THE LOVE SONGS OF SAPPHO, translated,...
THE LOVE SONGS OF SAPPHO, translated, with an essay by Paul Roche (Signet: $4.95, illustrated). A vivid new translation of the work of the 7th-Century BC poet, whom classical authors praised as “the tenth muse,” but whose name is synonymous only with lesbianism to modern readers. Sadly, only a few of her verses exist intact: Most of her known work survives on scraps of papyrus, gleaned from papier-mache excavated at the Greco-Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. Sappho’s greatest contribution to poetry appears to have been the introduction to the first-person voice. She described what she felt as an individual, rather than portraying herself as a passive vessel for the words of the gods. The extant fragments of her songs display a delicate, almost breathless beauty: “When the gentle feet of the Cretan girls/ Danced in tune round some intimate shrine/ Treading the smooth soft bloom of the lawn.” As though anticipating the survival of her work, Sappho seems to have written her own epitaph in the fragmentary valediction: “Yes/ they gave me success/ the golden/ Muses/ And once dead/ I shall not be forgotten.”
More to Read
Sign up for our Book Club newsletter
Get the latest news, events and more from the Los Angeles Times Book Club, and help us get L.A. reading and talking.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.