Poetry Of Sappho And Catullus

Pain can be expressed in both sorrow and anger. Sappho creates great imagery in this fragmented poem by taking pain into natural moving actions. She expresses how her feelings change from hurt to anger and how heavy pain can really be. Sappho uses physical movement to express her emotions in different directions. She also emphasizes how she sees revenge is the ultimate goal in order to recover from that pain.

A less theoretical definition of poetry is, “putting the best words in the best possible order.” A poet may incorporate the theory as follows. The poet may astutely choose words possibly with a double meaning in order to indirectly convey a message, evoke emotions, or to slander. Then, the poet may unconventionally place such words and phrases perhaps out of expected order for the sake of creating a “word picture,” emphasizing the speaker’s feelings, or offering tangibility to the poem. By implementing this idea onto poetic works, the poet will have auspiciously written a superb poem. This theory may be applied to a few of Catullus’s poems specifically “Carmen 5”, “Carmen 8”, and “Carmen 85.” Catullus’s meticulous choice of words and arrangement highlight the central focus of the poem, obliquely criticize traditional Roman law, manipulate the audience’s attitude, transmit the speaker’s emotions, paint “word pictures,” and offer symbolic meaning consequently producing a successful poem.

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.

Love is a term used daily in one’s life. Many categorize love in many forms. These forms differ from one-another such as the difference between love for food and love for one’s spouse. However, in the play; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, love takes different forms than the ones experienced in reality. One can classify the different types of love used in this play into three different categories; true love, love produced by cupid’s flower, and the state of lust.

In the poems “Pamphillia to Amphilanthus” and “I… and Your Eyes,” there are similarities and differences. The poems are both about love. The poems have different perspectives on how they view love. The poems have the same subject, but in contrast have differences of how the subject is viewed. The poems’ styles and theme also have differences and similarities. Love is perceived differently in each poem.

The focal point of this report will be on the content of poem 64 and how it, reflects Catullus himself and his relationship with Lesbia. Further, I will examine the mirroring of characters and emotions and ambiguity of the poem as it stands in relation to his other works.

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.

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote poems that conveyed intense and confronting emotions. Catullus was a technical master who wrote in a spectacular range of different verse patterns. Although Catullus was written by the latin poet himself, the version I came across with was the translation of Peter Green. Catullus’ poems are varied among imitations of Greek poets, comic verse, love poems and several more. The author’s poems do imitate Sappho’s poems, but the only difference is that Catullus does mention the identify of the person he is referring to. “Sparrow, precious darling of my sweetheart,/ always her plaything, held fast in her bosom…” (poem 2, pg. 942). This text demonstrated the identity to the object the author was referring to. There are various of themes within the poems, but the major one is the view of love.

In another poem that Sappho wrote, “ A Prayer to Aphrodite”, Sappho describes anguished love. Sappho desires nothing more then to have this unrequited love returned to her arms. In this poem the magic of language calls Aphrodite forth and inspires her to do Sappho a favor. It inspires the goddess to give Sappho the power to bring this person back to the “glittering net” of her arms (19). This shows Sappho’s true desire to harness the power of love through the magic of language. If she can only write this poem beautiful enough then Aphrodite will take pity on her and give her what she most wants.

Sappho’s poems reveal the complicated nature of human sexuality in Greek society by saying that people need love. Sappho views love is about beauty, desire, and sacrifice. Love can be a battle and a pain, as it can be a terrain of erotic struggle one of victory, loss and ecstasy. People should be living their life through what their heart tells them. Love is blinding and superficial. It didn’t matter if you were a same race couple, as long as you had love, anyone could be with

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.

In calling love “a serious mental disease,” Plato inspired centuries of authors, doctors, and philosophers. Unlike romantic comedy movies and the Top 40 pop songs chart, which idolize love, literature frequently portrays it as a sickness. Both love and mental illness affect brain chemistry, mood, and behavior. In pieces such as Euripides’ Medea, symptoms of love range from mental illness-like ailments to physical manifestations such as a vanishing appetite, concentration, and apparent sanity. In Longus’ work, love is described as having similar traits. Throughout the story of Daphnis and Chloe’s pastoral romance, love drives both of them mad with longing. Love amplifies their innocent feelings for each other, resulting in a disorienting combination of depression and mania. The affliction goes deeper; their total devotion to each other and pastoral

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander of love’s complications in an exchange with Hermia (Shakespeare I.i.136). Although the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly deals with the difficulty of romance, it is not considered a true love story like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, as he unfolds the story, intentionally distances the audience from the emotions of the characters so he can caricature the anguish and burdens endured by the lovers. Through his masterful use of figurative language, Shakespeare examines the theme of the capricious and irrational nature of love.

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.