Sappho poems gay
Voices of queer desire own been with us for millennia. For Pride, we offer a selection of voices from the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. From fragments of the love elegy of Sappho of Lesbos to a love spell by Serapiakos from Hawara in Egypt. The urgency and vigor of their queer want still resonate today.
In her recent novel After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz reminds us of Sappho’s continued power to captivate:
Who was Sappho? No one knew, but she had an island. She was garlanded with girls. She could sit down to dine and look straight at the woman she loved, however unhappily. When she sang, everyone said, it was like evening on a riverbank, sinking down into the moss with the sky pouring over you (Schwartz , 9).
In our present era, homosexual voices—particularly trans and neutrois ones—are under attack. These voices matter and should be heard. Likewise, it is important to recognise and listen to the many queer voices that came before.
Selected Voices
“Queer desire” here describes desires other than heterosexual or cisgender. Such desire is typically identifiable
Sappho > Quotes
“I have not had one word from her
Frankly I long for I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy
but recollect (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
"myrrh poured on your head
and on pliable mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song”
&#; Sappho
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POEMS OF SAPPHO
TRANSLATED BY JULIA DUBNOFF
1
Immortal Aphrodite, on your intricately brocaded throne,[1]
infant of Zeus, weaver of wiles, this I pray:
Dear Lady, don&#;t crush my heart
with pains and sorrows.
5 But come here, if ever before,
when you heard my far-off cry,
you listened. And you came,
leaving your father&#;s house,
yoking your chariot of gold.
10 Then beautiful swift sparrows led you over the ebony
Sappho: F*cking Superb, You Funky Little Lesbian
The Sapphic Stanza
Sappho not only wrote beautiful, haunting poems, but invented an entirely distinct poetic form, appropriately named after her! Composed of two hendecasyllabic (eleven syllables) verses, and then a third verse beginning the same way and continuing with five more syllables (sometimes written as a fourth line), it gave Sappho’s poetry its lyrical nature.
Using "–" for a long syllable, "∪" for a short syllable, and "x" for a free syllable, the meter looked like this:
– ∪ – x – ∪ ∪ – ∪ – –
– ∪ – x – ∪ ∪ – ∪ – –
– ∪ – x – ∪ ∪ – ∪ – –
– ∪ ∪ – –
The Mixolydian Mode
This link also has some wonderful information about another invention of Sappho’s: the Mixolydian Mode, which is a musical scale that is still in use today, although heavily altered through history!
What did Sappho’s poetry sound like?
Sappho’s poetry was meant to be recited to the sound of an ancient Greek instrument called a lyre, sometimes made from tortoise-shell, and looked like this: