, strained effects, or effects which have to be hunted for. -The Greek lyric spirit would therefore have loved the best of Burns -and would have recognised him for its own. But you cannot translate -Burns. Neither can you translate Sappho. Nevertheless one attempt may -be nearer, less inadequate, than another. Let us take the hymn to -Aphrodite. It is quoted by the critic Dionysius for its “happy language -and its easy grace of composition.” - -The first stanza contains in the Greek sixteen words, big and little. -In woeful prose these may be literally rendered “_Radiant-throned -immortal Aphrodite, child of Zeus, guile-weaver, I beseech thee, Queen, -crush not my heart with griefs or cares._” - -In turning Greek poetry into English, and so inserting all those little -pronouns and articles and prepositions with which a synthetic language -can dispense, it may be estimated that the number of words will be -greater by about one half,--the little words making the odd half. But -Ambrose Philips makes thirty-four words out of those sixteen-- - - “O Venus, _beauty of the skies, - To whom a thousand temples rise, - Gaily false in gentle smiles_, - Full of love-perplexing wiles; - O Goddess, from my heart remove - The wasting cares and pains of love.” - -The italics should suffice for criticism upon the fidelity of this -“translation.” Mr. J. H. Merivale, though more faithful to the material -contents, finds forty-three words necessary-- - - “Immortal Venus, throned above - In radiant beauty, child of Jove, - O skilled in every _art of love - And_ artful snare; - _Dread power, to whom I bend the knee, - Release_ my soul and set it free - From _bonds_ of _piercing_ agony - And _gloomy_ care.” - -We may perhaps without presumption ask whether the sense is not given -more faithfully, in a more natural English form and rhythm, and in -a shape sufficiently reminiscent of the original stanza, in the -twenty-three words which follow-- - - “Guile-weaving child of Zeus, who art - Immortal, throned in radiance, spare, - O Queen of Love, to break my heart - With grief and care.” - -Keeping to the same principles of strict compression and strict -simplicity we may thus continue with the remainder of the poem-- - - “But hither come, as thou of old, - When my voice reached thine ear afar, - Didst leave thy father’s hall of gold, - And yoke thy car, - And through mid air their whirring wing - Thy bonny doves did swiftly ply - O’er the dark earth, and thee did bring - Down from the sky. - Right soon they came, and thou, blest Queen, - A smile upon thy face divine, - Didst ask what ail’d me, what might mean - That call of mine. - ‘What would’st thou have, with heart on fire, - Sappho?’ thou saidst. ‘Whom pray’st thou me - To win for thee to fond desire? - Who wrongeth thee? - Soon shall he seek, who now doth shun; - Who scorns thy gifts, shall gifts bestow; - Who loves thee not, shall love anon, - Wilt thou or no.’ - So come thou now, and set me free - From carking cares; bring to full end - My heart’s desire; thyself O be - My stay and friend!” - -The perfection of the Greek style is fine simplicity. We must not -say that this characteristic perfection is more absolutely displayed -in Sappho than in Homer or Sophocles. It is, however, illustrated by -Sappho in that region of verse which pre-eminently demands it, the -lyric of personal emotion. There may be, with different persons and -at different dates, wide differences of interest in regard to the -themes and structures of the epic, the drama, or the triumphal ode. -Most forms of poetry must some time cease to find full appreciation, -because of the peculiar ideas and conventions of their time and place. -But the poetry of the primal and eternal passions of the human heart, -of its experiences and its emotions, carries with it those touches -which make the whole world kin. Love and sorrow are re-born with every -human being. Time and civilisation make little difference. But those -touches are only weakened by far-sought words and elaborate metres, by -recondite conceits and ambitious psychology. - -Perhaps the woman who seeks to come nearest to Sappho in poetry is Mrs. -Browning, but she falls far short of her predecessor, not only through -inferior mastery of form, but also through an excessive “bookishness” -of thought. The poet moves by-- - - “High and passionate thoughts - To their own music chanted.” - -In the case of songs whose theme is what Sappho calls the “bitter -sweet” of love, their proper style has been determined by the gathering -consensus of humanity, and it is a style simple but powerful, with a -magic recurring in cadences easy to grasp and too affecting to forget. -It is the style of “Ye flowery banks o’ bonnie Doon,” not of the Ode on -St. Cecilia’s Day. Sappho’s songs fulfil all the conditions, and even -of her fragments that is true which her imitator Horace said of her -completer poems, as he more happily possessed them-- - - “Still breathes the love, still lives the fire - Imparted to the Lesbian’s lyre.” - -The virtue of Sappho is supreme art without artificiality, utter truth -to natural feeling wedded to words of utter truth. Let Pausanias, -that ancient Baedeker, declare that “concerning love Sappho sang many -things which are inconsistent with one another.” She is only the more -truthful therefor. No human heart, frankly enjoying or suffering the -“bitter-sweet” moods and experiences of love, ever was consistent. -Consistency belongs only to the cool and calculating brain. If love is -cool and calculating, it is not love. - -How much Sappho may have written on other subjects than this, the most -engrossing of all, we shall perhaps never know. But we may be sure that -one of the most priceless poetical treasures lost to the world has been -those other verses which, to quote Shelley on Keats, told of-- - - “All she had loved, and moulded into thought - From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound.” - -There is, we may add, one quality besides beauty in verse which can -never be analysed. It is charm. Sappho is pervaded with charm. And this -suggests that we may conclude by quoting the judgment of Matthew Arnold -upon one defect at least which must make Heine rank always lower than -Sappho:-- - - “Charm is the glory which makes - Song of the poet divine; - Love is the fountain of charm. - How without charm wilt thou draw, - Poet! the world to thy way? - Not by thy lightnings of wit-- - Not by thy thunder of scorn! - These to the world, too, are given; - Wit it possesses and scorn-- - Charm is the poet’s alone.” - - -THE ST. ABBS PRESS, LONDON - - - - -Transcriber’s Note - - -Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant -preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not -changed. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sappho, by Thomas George Tucker - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAPPHO *** - -***** This file should be named 60906-0.txt or 60906-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/9/0/60906/ - -Produced by Turgut Dincer, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Sappho - -Author: Thomas George Tucker - -Release Date: December 12, 2019 [EBook #60906] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAPPHO *** - - - - -Produced by Turgut Dincer, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<h1 class="gesperrt">SAPPHO</h1> - -<hr /> - -<p class="newpage p4 center wspace large"> -A Lecture delivered before<br /> -the Classical Association<br /> -of Victoria, 1913. -</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="newpage p4 center"> -<p class="xxlarge bold gesperrt">SAPPHO</p> - -<p class="p4 wspace vspace"><span class="large">T. G. TUCKER,</span><br /> -<span class="small">LITT.D. (CAMB.), HON. LITT.D. (DUBLIN)</span></p> - -<p class="wspace">Professor of Classical Philology in the University of<br /> -Melbourne</p> - -<p class="p4 vspace wspace larger">MELBOURNE<br /> -<span class="gesperrt">THOMAS C. LOTHIAN</span><br /> -<span class="smaller">1914</span><br /> - -<i>PRINTED IN ENGLAND</i> -</p> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p class="newpage p4 center vspace wspace"> -<span class="smcap">Copyright.</span><br /> -<i>First Edition, May 1914.</i> -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="SAPPHO">SAPPHO</h2> -</div> - -<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">It</span> is hardly possible to realise and -judge of Sappho without realising -her environment. The picture -must have its background, and the -background is Lesbos about the year -600 <span class="smcap smaller">B.C.</span> One may well regret never -to have seen the island now called -Mytilini, but known in ancient times -as Lesbos. There are, however, descriptions -not a few, and with these -we must perforce be satisfied. On -the map it lies there in the Ægean<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span> -Sea, a sort of triangle with rounded -edges, pierced deeply on the south by -two deep lochs or fiords, while toward -each of its three angles it rises -into mountains of from two to three -thousand feet in height. One way -it stretches some thirty-five miles, -the other some twenty-five.</p> - -<p>It is twenty-five centuries ago since -this island was the home of Sappho, -of Alcæus, and of a whole school of -the most finished lyric poetry and -music ever heard in Greece. From -its northern shore, across only seven -miles of laughing sea, the poetess -might every day look upon the Troad, -the land of Homeric legend; and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span> -in the North-East distance, over the -broadening strait, rose the storied -crest of “many-fountained Ida.” The -air was clear with that translucency of -which Athens also boasted, and in -which the Athenian poet rightly or -wrongly found one cause of the -Athenian intellectual brilliancy. The -climate was, and still is, famous for its -mildness and salubrity. The Lesbian -soil was, and still is, rich in corn and -oil and wine, in figs and olives, in -building-wood and tinted marble. It -was eminently a land of flowers and -aromatic plants, of the rose and the -iris, the myrtle and the violet, and -the Lesbians would seem to have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span> -loved and cultivated flowers much -as they are loved and cultivated in -Japan.</p> - -<p>Such was the land. The Greeks who -inhabited it belonged apparently to -that Achæan-Æolian branch which -was the first to cross from Europe to -the north-west Ægæan and to oust, -or plant colonies among, the older -nameless—perhaps “Pelasgian”—occupants. -This is not the place to -discuss the tribal or even racial differences -which once existed between -Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greeks. -Their divergence of character was -great; it was of the first significance -as exhibited in war, in social life, in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span> -art. The fact that each division spoke -the Greek tongue, though with various -accents and idioms, is no longer held -as proof that their racial origin and -capacity were the same. Between -the Greek of Lesbos and the Greek of -Sparta there were differences in temper, -in adaptability, and in taste, as great -as those between the English-speaking -Irishman, with his nimble sympathies -and his ready eloquence and wit, -and the slower if surer Saxon of Mid-lothian. -If we touch upon this question -here, it is merely because it casts -some measure of light upon those -social and literary characteristics of -the Lesbians in which Sappho fortunately<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span> -shared. Almost beyond a -doubt the Æolian Greeks who first -made Lesbos their home were the -nearest of kin to those fair-haired -Achæans who, in the <i>Iliad</i>, followed -their feudal lords to the siege of Troy. -Socially a distinguishing mark of these -people was the liberty and high position -enjoyed by the women in the -household, by the Penelopes as well as -by the Helens. This fact has hardly -been sufficiently considered in dealing -with that peculiar position of Sappho -and her coterie, concerning which something -will be said later on. Artistically -their distinguishing mark, as -represented first in Homer, was their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span> -clear, open-eyed, original observation -of essentials, their veracity of description, -their dislike of the indefinite -and the mystic. This too is clearly -reflected in the work of Sappho and -her compatriots.</p> - -<p>We must not, it is true, make too -much of this racial derivation and -its consequences. The population of -Lesbos doubtless became mixed; the -lapse of centuries, the passing away -of the feudal relation, increasing ease -and wealth in a softening climate, -long intercourse with the trade and -culture of the neighbouring Asiatic -coast—all these had their inevitable -effects. Nevertheless, among it all,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span> -the frank genius of earliest Greece is -still discernible in the classic poetry -of Lesbos.</p> - -<p>The island naturally possessed its -characteristic speech. The dialect of -Lesbos was strongly marked. It is -altogether unsafe to specify at this -distance of time the particular qualities -of softness or sonority which belonged -to Greek dialects; but, if one may venture -where doubt must always be so -great, it would not be unreasonable -to speak of Lesbian Greek as perhaps -the most “singable” of them all. -In several ways it is peculiarly like -Italian. The aspirate is gone, the -double consonants are brought out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span> -with an Italian clarity unique in -Greece, the vowels are firm and musical. -And here we must remember that a -local Greek dialect must never be -looked upon as a provincial <em>patois</em> -simply because it is not Attic. Neither -Attic nor any other one speech possessed -a pre-eminence in Greece in -the year 600 <span class="smcap smaller">B.C.</span> The poet of every -little independent Grecian state was -free to compose in his own idiom, with -no more hesitation or self-consciousness -than would have occurred to a Provençal -troubadour, an early <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">trouvère</i> of -Normandy, or a Sicilian poet before -the age of Dante. The half-doubts of -Burns when writing his native Scots<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span> -would find no sympathy in Sappho or -Alcæus. No poetry that profoundly -stirs the heart was ever written with -effort in an alien speech. Burns perhaps -had some reason to be tempted to -write in English. The Lesbian singers -had no temptation to write in anything -but Lesbian. Sappho may indeed be -called the Burns of Greece, but if her -dialect, like his, was local, it was at the -same time the genuine and recognised -language of the most cultured men and -women of her people.</p> - -<p>Having thus spoken of Lesbos, its -people, and its language, we may proceed -to the social and ethical surroundings -into which Sappho was born.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span> -The island contained, after the usual -Greek fashion, perhaps half-a-dozen -little communities independent of each -other. All these had their “little -summer wars” and their little revolutions; -but it is with Mitylene, the -chief and largest town, that the life of -Sappho is identified. The history of -such a town at this period may be -compared to that of an Italian city -in the later thirteenth century. It -was the history of a struggle between -a despotism, or an oligarchy of aristocrats, -and the rights of the citizens. -The <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">grandi</i> and <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">popolari</i> of Florence -in the time of Dante find their analogues -in the conflicts of nobles like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span> -Alcæus and his brother Antimenidas -against the champions of the common -folk of Mitylene. There were also -feuds less immediately explainable, -just as there were feuds of Guelfs -and Ghibellines, of Blacks and Whites. -We need not inquire into the usurpations -of Melanchrus and Myrsilus or -the dictatorship of Pittacus. Men -carried to power by favour of one -party might drive their opponents into -banishment, just as Dante was exiled -to Verona and Ravenna. Among -those who thus left their country for -a space were the poet Alcæus and his -greater contemporary Sappho. Particularly -haughty and turbulent were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span> -the nobly born, and these often elected -to roam abroad and serve as <i xml:lang="it" lang="it">condottieri</i> -in foreign armies rather than -condescend to obey the rule of the -commons at home. It may be mentioned -in passing that the brother of -the poet Alcæus took service under -King Nebuchadnezzar, and in his wars -killed a Goliath, who “lacked but a -hand’s-breath of five cubits.”</p> - -<p>Yet these are after all but surface incidents, -of which history often makes -too much. As in modern times, the -little wars and little revolutions caused -but an inconsiderable suspension of -social and industrial life. Commerce -and art went on very much as before.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span> -The vines of Lesbos were pruned, the -ships of Lesbos went trading down the -coast, the poets and musicians of -Lesbos played and sang. We know -that while Guelfs were quarrelling with -Ghibellines and Florentines were fighting -with Pisans or Genoese, the festive -processions went with song across the -Arno, Giotto’s tower rose from the -ground, Guido Cavalcanti composed -his sonnets, and Dante, for all that he -must fight in the front ranks at -Campaldino, found time and hearers for -his <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Donne ch’ avete intelletto d’amore</i>. -So it was at Mitylene. We need not -therefore picture Sappho and her -society of maidens as living perpetually<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span> -among war’s alarms or fluttering in -daily expectation of battle, murder, -and sudden death. Life in Lesbos -must have been passing cheerful, as life -goes.</p> - -<p>When we proceed next to speak of -the lively enthusiasm of this Lesbian -folk for beauty in all its forms, and -in especial for the beauty of music and -poetry, we must guard against a misconception. -Under all the love of art -which ruled in Lesbos, amid all its -eager cultivation of the Muses and the -Graces, this isle of Greece “where burning -Sappho loved and sung” carried -on its daily work as strenuously -as any Greeks were wont. Its farmers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span> -and fishermen, its quarriers and vine-dressers, -laboured like others in sun -or cold. There was no doubt plenty -of envy, hatred, and malice, and no -little that was coarse and gross. -Nevertheless the love of art and beauty -and the spontaneous appreciation of -them penetrated far deeper into a -Greek people than it does with us. -It was not an artificial outgrowth, a -dainty efflorescence of leisure and luxury. -It was no private possession of -the <em>virtuoso</em>, or sequestered playground -of the amateur. Even now the popular -songs of the village Greeks are in -literary grace and thought of a higher -quality than many songs familiar<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span> -to our drawing-rooms. Life without -song and dance upon the sward was -unimaginable in old Hellas.</p> - -<p>The special pride of Lesbos was in its -music and poetry. In the language of -the legend, when that magic singer -Orpheus had been torn to pieces in -Thrace, his head—with, as some say, -his lyre—was carried “down the swift -Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.” On the -coins of Mitylene, as on the flag of Ireland, -may be seen a harp. The first -great name in the musical history of -Greece is that of the Lesbian Terpander. -It is not indeed a probable story that he -was the first to increase the strings of -the lyre from four to seven, but it is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span> -practically certain that he both improved -that instrument and invented -new forms of composition to embody -a lyrical idea. Another world-known -poet and musician who shed glory on -Lesbos was Arion. Of him in later -days the story grew that, when he was -thrown overboard by pirates, a dolphin, -which had been charmed by his melodies, -bore him upon its back safe to -the Tarentine shore.</p> - -<p>In Lesbos, as in every part of -Greece, there were abundant demands -upon musician and poet. Every -occasion of worship, festivity, and -grief required its song. The gods -were hymned by groups at their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span> -altars and by white-robed maidens -in processions; at weddings the -hymeneal chorus was chanted along -the street, and the epithalamion -before the doors of the bridal home; -at every banquet were sung lively -catches and jocund songs of Bacchus; -every season—spring, summer, harvest—had -its popular ditty, exultant -or pathetic; almost every occupation, -of herdsman, boatman, gardener, -was beguiled with melody; -at the coming of the first swallow, -as on the old English Mayday, the -children sang the “swallow-song” from -house to house. And let it be -remembered that the Greeks had none<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span> -of our modern tolerance for a song of -which the words were nought and -the tune everything. To them the -thought, the sentiment, was first; -the melody was simply its proper -vehicle. Italian opera, when not -a word is intelligible, would have -seemed to them a strange anomaly. -To them <i xml:lang="grc" lang="grc">mousikê</i> was the “art of the -Muses,” and this meant literature -no less than minstrelsy. The poet, -unless, like Burns, he wrote his verses -to existing tunes, was his own -composer. In either case he was -poet first and foremost.</p> - -<p>Now for generations the songs for -special purposes had been shaping<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span> -themselves on special lines. To use -a phrase of Aristotle, experience had -found out the right species to fit the -case. There were sundry recognised -stanzas and metres for a processional, -a hymeneal, or a dirge. In most -cases, therefore, the task of a new -poet was to write new words; the -melody would, as in the case of Burns, -almost find itself. Nevertheless the -complete poet could not dispense with -an elaborate training in music. To -invent beautiful variations of existing -tunes was part of his glory; he -must at least write words which -should sing themselves to the melody -he selected. “Melodies” is the word,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span> -for the Greeks knew practically -nothing of harmonies. Their songs -were sung in unison, or simply with an -octave interval when men sang with -women or with boys. The accompanying -instrument was generally -the lyre, or one of many stringed -instruments akin thereto; sometimes -it was the so-called flute, which was -in truth a clarinet. Whatever their -musical deficiencies, it has been -maintained by competent authorities -that in nicety of ear for pitch and -time the training of the Greeks -incomparably surpassed the modern. -Be that as it may, it must never be left -out of sight that, when a Lesbian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span> -wrote a song, it was in the first place as -perfect a poem as he could create, and -in the second it was meant to be sung, -not merely to be read. Shelley’s <i>Ode -to a Skylark</i> is consummate literature. -Yet we may doubt if it could ever be -sung, and assuredly it was not written -to that end. On the other hand, the -songs of Moore are often but sickly -stuff to read, but they lend themselves -perfectly to those touching Irish airs, -to which, by the way, the Lesbians -seem to have been akin in a peculiar -tone of plaintiveness. A Greek lyric -aimed at combining the literary -<i xml:lang="grc" lang="grc">mousikê</i> of Shelley’s <i>Ode</i> with the -songful <i xml:lang="grc" lang="grc">mousikê</i> of Moore. It is in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span> -perfection of this combination that -Sappho excels all women who have -ever written verse.</p> - -<p>Where song was for generations so -abundant, it follows that there was -floating about among the people -many an old ballad or favourite ditty -whose author had been long forgotten. -Numbers of these <i xml:lang="de" lang="de">Volkslieder</i>, or -snatches of them, lay, sometimes -with consciousness and sometimes -unrealised, in the memory of every -child of Lesbos. The artistic poet did -not scorn them; he feared no charge of -plagiarism if he adopted and adapted -them; he often acted as Burns acted -with the ballads of Scotland; he took<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span> -them, gave them that marvellous -and inexplicable touch of finality -which only genius can impart, and -so made them his for ever. This -also did Sappho do, and her verses, -when she deals with well-worn -themes, are beyond question often -fed with the hints of older nameless -songsters.</p> - -<p>There is one department of lyric -verse in which Lesbos stood supreme, -and Sappho supreme in Lesbos. It is -the poetry, not of religion or marriage, -of the banquet or the seasons, but of -personal emotion; the verse of the -“lyric cry,” which tells of the writer’s -own passion, its waves of joy and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span> -sorrow, love and hate. It is the monody, -the verse sung, not by a gathered -company, but from the one overflowing -heart, the song best represented at -Rome by Catullus, and in modern -times by Burns or Heine. For most -of her poems in this kind there is no -reason to suppose that Sappho relied -upon any promptings but those of her -own soul. She took the floating -rhythms of the ballads, modified them, -and into their mould she poured verse -which, as George Sand said of her own -writings, came from “the real blood of -her heart and the real flame of her -thought.”</p> - -<p>And here at length we come to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span> -poetess herself. Into this land, devoted -to poetry, to music, to flowers, and so -regardful of loveliness that a public -“prize of beauty” was annually competed -for in the temple of Hera, was -Sappho—or Psappha, as she apparently -called herself—born in the latter part -of the seventh century before Christ. -Our ancient authorities are sufficiently -in agreement as to her date, and we may -lay it down that she was in her prime -about the year 600 <span class="smcap smaller">B.C.</span>, or nearly a -hundred and fifty years before that -great period of Athenian literary -culture which is represented by -Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. -The ascertainable facts of her career<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span> -are miserably few, and concerning -those matters which are in debate as -to her life and character the present -exponent must be permitted to express -simply his own views, premising that -they have been formed with all due -and deliberate care.</p> - -<p>Whether the names of her parents -were or were not Scamandronymus -and Clêis is an unimportant question. -We may simply remark that both -those names are of aristocratic colour, -and both are more or less authenticated. -Whether again she was born at -Mitylene itself, or at the smaller town -of Eresos, is of little moment, since -we know that at any rate Mitylene was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span> -the scene of her life’s work. That she -belonged to the ranks of the well-born, -and that good looks were in the family, -is proved by the choice of her brother -Larichus as cup-bearer of Mitylene, an -office which was bestowed only on -handsome and noble youth. That at -least one member of the family -possessed considerable means is known -from the rather romantic history of a -second brother, Charaxus. This young -man sailed away in his ship, laden with -the famous Lesbian wine—the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">innocentis -pocula Lesbii</i> of Horace—as far -as Egypt. There he traded in that -merchandise at the Pan-Grecian free-town -of Naucratis, which had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span> -established in the Delta under a permission -somewhat similar to that by which -settlement was first allowed in the -treaty-ports of China. Here, however, -he fell in love with the world-famed -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">demi-mondaine</i> whose name, Doricha, -is less familiar than her sobriquet -Rhodôpis—“complexion of a rose”—and -his gains were spent in chivalrously -ransoming that lady from a degrading -slavery. It is of interest to know, -though the verses are not preserved to -us, that his poetess sister reproved him -sharply for this conduct. Her “love -of love” did not blind her to the claims -of family honour and dignity. It is -gratifying to learn that at a later time<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span> -she expresses her reconciliation to her -brother in a poem which, like those of -Herondas and Bacchylides, has but -recently been disgorged, though in a sadly -mutilated state, by the omnivorous -sands of Egypt. Sappho herself is -said to have married a wealthy islander -of Andros, and to have had at least one -daughter, whose name, according -to Greek custom, was the name of the -grandmother, Clêis. It is apparently -this Clêis whom she is addressing in a -fragment which we may venture to -translate <span class="locked">thus——</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span></p> -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“I have a maid, a bonny maid,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">As dainty as the golden flowers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My darling Clêis. Were I paid<br /></span> -<span class="i2">All Lydia, and the lovely bowers<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of Cyprus, ’twould not buy my maid.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>An inscription on the Parian marbles -informs us that, at some uncertain date, -Sappho fled, or was driven, into banishment -to Sicily. There is nothing -unlikely in the circumstance, and it -is worth noting that more than 500 -years later, in the days of Cicero, -Verres, the governor of that island, appropriated -a bronze statue of Sappho, -wrought by a Grecian master and -greatly prized at Syracuse.</p> - -<p>As <i xml:lang="de" lang="de">Aberglaube</i> which has gathered -about Sappho’s history, there are two<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span> -strange legends, or rather there is one -strange legend in two parts, which must -here be told briefly.</p> - -<p>The story goes that once upon a time -Aphrodite, goddess of love, disguised -as an aged woman, was gallantly -ferried across to Lesbos by a young -waterman of the name of Phaon. In -reward she bestowed upon him marvellous -beauty and irresistible charm. -Of him, the fable tells, Sappho became -enamoured to the point of frenzy, and, -unable to win his heart, she resolved -to attempt the last and most desperate -cure known for her disease. Away in -the Ionian Sea was the jutting rock of -Leucas, and it was believed that those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span> -who cast themselves down from that -cliff into the sea either ended their -miseries in death or rose from the -waters cured of their malady. What -became of Sappho when she took that -“lover’s leap” may be found narrated -by Hephæstion. It is given in -Addison’s 233rd <i>Spectator</i>. “Many who -were present related that they saw -her fall into the sea, from whence she -never rose again; there were others -who affirmed that she never came to -the bottom of her leap, but that she -was changed into a swan as she fell, -and that they saw her hovering in the -air under that shape. But whether -or no the whiteness and fluttering of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span> -her garments might not deceive those -who looked upon her, or whether she -might not really be metamorphosed -into that musical and melancholy bird, -is still a doubt among the Lesbians.” -Well, let us share the Lesbian doubt, -and a little more. Suffice it to say -that, though this story, which has been -elaborated by the fancy of Ovid, -appears to have been known in some -shape to Menander and other comic -poets of Athens, there is absolutely -no trace of the name of Phaon or of -anything connected with him in any -fragment of Sappho. Nor was there -likely to be, seeing that he is in all probability -but another <em>avatar</em> of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span> -mythical youth Adonis. More interesting -is it to observe that the rock of -desperation is called “Sappho’s Leap” -unto this day. Unfortunately we do -not know when or by whom it was so -baptized.</p> - -<p>Of Sappho’s personal appearance -we have no certain knowledge. More -than four centuries later a philosopher -named Maximus Tyrius says -that she was considered beautiful, -“though” short and dark, and hence -is prompted Swinburne’s <span class="locked">assumption—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“The small dark body’s Lesbian loveliness<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That held the fire eternal.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span> -If this be true, she was sufficiently -unlike the conventional ideal of Lesbian -beauty. Her contemporary Alcæus -speaks of her “sweet smile,” and -Anacreon, in the next generation, of -her “sweet voice.” Later writers of -epigrams, who can hardly have known -much about the matter, call her -“bright-eyed,” or “the pride of the -lovely-haired Lesbians,” but those are -as likely as not mere descriptive -guesses of the kind in which poetical -fancy may pardonably indulge. If -we meet with the untranslatable -adjective <i xml:lang="grc" lang="grc">kalê</i> applied to her by Plato, -we have to remember that it is a stock -epithet of admiration for a writer of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span> -charm and genius, and in such cases -contains no reference whatever to -beauty of person.</p> - -<p>What we really know best of Sappho’s -life is that she was acknowledged the -choicest spirit of her time in music -and poetry, and that, whether as -friendly guide or professional teacher -or something of both, she gathered -about her what may be variously -called a coterie, academy, conservatorium, -or club, of young women, -not only from Lesbos itself but -from other islands, and even from -Miletus and the distant Pamphylia. -Sometimes they were called her “companions,” -sometimes her “disciples.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span> -One of them, Erinna of Telos, herself -became famous, but unhappily survives -for us as a lyrist only in an -inconsiderable line or two.</p> - -<p>Sappho appears to have taught -these damsels music and also the art -of poetry, so far as that art is teachable. -She appears, moreover, to have taught -them whatever charms and graces of -bearing and behaviour were most -desired by women, whether in their -social life or in their frequent appearances -in religious or secular processions -and ceremonies. There exists a short -fragment in which she derides the -rusticity of the woman who has no -idea how to hold up her train about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span> -her ankles. In another place she bids -one of her <span class="locked">maidens—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w15"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Take sprigs of anise fair<br /></span> -<span class="i2">With soft hands twined,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And round thy bonny hair<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A chaplet bind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Muse with smiles will bless<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Thy blossoms gay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While from the garlandless<br /></span> -<span class="i2">She turns away.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>It has often been observed that the -relations of Sappho with the young -women Erinna and Atthis and Anactoria -resembled those of Socrates with -the young men Alcibiades and Charmides -and Phædrus. But it has apparently<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span> -not been also pointed out as a parallel -that, three centuries later, there -similarly gathered about the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">maître</i> -Philêtas, in the isle of Cos, a school of -young poets, among whom were no -less persons than Theocritus, Asclepiades -and Aratus.</p> - -<p>The peculiarity of Sappho’s coterie -lay to the general mind in the fact -that it was a club of women. And -here we must handle with brief and -gentle touch, but with no false reserve, a -topic which no discourse on Sappho can -shrink from facing. The reputation -of Sappho and her comrades has long -been made to suffer from what is -probably, and almost certainly, a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span> -cruel injustice. Partly through the -social depravity of the later Greek -and Roman, partly through taking -too seriously the scurrilous humours -of the comic dramatists of Athens, -many ancients and most moderns have -formed concerning that Lesbian -school a notion which in all likelihood -does bitter wrong to Sappho, wrong -to art, and wrong to human nature. -At Athens, as among all the Ionian -Greeks, and later on among Greeks -almost everywhere, a woman of character -was kept in a seclusion suggestive -of the oriental. The woman most -to be praised, Pericles declared, was -“she of whom least is said among men<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span> -whether for good or evil.” This, as -we have seen, was not the way of the -older Æolian Lesbos, where woman -still enjoyed much of the Homeric -freedom and independence to go and -come and live her life. What more -natural than for Athenians to imagine -that the famous coterie of Sappho -consisted of women of the same class -as the brilliant Aspasia? Their very -talent was proof enough, for the -Athenian housekeeper who passed -for wife made no pretensions to literature -and art. What more natural also -than for an Athenian playwright, like -him of the <i>Ecclesiazusæ</i>, or “<i>Women -in Parliament</i>,” to find scandalous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span> -comedy in the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Précieuses</i> of Lesbos? -Again, the poems of Sappho are -nearly all poems of love, and to the -ordinary Greek, especially of a later -date, it was unseemly for modest -women to acknowledge so positive -a passion. An Elizabeth Barrett -Browning would have received no -countenance from the Athenian Mrs. -Grundy. The truth seems to be that -Lesbos in the year 600 <span class="smcap smaller">B.C.</span> was in -this respect socially and ethically -almost as different from the Athens -of two hundred years later as the -emancipated young woman of America -is different from the dragon-guarded -Spanish maiden of Madrid.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span> -We may pass by other considerations -which might be urged, but it is no -surprise that the false notion of Sappho, -constructed by decadent Greeks and -refined upon by the vice of the Romans, -should do her special harm in the days -when paganism gave way to Christianity. -Among the many works destroyed -by the unco’ guid in the early -Byzantine days were the poems of -Sappho—destroyed the more savagely -because that particular pagan, who -so passionately invoked the Queen -of love, was a woman, and woman’s -ideal place was then the cloister. -Unhappily certain moderns, who are -anything but unco’ guid, have carried<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span> -on the wrong in a different way, and, -for example, the title <i>Sapho</i> of -Daudet’s sketch of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">mœurs Parisiennes</i> -is a choice which may pardonably -stir the ire of any Hellenist.</p> - -<p>The few fragments of Sappho which -have been preserved are not those -which have been spared by the saints -or which have been culled for special -innocence. They simply happen to be -quoted here and there by ancient -critics, grammarians, and even lexicographers, -to illustrate some æsthetic -doctrine, the use of some word, or even -some peculiarity of grammar. And -no understanding man or woman can -read them without feeling that what<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span> -we find is sheer poetry, sound and -true, free from dross in either form -or thought. Says Sappho herself, -“I love daintiness, and for me love -possesses the brightness and beauty -of the sun.” To Alcæus, her fellow-countryman -and acquaintance, she was -the “violet-weaving, pure, sweetly-smiling -Sappho.” To Plato, who -judged even art by ethical standards, -she is “beautiful and wise.” Her reply -to her fellow-poet, when he was too -bashful to say something which was -in his mind, was <span class="locked">this—</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span></p> -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Had your desire been right and good,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Your tongue perplex’d with no bad thought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With frank eye unabashed you would<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Have spoken of the thing you ought.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>To some lover she says—if she is -speaking in her own <span class="locked">person—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w15"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“As friends we’ll part:<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Win thee a younger bride;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too old, I lack the heart<br /></span> -<span class="i2">To keep thee at my side.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>Nay, we may go further and say -that, after reading and re-reading and -translating and commenting on her -poems, so far as we possess them, we -find her verse full indeed of warmth -and colour, full of poignant feeling, -but never riotous, always sane, always<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span> -controlled by the truest sense of art. -Obedience to the central Greek motto <span xml:lang="grc" lang="grc">μηδὲν ἄγαν</span>—“nothing -too much”—was -never better exemplified. The Greeks -would never have set her on such a -pedestal if she had been the poetical -mænad who seems to exist in the mind -of Swinburne, when he writes of her, -in that vicious exaggeration of phrase -which he too often affects, <span class="locked">as—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w25"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Love’s priestess, mad with pain and joy of song,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Song’s priestess, mad with joy and pain of love.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">No writer so lacking in <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">sophrosyne</i> -could assert, as Swinburne elsewhere<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span> -in his finer and truer style makes her -<span class="locked">assert—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“I Sappho shall be one ...<br /></span> -<span class="i0">... with all high things for ever.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>There is not a line of Sappho of -which you do not feel that, glow as it -may with feeling, it is constructed with -such art as—unconscious though it -may possibly be—can only be sustained -in a mind of perfect sanity.</p> - -<p>There is something else which is -too often strangely overlooked in -judging a poet from his writings alone. -It is particularly liable to be forgotten -when the writings which have been -preserved are but fragments severed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span> -from their context. The poet is not -always writing in his own person; he -is not always revealing his own feelings. -He is often dramatising; and -his verses then utter the sentiments -and passions suited to the character -concerned. No one will accept a -passage culled from Shakespeare as -proof of the ethical views of Shakespeare -himself. It may express only -the whim of Falstaff, or the snarl of -Shylock, or the banter of Benedick, -or the melancholy humour of Hamlet. -Allowing for all the difference between -lyric poetry and dramatic, the lyrist -also has his passages in which he is -speaking for another. He may be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span> -actually writing <em>for</em> another. <i>In -Memoriam</i> doubtless represents the -heart of Tennyson himself. But -suppose posterity to retain but a few -fragments of his other works. What -shall we say of those who might take -the isolated words “I am aweary, -aweary, I would that I were dead” as -a proof of the settled pessimism of -our poet? We know that the speaker -was Mariana. We do not always -know who is the speaker in the fragments -of Sappho. But, even if we -did know, there still remains not a verse -which betrays the too much, or which -passes beyond the pathetic into the -reckless, the hysterical, still less the -dissolute.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span> -Behind Sappho, as behind Burns -before he wrote “Green grow the -rushes O” or “Auld Lang Syne,” lay -a mass of popular ballads and a wealth -of lyrical ideas to be seized upon and -shaped when the perfect mood arrived. -When she <span class="locked">sings—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w15"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Sunk is the moon;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The Pleiades are set;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis midnight; soon<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The hour is past; and yet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I lie alone”—<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">it is probable that she is setting one -such prehistoric lyrical idea to new -words or recasting one such vagrom -ditty. It is practically certain that she is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">60</span> -doing so in that quatrain which begins -“Sweet mother mine, I cannot ply -my loom.” That thought is embodied -in English folksong also—“O mother, -put my wheel away; I cannot spin -to-night”—as well as in German and -other tongues.</p> - -<p>Let us then sweep aside from the -memory of Sappho the myths of -Phaon and the Leucadian leap, and -the calumnies of Athenian worldlings -in the comic theatre; let us reject all -that Swinburnian hyperbole which -makes her “mad” in any sense whatever; -and let us simply take her upon -the strength of the “few passages, -but roses” which are left to us, and upon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span> -the word of Alcæus that she was the -“violet-weaving, pure, sweetly-smiling -Sappho.”</p> - -<p>Her life as teacher and æsthetic -guide in Lesbos evidently did not pass -without a cloud. Her talent, like -talent everywhere, found jealous rivals -and detractors. A certain Andromeda -seems to have caused her special -vexation by luring away her favourite -pupil Atthis. There were also, then -as now, rich but uncultured women -who had little love for art and its -votaries, particularly if these latter -were all too charming. To one such -woman Sappho, who, like a true -Æolian, looked with horror on a life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span> -without poetry and a death unhonoured -by song, <span class="locked">writes—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w30"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“When thou art dead, thou shalt lie, with none to remember or mourn,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">For ever and aye; for thy head no Pierian roses adorn;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But e’en in the nether abodes thou shalt herd thee, unnoted, forlorn,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">With the dead whom the great dead scorn.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>Her work as poetess, though of -everlasting value for what it touches -in universal humanity, naturally bears -many marks of her country and her -time. Besides her songs of personal -emotion, she wrote in several of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span> -various forms of occasional verse -which we found reason to mention as -existing in Lesbos. Of her wedding -songs and epithalamia we possess a -number of short fragments. Among -them is one in the accepted amœbæan -or antiphonic style, in which a band of -girls mock the men with failure to win -some dainty maiden, and the men -reply with a taunt at the neglected -bloom of the unprofitable virgin. -Say the <span class="locked">maids—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w15"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“On the top of the topmost spray<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The pippin blushes red,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Forgot by the gatherers—nay!<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Was it “forgot” we said?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Twas too far overhead!”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span></p> -<p class="in0">Reply the <span class="locked">men—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“The hyacinth so sweet<br /></span> -<span class="i2">On the hills where the herdsmen go<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is trampled ’neath their feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And its purple bloom laid low—”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">and there unhappily the record deserts -us.</p> - -<p>The writing of Sappho was thus in -no way dissociated from the surrounding -life of Lesbos. Similarly the -Lesbian love of bright and beautiful -things—of gold, of roses, of sweet -odours and sweet sounds—pervades -all that is left of her. The Queen of -Love sits on a richly-coloured throne; -she dispenses the “nectar” of love in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span> -“beakers of gold”; she wears a -“golden coronal”; the Graces have -“rosy arms”; verses are the “rose-wreath -of the Muses”; the blessed -goddesses shower grace upon those -who approach them with garlands -on their heads. If maidens dance -around the altar, they may dance -most pleasantly on the tender grass -flecked with flowers. It is sweet to -lie in the garden of the Nymphs, -<span class="locked">where—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Through apple-boughs, with purling sound,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Cool waters creep;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From quivering leaves descends around<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The dew of sleep.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Sweet among sounds is that of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span> -“harbinger of spring, the nightingale, -whose voice is all desire.” Sappho -does in very truth, as she declares, -love daintiness. Above all, she loves -love. Love is the “nectar” in the -<span class="locked">lines—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Come, Cyprian Queen, and, debonair,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">In golden cups the nectar bear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wherein all festal joy must share<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Or be no joy.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">But there is nothing morbid, nothing -of the hot-house, about all this. It -is simply the frank, naïve, half-physical, -half-mental, enjoyment of the youth -of the world, as fresh and healthy as -the love of the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">trouvères</i>, or of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span> -Chaucer, for the daisy, and of the balladist -for the season when the “shaws -be sheen and leaves be large and -long.”</p> - -<p>Unhappily of the nine books of -Sappho there have survived only one -complete poem, one or two considerable -fragments, and a number of -scraps and lines. So far as we possess -even these we have to thank ancient -critics, such as Aristotle, Dionysius, and -Longinus, writers of miscellanies, such -as Plutarch and Athenæus, or grammarians -like Hephæstion. We have -also to thank those modern scholars, -and particular Bergk, who have -acutely and patiently gleaned the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span> -scattered remnants from the pages of -these ancient authorities. Scanty as -they are, we can gather from them -as profound a conviction of their -creator’s genius as we gather from -some fragmentary torso of an ancient -masterpiece of sculpture. We may -grieve that a torso of Praxiteles is so -mutilated; nevertheless the art of the -master speaks in every recognisable -line of it. According to the old proverbs, -“Hercules may be known from -his foot” and “a lion from his toe-nail.” -What remains of Sappho is enough to -make us fully comprehend the splendour -of her poetic reputation in ancient -times. That reputation was unique.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span> -To the Greeks “the poet” meant -Homer; “the poetess” meant Sappho. -The story goes that Solon, the Athenian -sage and legislator who was her contemporary, -hearing his nephew sing -one of Sappho’s odes, demanded to be -taught it, “So that I may not die -without learning it.” Plato consents -to praise her, and that, when Plato -speaks of a poet, is praise from Sir -Hubert. To Aristotle she ranks with -Homer and Archilochus. Strabo, the -geographer, calls her “a marvellous -being,” whom “no woman could pretend -to rival in the very least in the matter -of poetry.” Plutarch avers that “her -utterances are veritably mingled with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span> -fire,” and that “the warmth of her -heart comes forth from her in her -songs.” He confesses also that their -dainty charm shamed him to put by -the wine-cup. To one writer of epigrams, -said to be Plato himself, she is -the “Tenth Muse”; to others she is -the “pride of Greece” or the “flower of -the Graces.” It is recorded that Mitylene -stamped her effigy upon its coins. -If imitation is the sincerest flattery, -she was flattered abundantly. The -most genuine lyric poet of Rome, -Catullus, and its most skilful artificer -of odes, Horace, both freely copied -her. They did more than imitate; -they plagiarised, they translated, sometimes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span> -almost word for word. There is -scarcely an intelligible fragment left of -Sappho which has not been borrowed -or adapted by some modern poet, in -English, French, or German.</p> - -<p>There is one mutilated ode of hers -which no one can translate. It is -quoted by Longinus as showing with -what vivid terseness she can portray -the tumultuous and conflicting sensations -of a lover in that bright fierce -south. Ambrose Philips makes it -wordy; Boileau makes it formal. It -displays all the grand Greek directness, -but a directness clothed in the -grand Greek charm of perfect rhythmical -expression. We can preserve,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span> -if we will, the directness, but the -charm of its medium will inevitably -vanish.</p> - -<p>In effect, lamentably stripped of its -native verbal charm, it may be <span class="locked">rendered—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Blest as the gods, methinks, is he<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who sitteth face to face with thee<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And hears thy sweet voice nigh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy winsome laugh, whereat my heart<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Doth in my bosom throb and start;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">One glimpse of thee, and I<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Am speechless, tongue-tied; subtle flame<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Steals in a moment through my frame;<br /></span> -<span class="i2">My ears ring; to mine eye<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All’s dark; a cold sweat breaks; all o’er<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I tremble, pale as death; nay more,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">I seem almost to die.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span></p> -<p class="in0">When after this we read in the <i>Phèdre</i> -of Racine these four <span class="locked">lines—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w30" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Je le vis, je rougis, je palis à sa vue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Un trouble s’éleva dans mon âme éperdue;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Je sentais tout mon cœur et transir et brûler:<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">we recognise their source. We recognise, -also, if it were not already confessed, -the source of this of Tennyson -in his <i>Fatima</i>:</p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w30"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Last night, when some one spoke his name,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From my swift blood, that went and came,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A thousand little shafts of flame<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Were shivered in my narrow frame.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span> -If this physical perturbation seems -strange to the more reticent man of -northern blood, it was in no way -strange to Theocritus, to Catullus, or -to Lucretius. Once more, according to -the German proverb, “he who would -comprehend the poet must travel in -the poet’s land.”</p> - -<p>And here we are confronted with a -supreme difficulty. While mere fact -is readily translatable, and thought is -approximately translatable, the literary -quality, which is warm with the pressure -and pulsation of a writer’s mood -and rhythmic with his emotional state, -is hopelessly untranslatable. It can be -suggested, but it cannot be reproduced.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span> -The translation is too often like the -bare, cold photograph of a scene of -which the emotional effect is largely -due to colour and atmosphere. The -simpler and more direct the words of -the original, the more impossible is -translation. In the original the words, -though simple and direct, are poetical, -beautiful in quality and association. -They contain in their own nature hints -of pathos, sparks of fire, which any -so-called synonym would lack. They -are musical in themselves and musical -in their combinations. They flow -easily, sweetly, touchingly through the -ear into the heart. The translator may -seek high and low in his own language<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span> -for words and combinations of the -same <em>timbre</em>, the same ethical or -emotional influence, the same gracious -and touching music. He will generally -seek in vain. In his own language -there may exist words approximately -answering in meaning, but, even -if they are fairly simple and direct, they -are often commonplace, sullied with -“ignoble use,” harsh in sound, without -distinction or charm. He may require -a whole phrase to convey the same tone -and effect; he becomes diffuse, where -terseness is a special virtue of his -original. Let a foreigner study to -render <span class="locked">this—</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Had we never loved sae kindly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Had we never loved sae blindly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Never met, or never parted,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Or <span class="locked">this——</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Take, O take those lips away,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">That so sweetly were forsworn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And those eyes, the break of day,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Lights that do mislead the morn!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But my kisses bring again,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Seals of love, but sealed in vain.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Is it to be imagined that he could -create precisely the effect of either of -these stanzas in French or Italian? -Is not much of that effect inseparable -from the words?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span> -Take a perfectly simple stanza of -<span class="locked">Heine—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w15" xml:lang="de" lang="de"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Du bist wie eine Blume<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So hold und schön und rein:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmuth<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Near as English is to German, incomparably -more easy as it is to render -German into English than Greek into -English, it may be declared that no -English rendering of this verse conveys, -or ever will convey, exactly the impression -of the German original.</p> - -<p>In respect of mere musical sound, -what other words could run precisely -like those of Coleridge at the opening<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span> -of <i>Kubla Khan</i>, or like Shelley’s “I -arise from dreams of thee”? The case -is exactly the same when we turn to a -Greek lyric. Alcæus writes four words -which mean simply “I felt the coming -of the flowery spring”; but no juxtaposition -of English words yet attempted -to that effect can recall to the student -of Greek the impression of</p> - -<p class="center" xml:lang="grc" lang="grc">ἦρος ἀνθεμόεντος ἐπάϊον ἐρχομένοιο.</p> - -<p>It is necessarily so with Sappho. She -is an embodiment of the typical Greek -genius, which demanded the terse and -clear, yet fine and noble, expression of a -natural thought, free, as Addison well -says, from “those little conceits and turns -of wit with which many of our modern<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span> -lyrics are so miserably infected.” -True Greek art detests pointless -elaboration, strained effects, or effects -which have to be hunted for. The -Greek lyric spirit would therefore -have loved the best of Burns and -would have recognised him for its own. -But you cannot translate Burns. -Neither can you translate Sappho. -Nevertheless one attempt may be -nearer, less inadequate, than another. -Let us take the hymn to Aphrodite. -It is quoted by the critic Dionysius for -its “happy language and its easy -grace of composition.”</p> - -<p>The first stanza contains in the Greek -sixteen words, big and little. In woeful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span> -prose these may be literally rendered -“<em>Radiant-throned immortal -Aphrodite, child of Zeus, guile-weaver, -I beseech thee, Queen, crush not my -heart with griefs or cares.</em>”</p> - -<p>In turning Greek poetry into English, -and so inserting all those little pronouns -and articles and prepositions with which -a synthetic language can dispense, it -may be estimated that the number -of words will be greater by about -one half,—the little words making -the odd half. But Ambrose Philips -makes thirty-four words out of those -<span class="locked">sixteen—</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span></p> -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“O Venus, <em>beauty of the skies,</em><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><em>To whom a thousand temples rise,</em><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><em>Gaily false in gentle smiles</em>,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Full of love-perplexing wiles;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O Goddess, from my heart remove<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The wasting cares and pains of love.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">The italics should suffice for criticism -upon the fidelity of this “translation.” -Mr. J. H. Merivale, though more -faithful to the material contents, finds -forty-three words <span class="locked">necessary—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Immortal Venus, throned above<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In radiant beauty, child of Jove,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O skilled in every <em>art of love</em><br /></span> -<span class="i2"><em>And</em> artful snare;<br /></span> -<span class="i0"><em>Dread power, to whom I bend the knee,</em><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><em>Release</em> my soul and set it free<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From <em>bonds</em> of <em>piercing</em> agony<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And <em>gloomy</em> care.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">83</span></p> -<p class="in0">We may perhaps without presumption -ask whether the sense is not given more -faithfully, in a more natural English -form and rhythm, and in a shape -sufficiently reminiscent of the original -stanza, in the twenty-three words which -<span class="locked">follow—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Guile-weaving child of Zeus, who art<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Immortal, throned in radiance, spare,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O Queen of Love, to break my heart<br /></span> -<span class="i2">With grief and care.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Keeping to the same principles of strict -compression and strict simplicity we -may thus continue with the remainder -of the <span class="locked">poem—</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">84</span> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span></p> -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w25"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“But hither come, as thou of old,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When my voice reached thine ear afar,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Didst leave thy father’s hall of gold,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And yoke thy car,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And through mid air their whirring wing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy bonny doves did swiftly ply<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O’er the dark earth, and thee did bring<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Down from the sky.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Right soon they came, and thou, blest Queen,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A smile upon thy face divine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Didst ask what ail’d me, what might mean<br /></span> -<span class="i2">That call of mine.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">‘What would’st thou have, with heart on fire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sappho?’ thou saidst. ‘Whom pray’st thou me<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To win for thee to fond desire?<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Who wrongeth thee?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soon shall he seek, who now doth shun;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who scorns thy gifts, shall gifts bestow;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who loves thee not, shall love anon,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Wilt thou or no.’<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So come thou now, and set me free<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From carking cares; bring to full end<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My heart’s desire; thyself O be<br /></span> -<span class="i2">My stay and friend!”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>The perfection of the Greek style is -fine simplicity. We must not say that -this characteristic perfection is more -absolutely displayed in Sappho than in -Homer or Sophocles. It is, however, -illustrated by Sappho in that region of -verse which pre-eminently demands it, -the lyric of personal emotion. There -may be, with different persons and at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">86</span> -different dates, wide differences of -interest in regard to the themes and -structures of the epic, the drama, or the -triumphal ode. Most forms of poetry -must some time cease to find full -appreciation, because of the peculiar -ideas and conventions of their time -and place. But the poetry of the -primal and eternal passions of the -human heart, of its experiences and -its emotions, carries with it those -touches which make the whole world -kin. Love and sorrow are re-born -with every human being. Time and -civilisation make little difference. -But those touches are only weakened by -far-sought words and elaborate metres,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span> -by recondite conceits and ambitious -psychology.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the woman who seeks to -come nearest to Sappho in poetry is -Mrs. Browning, but she falls far short -of her predecessor, not only through -inferior mastery of form, but also -through an excessive “bookishness” of -thought. The poet moves <span class="locked">by—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w15"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“High and passionate thoughts<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To their own music chanted.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">In the case of songs whose theme is -what Sappho calls the “bitter sweet” -of love, their proper style has been -determined by the gathering consensus -of humanity, and it is a style simple but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span> -powerful, with a magic recurring in -cadences easy to grasp and too affecting -to forget. It is the style of “Ye -flowery banks o’ bonnie Doon,” -not of the Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day. -Sappho’s songs fulfil all the conditions, -and even of her fragments that is true -which her imitator Horace said of her -completer poems, as he more happily -possessed <span class="locked">them—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Still breathes the love, still lives the fire<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Imparted to the Lesbian’s lyre.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>The virtue of Sappho is supreme -art without artificiality, utter truth -to natural feeling wedded to words of -utter truth. Let Pausanias, that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span> -ancient Baedeker, declare that “concerning -love Sappho sang many things -which are inconsistent with one -another.” She is only the more truthful -therefor. No human heart, frankly -enjoying or suffering the “bitter-sweet” -moods and experiences of love, ever was -consistent. Consistency belongs only -to the cool and calculating brain. If -love is cool and calculating, it is not -love.</p> - -<p>How much Sappho may have written -on other subjects than this, the most -engrossing of all, we shall perhaps never -know. But we may be sure that one -of the most priceless poetical treasures -lost to the world has been those other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span> -verses which, to quote Shelley on -Keats, told <span class="locked">of—</span></p> - -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“All she had loved, and moulded into thought<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">There is, we may add, one quality besides -beauty in verse which can never -be analysed. It is charm. Sappho -is pervaded with charm. And this -suggests that we may conclude by -quoting the judgment of Matthew -Arnold upon one defect at least which -must make Heine rank always lower -than <span class="locked">Sappho:—</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span></p> -<div class="poem-container"> -<div class="poem w20"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Charm is the glory which makes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Song of the poet divine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love is the fountain of charm.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How without charm wilt thou draw,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Poet! the world to thy way?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not by thy lightnings of wit—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not by thy thunder of scorn!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These to the world, too, are given;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wit it possesses and scorn—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Charm is the poet’s alone.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="p4 center"><span class="smcap">The St. <span class="bt">Abbs Press,</span> London</span></p> - -<div class="chapter"><div class="transnote"> -<h2 class="nobreak p1" id="Transcribers_Note">Transcriber’s Note</h2> - -<p>Punctuation and spelling were made -consistent when a predominant preference was found -in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.</p> -</div></div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sappho, by Thomas George Tucker - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAPPHO *** - -***** This file should be named 60906-h.htm or 60906-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/9/0/60906/ - -Produced by Turgut Dincer, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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