Author: Erin Baldwin
Before there was Time’s Up and #MeToo, there was Sappho.
Sappho may not have specifically been advocating for change, but she was revolutionary in her own distinct way. Sappho was doing what few — if any — other women were doing at the time. She was writing, and she was becoming famous for it.
Today, Sappho is considered not only one of the best female poets of ancient Greece but also one of the best poets period. Her sensual poems written from a first-person perspective speak of domestic life, wedding ceremonies, virginity, motherhood and, above all things, love. Sappho gives voice to a whole sphere of society generally ignored by male writers at the time. Even when Homer spoke of women, most famously Penelope in The Odyssey, it was filtered through a male gaze. When Sappho speaks of women, she speaks as a woman.
Sappho was born sometime in the latter part of seventh century BC on the island of Lesbos. While little is known about her life, there are some facts that can be gleaned from her poetry and the work of other authors: she was from an aristocratic family, she had three brothers, she was exiled in Sicily due to political tensions in Greece and she also had a beloved daughter named Cleis. Otherwise, not much can be definitively said. Except for something quite surprising: Sappho appears to have engaged in various same-sex romantic relationships. And not only did she take part in them, she wrote about them publicly (if you're wondering, the word 'lesbian' is thought to come from Sappho's birthplace Lesbos).
It's impossible to say, of course, if Sappho's poetry can be taken at face-value. Over the years, many critics and historians have tried to discredit her and argue that her poetry can be interpreted in various ways. Some have argued that, while she wrote as a woman being in love with a woman, she was simply creating a fictitious voice for her poetry.
Yet it's hard to understand why she would have done so. Ancient Greece didn't have the same strictly defined categories of sexual preference we have today. Male sexuality was much more fluid and saw many men engaging in both male-female and male-male relations. However, it wasn't the same for women. Their sexual freedom was much more limited and certainly female-female romantic and sexual relations weren't normalized. Sappho's writing is an anomaly in the sense that it discusses such behaviour openly, and heightens it with evocative and sensual language.
Calling Sappho's poetry lyrical is both a literal and figurative statement. Literal because Sappho's verses were actually written as songs to be performed out loud with the accompaniment of a lyre. Figurative because her poetry possesses a musical quality and overflows with sentiment and feeling.
One of my favourite of Sappho's poems is numbered 31:
'He seems to me equal to the gods,
that man who sits opposite you
and listens near
to your sweet voice
and lovely laughter. My heart
begins to flutter in my chest.
When I look at you even for a moment
I can no longer speak.
My tongue fails and a subtle
fire races beneath my skin,
I see nothing with my eyes
and my ears hum.
Sweat pours from me and a trembling
seizes my whole body. I am greener
than grass and it seem I am a little short
of dying.
But all must be endured, for even a poor man . . .'
It's worth quoting at length because it demonstrates the quality of Sappho's verse. She makes use of a variety of senses to articulate the transformative power of love: sight, sound and touch . In doing so, Sappho poignantly captures what love does to a person, along with the chaos, self-abasement and confusion it creates in both the physical body and the mind. It also is worth mentioning that Sappho is surely peaking of a woman here, made evident by her word choice in the original Greek.
Sappho doesn’t make the slightest effort to censure herself. Instead, her poetry is all raw and genuine emotion. However, it's the way she pulls these various emotions together in such clear, simple and eloquent prose that's so remarkable. In an early first or third-century treatise on the sublime, Longinus asks,
Aren't you amazed how in this poem she in the same moment seeks out the soul, body, hearing, tongue, sight and skin as though they were something external to her, and how she both freezes and burns, is afraid and nearly dead, so that we see in her not a single emotion but many coming together? All this of course is what happens to people in love. But it is her selection, as I have said, of all the most important features and her combination of them that have produced such an amazing result.
You may have noticed the poem above ends in an ellipsis. This isn't a stylistic choice. Sappho's writing only comes to us in fragments. Although it is believed she was a prolific poet at the time, most of her writing was destroyed over centuries. Until 1896, the only access to Sappho came through quotations found in the work of other ancient writers. That year, however, an archaeological dig in the small Egyptian town of el-Behnesa found numerous pieces of badly damaged ancient papyrus with Sappho's writing. More have since been discovered.
Poem 31 reads somewhat completely, but take a look at 43:
... disturbs the stillness
... distress, mind
... settles down
... but come, beloved ones
... for day is near
In a sense, it's frustrating that we may never know precisely what Sappho wrote. Yet these gaps give her writing a haunting, ethereal quality. They allow a level of input from the reader, a space to insert your own words and interpretation. Sappho could be speaking of almost anything here. Yet even in the few words, there is a distinctive tone. She appears to describe a distressed mind while simultaneously proclaiming there is hope for the day is near. Even in the little we have of this poem, there is enough to make it though-provoking.
I could go on endlessly discussing the merit of Sappho's work. But I'll conclude by quoting 132, a short fragmented poem in which Sappho discusses her daughter Cleis:
I have a beautiful child who is like golden flowers
in form, my beloved Cleis, for whom
I would not take all of Lydia or lovely ...
It's not a lot, but what is remarkable is how this poem showcases Sappho's pride in her daughter. Daughters weren't typically seen as symbols of prosperity and wealth in ancient Greece. Sons were. They were the ones to bring fortune and status to a family. Yet it is clear how much Sappho adores Cleis. She compares her to golden flowers. She also articulates that she would trade nothing, no matter how substantial a prize, in place of her.
In writing of Cleis with such high praise, Sappho speaks as a mother who loves her daughter. But she also does something else. By assigning a value to Cleis, Sappho assigns a value to all women. She advocates for women's worth. She celebrates women's existence.
It's for this reason that I think Sappho might be called the world’s first feminist. In a world dominated by male voices, Sappho spoke and gave voice to a silent realm of women. Furthermore, she placed women in an admirable light. She weaves poems about female individuals who are mesmerizing and clever and delightful. Flawed to be sure, but complex and real. When I read Sappho's writing I am reminded of the women I know.
Sappho may only come to us in fragments, but these fragments are certainly enough to create a powerful — and memorable — feminist voice.
*For more information on Sappho I would highly recommend Philp Freeman's book Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet. The first part is a sort of biography of Sappho and her life in ancient Greece while the second part features the entirety of her discovered poems. Much of the background information on Sappho in this post was taken from Freeman's work. This post was originally posted on www.truthsandedits.com on April 12, 2018.