Intro to Community Week: Fragments of Sappho

[poetree_admin]

"Of the nine books of lyrics that Sappho is said to have composed, one poem has survived complete. All the rest are fragments."

"Hellenistic poets called her 'the tenth Muse' or 'the mortal Muse'"

    - 'Introduction', If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho - Anne Carson.
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Our central text for this week comes to us from more than two thousand five hundred years in the past. Sappho's original poem would have been lyric in the oldest sense of the word: intended for singing or chanting with musical lyre accompaniment. That the words, if not the music, were transcribed and treasured is testament both to their power and to how highly Sappho was regarded by her contemporaries and later generations. Centuries after her death, the Library of Alexandria staff collected every surviving poem of hers into nine papyrus scroll books, and listed Sappho as one of the nine ancient Greek 'lyric poets' most worthy of close study. In other words, Sappho was regularly listed in the ancient 'top ten nine' in her chosen art - no easy feat for any poet working in that tradition, let alone a female one.

The Library of Alexandria burned. Julius Caesar set fire to it; Emperor Aurelian burnt the entire city quarter to the ground; its daughter library in the Serapeum was destroyed, possibly by Pope Theophilus; no one knows for sure if there was a library left to burn by the time commander Amr ibn Al-Asi came conquering. The wonder is not that there is only one whole poem of Sappho's left; the wonder is that there are any fragments left at all, and that we can still find meaning in them after such millennia.

This week, we will explore Fragment 16 primarily in translation, re-examining it in light of its cultural and historical contexts, reimagining it as set to music, remixing it into new poetry, and revisiting more generally how we make sense of gaps in our record & our understanding of the past.


Monday: rainjoy: Greek Conceptions of Beauty, and Other Notes on Translation

Tuesday: luzula: Sappho's 16th fragment set to music

Wednesday: poetree_admin: ['free space of imaginal adventure' in honor of missing matter]

Thursday: alexconall: advancing Sappho into the English-speaking modern day [remix poem]

Friday: kaberett: Ringing steel, or, resonance

Saturday: cirque: Small Miracles

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Last edited 9/21/13 by jjhunter

Greek Conceptions of Beauty, and Other Notes on Translation

[poetree_admin]

Posted on behalf of rainjoy. Anne Carson translation of Fragment 16 can be read here.
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Forgive my intrusion, as someone who is not a poet, nor a classicist, nor even for more than ten years any official student of literature - I'm a philosopher who doesn't know when not to dabble, but I do soothe my conscience for my constant interfering in art by being an aesthetician by trade; I might in my daily life deal mostly in very abstract concepts, but what they relate to in the end is this poem in front of us, and what it does to us, and what it does to me every single time. So I'll try to keep this fairly brief and on point, and what I'm going to talk about here is mostly context for the poem, because there are a few things to take into account which really do matter and I always want to grab people tight and *make them understand this* because I *want* them to love the poem the way that I do. And I do love it, painfully so.

Always remember the act of translation, and the translator's choices; always remember the conception of beauty in the poem, and the poet's choices; and always remember the sheer state of the poem as it survives, because the 'test of time' is a lie. What survives for two thousand years is a matter of luck as much as taste, a matter of how useful scholars across history thought the Greek in that passage was for teaching Greek grammar, a matter of whim and fire and forgetfulness and creeping damp. The fact that we have what we have of the poem is a gift, an accident, a fluke, a blessing. And as for the missing pieces, when it comes to it, after more than two thousand years, even Sappho's silence sings.

So. ( There is a reason that when it comes to Sappho I stick my fingers in my ears and make furious noise if anyone besides Anne Carson attempts to translate her. )

( The fact that this is an ancient Greek poem matters, because Sappho's conception of beauty is downright subversive to some classical minds. )