Willis Barnstone

Sappho

A prize-winning poet offers a contemporary translation of poems written by the greatest Greek love poet, whose thrilling lyric verse and mystique endures to be rediscovered by each generation. Original.

The Complete Poems of Sappho

Larissa Campos

I lie here miserable and broken with desire, pierced through to the bones by the bitterness of this god-given painful love. O comrade, this passion makes my limbs limp and tramples over me. (frag. 104 Diehl.)1 32 Apollonios Dyskolos Pronouns 144a (1.113 Schneider).

See, while I write, my words are lost in tears: The less my sense, the more my love appears.

I greet you as a god. Your songs are our immortal daughters. Dioskorides, in The Greek Anthology 7.407

Your poems, Sappho, are the sweetest pillow for young lovers.

From Greek Poetry on Sappho This tomb contains the silent bones of Sappho, but her wise sayings are immortal. Pinytos, in The Greek Anthology 7.16

[She was called] “manly Sappho,” either because she was famous as a poet, an art in which men are known, or else because she has been defamed for being of that tribe [of homosexuals].

Porphyrio, in Horace’s Epistles 1.19.28 (P. 362 HOLDER)

Both seem to me to have practiced love in their own way, she of women, he of men, and both said that they could fall in love many times and all beautiful people attracted them.

Yet I love refinement and Eros has got me brightness and the beauty of the sun. 

Someone, I tell you, in another time, will remember us. [147]

 Now in my heart I see clearly a beautiful face shining back on me, stained with love [4]

I am not of a wounding spirit rather I have a gentle heart [120]

Hello and Goodbye A hearty good day to the daughter of the house of Polyanax [155]

When anger is flooding through your chest best to quiet your reckless barking tongue [158] 

Often those I treat well are just the ones who most harm me

When she left me she wept profusely and told me, “Oh how we’ve suffered in all this. Psapfo, I swear I go unwillingly.”

And I answered her, “Be happy, go and remember me, you know how we worshiped you. But if not, I want to remind you of beautiful days we shared, how you took wreaths of violets, roses and crocuses, and at my side tied them in garlands made of flowers round your tender throat, and with sweet myrrh oil worthy of a queen you anointed your limbs and on a soft bed gently you would satisfy your longing and how there was no holy shrine where we were absent, no grove no dance no sound”

You came and I went mad about you. You cooled my mind burning with longing. 

Love shook my heart like wind on a mountain punishing oak trees.

You will remember we did these things in our youth, many and beautiful things.

Someone, I tell you, in another time, will remember us.

Sappho’s lyrics, composed in the seventh century B.C.E., transcend their time and place to enchant us now. In lines that are at once passionate and precise, seemingly artless and yet magical, she writes of the cycles of life and death, and of erotic desire as a sacred calling. She looks into the burning center of things, and expresses pure wonder in the evening star, the moon, birdsong.

Resolvi ir atrás de mais sobre uma artista que eu já admirava o trabalho e a história, já conhecia o impacto, e infelizmente, o apagamento. Sappho foi uma mulher inspiradora e mudou o rumo de todas as escritoras sáficas do mundo por simplesmente existir e desafiar as normas da sua época. 

Muito triste que a maioria do seu trabalho tenha se perdido, por guerras, leis, mudanças históricas, preconceitos. Mas, em uma de suas falas mais famosas, ela fala que um dia seria lembrada, e é.

Resolvi ir atrás de mais sobre uma artista que eu já admirava o trabalho e a história, já conhecia o impacto, e infelizmente, o apagamento. Sappho foi uma mulher inspiradora e mudou o rumo de todas as escritoras sáficas do mundo por simplesmente existir e desafiar as normas da sua época. 

Muito triste que a maioria do seu trabalho tenha se perdido, por guerras, leis, mudanças históricas, preconceitos. Mas, em uma de suas falas mais famosas, ela fala que um dia seria lembrada, e é.

kait

women. are everything. to me. i liked this so much and it was cool to see the poems about women loving women and what they meant to sappho and how important they are in the current world.

azliana aziz

Kimberly

The illustrations in this book are simple, elegant, and beautiful. I would love to read Sappho in ancient Greek, but I thought the translation was well done. I enjoyed some of her pieces more than others. I was drawn to the ones that told a story or and loved the ones that spoke deeply of emotion. I am interested to see other translations and how they compare.

Erin 

What better book to finish off Pride month than the Complete Poems of Sappho, the World's Favourite Greek Lesbian? We should all be reading more Greek literature and poetry, and if we did, the world would be a much more desirable place. Passionate and full of deep love, Sappho's poetry makes you wonder how we ever shifted to a world where gay love was described as unnatural (organised religion, that's how). There is nothing more human than love for another. Probably not For Everyone, but for everyone anyway.

Organisational wise, I would probably have preferred the sections of this book to be rearranged. Having the Greek people and places glossary at the beginning rather at the end would be so much more useful. By reading it before reading any of the poetry, you might actually be able to identify some of the people that Sappho writes about. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from reading it first anyway, but no one jumps to the end of the book and reads that part first. I appreciated the sources, notes, and commentary section a lot, because I am a person that struggles to read older styles of writing, and having little explanations as to who and what is being referenced is immensely helpful in appreciating anything in general. However, I wish that it was intermingled with the poetry itself - having a poem immediately followed by notes and commentary is much easier than flipping back and forth between the beginning and end of the book - especially if you are reading an ebook. As it was, I skipped a lot of the commentary because of this, largely because it felt like I would have to go back and reread the entire poetry section again from start to finish.

Anyway, I'm glad I read this. Ancient Greece and Greek mythology in general is just impossibly cool and relatable, and the world needs it. I could go into so much more detail about how it affects our lives and language and knowledge about pretty much everything. But another time - for now, enjoy the lesbian love poetry.

Anna Yada

Sappho’s thrilling lyric verse has been unremittingly popular for more than 2,600 years—certainly a record for poetry of any kind—and love for her art only increases as time goes on. Though her extant work consists only of a collection of fragments and a handful of complete poems, her mystique endures to be discovered anew by each generation, and to inspire new efforts at bringing the spirit of her Greek words faithfully into English. In the past, translators have taken two basic approaches to Sappho: either very literally translating only the words in the fragments, or taking the liberty of reconstructing the missing parts. Willis Barnstone has taken a middle course, in which he remains faithful to the words of the fragments, only very judiciously filling in a word or phrase in cases where the meaning is obvious. This edition includes extensive notes and a special section of "Testimonia": appreciations of Sappho in the words of ancient writers from Plato to Plutarch. Also included are a glossary of all the figures mentioned in the poems, and suggestions for further reading.

The Complete Poems of Sappho

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