Love and Sappho

In fragments 16, Sappho claims that mortals cannot compare to the beauty of Helen. Sappho remains simple and to the point with her description of Helen. Unlike Homer, Sappho claims that the cause of

Symposium is a gathering hosted by Agaton to celebrate his first tragedy award for playwriting. Each of the guests gave a speech about love. The speech dealing with questions about what is love; interpersonal relationships through love; what types of love are worthy of praise; the purpose of love; and others. A series of speech about the love ended by the entry of Alcibiades, known as a wealthy aristocrat of Athens for his good-looking, and political career. He entered the discussion drunkenly supporting by a flute-girl, follow upon his speech about love. His unexpected entrance and speech dramatically changed the mood left from Diotima’s serious dialogue with Socrates about the ideal love. The first five speeches contradicted each other and were reconciled in Diotima’s speech, especially her speech about “Ladder if love” and “love of wisdom ”, which implies the delicate relationship between Alcibiades and Socrates.

Throughout the fragmented poem, Sappho expresses how someone else’s degrading words affect her and how she handles that pain. She is quick to judge and takes action after being put down. With the descriptions of her pain in movements, she tells a story of what caused her pain.

In this free-verse war poem, the idea of 'journey' extends itself to cover both the physical and emotional aspects of the subject matter of the poem. Repetition and word

Throughout the poem the tone and harmony is showing many different moods including shyness, anger and calmness. An example of shyness is at the start of the poem “softy, silently it swishes”, an example of anger is in the middle of the poem “it thumps, it sprays it rips at shores, its ozone spray”, and finally at the end of the poem calmness is shown, “it spends its strength, it sings, it sighs. The wave recedes”. One aspect of the poem I find intriguing is the alliteration and personification. For example, “it sighs, it sings, it seeks”.

Sappho’s poem, entitled Fragment 16, is of the lyrical style instead of the epic style we are used to in Homer’s Iliad. The lyrical style of poetry got its name because it was usually accompanied by a lyre while it was recited. It also was used to express more emotion rather than telling a story. This form of poetry seems to be more artistic rather than the story telling of epic poetry of the time. In this poem we are able to use the comparison of different imagery to understand a common theme within the poem itself. The reason for the interesting title of the poem is because most of Sappho’s poetry is now only found in fragmented forms. Most of Sappho’s writing is from 600 B.C.E.

Lyric poetry flourished during Greece’s Archaic Age. This was a time of rebirth for Greece. Literacy shifted from epics to lyric poetry as a result encouragement for a variety of voices to be heard. Lyric poetry is different from epic poetry because it is more personal to the author and is mostly their personal thoughts. In Greece, Sappho was unquestionably the finest composer of lyric poetry. Sappho’s poems were intimate. Love was always the evident theme.

Life is pink, or so says Louis Armstrong’s version of Edith Piaf’s beautiful French song, La Vie En Rose. Plato is arguably the most famous philosopher from Ancient Greece. The Symposium, one of Plato’s most famous works, is a brilliant piece of literature centered on a group of men telling their own versions of what they believe to be Love. The Goddess of Love however, is the main focus of Plato’s work more so than the act of actually being in love. This becomes the men’s main focal point for the duration of their speeches. Both the story and the song, depict versions of love of Love that are relatively common. In the soft tones of La Vie En Rose, the perfection of what being in love can become is heard clearly. Believing that everything is wonderful and it could never change is a symptom of the rose coloured glasses Armstrong is singing about. Socrates in believes that Love can be both horrible and bad. There are people who believe that love is the solution to all of their problems, and those who believe that there are bad aspects that come with being in love. Hundreds of years apart, and these two men are trying to send different messages about the same subject—love.

Other authors after Homer also use reverence for a god’s domain as a tool to gain attention from the gods. In the Fragments, the author, Sappho, uses this tool to gain attention from the gods for herself. Sappho is a lover of love and her work shows her obsession with love as most of her partially retained and transcribed lyrics focus on love and its different forms. In supplication to the goddess Aphrodite, Sappho writes, “Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind… I beg you do not break with hard pains, O lady, my heart” (The Fragments, pg.3). Due to the fact that love is Aphrodite’s domain, Aphrodite pays attention to Sappho – someone who personifies and respects the power of love. Subsequently, after Sappho’s supplication, Aphrodite asks, “Whom should I persuade (now again) to lead you back into her love? Who, O Sappho, is wronging you?” (The fragments, pg.3). The use of the phrase ‘now again’ indicates that Aphrodite not only pays attention to Sappho, but that Aphrodite helps Sappho in issues of love repeatedly. Out of context, the phrase ‘now again’ also denotes and exasperated tone, however, the preceding context states that Aphrodite greeted Sappho smiling – a symbol of pleasure with another. Additionally, Sappho gains the attention of Hera because of her mention and praise of marriage in lyric 44, motherly love in lyric 132 and the praise of women throughout - all powers that lie under Hera’s domain. Recently in a newly discovered and transcribed lyric, Sappho says,

In order to understand how Homer and Sappho defy the gendered norms for women, one must first know the Greek’s gendered norms for women. Greek women lacked personalities,

Sappho is an ancient Greek poet who is known for her capability in the theorization and processing of love, though in The New Sappho her curiosity and amusement tends to turn its perspective to the idea of age. While we are used to the common concept of love and appearance of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, in Sappho’s poems, it seems that The New Sappho is both a play on her age, as well as a metaphor for her new subject. The poem’s title seems to suggest a rebirth or a renewal of being, yet in contradiction her physical form is aging.

causes the poem to flow, and thus lightens up the dark and serious issue of war. The lines "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place." are easy to read; however, their meaning is extremely

There are different forms of love, ranging from the lust of one another to a familial fondness. Two poets, Sappho and Catullus, each represent a different type of love in their respective poems. Sappho, a female poet born in the early sixth century B.C. on the Greek island of Lesbos, was said to be the tenth Muse and a supreme lyric poet of her time. Her life remains mostly a mystery, but through her poems it has been found out that she had a husband, and a daughter named Cleis. Catullus, a Roman poet that lived from roughly 84 to 54 B.C., found inspiration in and was influenced by Sappho, opting to write about love rather than politics like the rest of the poets of his time. He also popularized the style of “love elegy” in poems. Sappho and Catullus, as seen in “Sleep, Darling” and “If Ever Anyone Anywhere” respectively, use diction, the speaker, figurative language, and imagery in similar and different ways to express varying versions of love.

The first stanza connotes a slight sense structure as the phrase “ and his buddies did too” is repeated after stating each action the soldier does. Moreover, the lines themselves are structured in such a way that suggests a deliberate organized form- especially in comparison to how the rest of the poem is written. Most interesting about the

When Sappho expressed herself through her wonderful poetry, she spoke on behalf of many women of her time. Interestingly, she lived through verbal expression and spoke about it so refined in her own poetic style. She knew what women in antiquity wanted and expressed it so well in her writing style.