Interpretation and Texts
There is a vast difference between Criticism and Interpretation. The scholarly Classical world has long shown its preference for the critics, and been shy of the subjective side of interpretative study. It is as if Criticism, founded in history and cumulative detailed scholarship, were more worthy of honor than intuition and imaginative interpretation. The amount of detailed critical study devoted to Sappho and the history of the actual texts is staggering, more than a literary reader would be able to digest in months of concentrated reading. And it is couched in a scholarly format which makes it unavailable to non-professional readers, and probably unreadable in large party as well. The aim of this study is to interpret the authentic texts which have been established as Sappho's poetry, in their original form, examining their communicative meaning on the one hand, and at the same time investigating the internal microstructure of the poems as poetic artifacts.
All Greek and Roman poetry has an immediate base in form and sound. The sounds of the words themselves are pure musical sound, and since language moves in time with motion, they foretell the way we see moving images in modern cinematic art. Cinematic style viewing does not come from a machine, it is a way of seeing which has deep roots in the past, often ensconced in vivid storytelling, in the ancient Epic, and in the choral parts of Greek drama. We cannot separate a Greek poem from either its explicit sound or from its explicit visual references, since together they present a duplex level of composite meaning which accompanies and amplifies the apparent "meaning" of a written text. Presenting this composite view of Sappho's poetry in terms of sound and its configurations is the specific aim of the present study.
Before turning to the poems, which are here given in Greek text along with a translation and followed by a detailed commentary, it is necessary to discuss several things which impinge on the reading of the Greek. The text itself involves several problems, the first of which is the representation in modern typographical conventions.
The first thing a beginner notices about a page of Greek is the display of several diacritics above the characters, which he is told are "accents", and he dutifully goes about reading the words with these "accents" at a louder amplitude than the unaccented syllable. He has substituted Stress for something else which these marks were put there to indicate --- a musical Pitch. But there are complications:
The Acute or 'oxu' is a musical pitch sign, which requires the pitch of the vowel indicated to rise up as much as a musical fifth. This is an up-sliding motion, which starts at a base level and moves upward over the indicated length of the vowel. This rising pitch can be associated with a short vowel or a long vowel, and must be employed simultaneously with the duration of the vowel as part of the metrical cadencing of a line of verse.
The Circumflex is more complicated. It starts with an up-sliding pitch like the Acute, but it rests at the top of the rise and then slides down to the original base-line from which it started. This takes more time than is allowed by a regular long vowel, so the circumflexed vowel or diphthong will be "overlong", allowing for the time required for this swinging pitch. The circumflexed sound will seem strange at first, it is something like the "meeouw" of a cat's cry, or the melismatic effect of the Chinese 'hao' for "good", or the English patronizing phrase "Well, now....!".
The Grave is not a pitch at all. It means that a previously up-pitched Acute has been demoted to the base level at which all unmarked syllables reside, and is to be disregarded as a sound of musical intonation. Some of the papyri intended for school use of for teaching foreigners the right pronunciation of Greek will have the Grave on all syllables which do not have Acute or Circumflex diacritics, a caution to the barbarian learner NOT to raise the pitch level. Stressing this also as loud we make a bad mistake.
Since learning to use the pitch intonation is important in reaching for the authentic sound of Greek poetry, this study prints with the Greek only the pitch markings which involve actual sounds. Thus the Smooth Breathing (which means nothing more than "no aspiration here!) is unnecessary, as is the negative information of the Grave sign (meaning "Keep tone level down, please!). By clearing away unnecessary signs, and indicating only the rising Acute and over-arching Circumflex as real sounds as used in the poetic idiom, we keep he reader's attention on pronunciation, as critical to the understanding of the poetry.
Why does this have to be mentioned at all? It is because we have been pronouncing all three Accent marks as Stresses when we learn our Attic Greek, making the syllables strong and loud. Learning this regularly in reading prose, we have to forget what we have been doing when we turn to verse, and start over again with long and short syllables. But we are so used to this Stress pronunciation, that we then start converting "long" to Loud, and "short" to Weak. This is in direct opposition to the known metrical quality of Greek as a Duration based language which has something like a musical eighth note for a Short, a quarter note for a Long, and a dotted quarter or even a half note for the triple-length Circumflexed syllable.
At long last Classicists are beginning to recognize the fault in our traditional pronunciation of ancient Greek, and attempts have been made to rectify the situation with recorded segments as examples pointing toward an authentic sound. One problem here is that it is very difficult to combine the metrical long-short sequences with a pitch-wise up-down tone, and some of the recorded examples are done by people who are not sufficiently trained in voice manipulation. It takes the practice and experience of a trained professional actor to get these things all right, and make them flow easily in a natural way.
A second problem is the fact that each native language speaker will inevitably pronounce his "authenticized" Greek in the manner of his own speech patterns, and an Italian pronunciation of Greek may be virtually incomprehensible to an English native speaker. So we have a dual set of problems. We want to understand something about the nature of ancient Greek pronunciation, and also find a way to represent it in the phonetic patterns of our own native speech.
People always ask what the pronunciation of ancient Greek was like, but the idea of a corrected pronunciation which will be good for all modern speakers everywhere regardless of their own language usage, is clearly impossible. In such a jumble, one might revert in despair to the old double standard of the traditional "prose or poetry" reading of Greek, but that would completely lose sight of the exquisite refinements of the poetry of ancient Greece. Doing it all right does take work, but like many other things that do not come easily, doing it right will be well worth the effort expended.
There is now much interest in reading Ancient Greek with an authentic pronunciation, but there are two problems which confront us as soon as we start. Let me outline these very briefly:
First, we all have very specific pronunciations of our basic speech sounds which we have learned in early childhood in accessing our native language. These are deeply encoded in our linguistic memory, and aside from a few of us who are completely bilingual, we retain our native pronunciation throughout life. When we read an ancient language where there is no detailed information about the sounds, we will continue to use the sounds of our native speech, even if we try to make some minor adjustments. A French speaker will read Platovery differently from a native U.S. speaker, and an Italian will read his Vergil in a manner which will be totally foreign to the English speaker trained in his English-based school pronunciation. We can "correct" simple linguistic features like the over-aspiration of a Greek Phi, but we cannot produce the genuine ancient vowels, since we don't know exactly what timbre they originally had, and at the same time we cannot divest ourselves of our own native vowel-patterns. Second, it now seems very important to try to use the musical pitch signs which are recorded as the Greek "accents", but there are several problems here. First we have to get rid of the Stresses which have long been associated with the Accents, and replace them by Durations, a difficult process once one has learned Greek in the traditional Western way. Then having mastered a length-based system for reading Greek poetry, we face the doubly difficult business of superimposing musical pitches atop the length-based readings. In theory this should be possible by reading both lengths and pitches from the printed text as we go along, but anyone who has tried this will attest the difficulty of the triple process of Reading characters, deducing variable Length patterns and applying musical Intonations to the vocal output all at the same time.
As one who has advocated a better and more authentic way of reading ancient Greek for many years, I know how difficult such a composite process can be. The only way I have been able to combine all three of these disparate levels of reading is by imbibing into memory the composite "triple text" and becoming so familiar with it as a singlemind-sound process, that I can read or (better) chant it in a single acoustic flow. But of course this is just what an ancient bard or poet was doing, and following lamely and with difficult in his path at this far removed date, we begin to see why the role of "Poet" was in ancient times so highly regarded. He did things learned by long practice, things which nobody else in the society could think of performing. So if we embark on this route toward authenticity, I suggest we proceed carefully and with much assiduity, expecting the process to be much harder than a scholarly description would state.
Since Greek is always sprinted with diacritics Accents, we have ready-made information on each page which can be read from the text, without reference to rules explaining how they got there. In fact there is much confusion about many of the accented words, which the ancient metrical writers went to great efforts to explain. And modern editorial conventions have regularized the accents, which in many cases have variants discussed in the old treatises or seen in the papyri.
The Accents were invented and first used by the Alexandrian academicians who were faced with teaching a correct pitch pronunciation to a large body of non-Greek speakers in an expanding Hellenistic world. Accented texts were used for school texts, and reading copies of the papyri are often without any diacritics. There is no evidence that an educated reader in the days of Plato had accented texts for any of his reading, and in the Archaic period we are not even clear about the shape of the characters used. Sappho probably recorded her verse in somewhat rounded capitals, but we have no idea of the shape or appearance of her autograph copy.
This would be a far cry from the MSS hand on which our printed 16th century editions were based, replete as they were with abbreviations and special ligatures which are unreadable even to a modern trained student of Greek. Our shaded Teubner text is no more original or authentic than the Oxford font derived from the handwriting of Richard Porson in the early l9th century.
Format is important, since it dictates a great deal about how we read a text, the speed of reading and rate of comprehension, as well as the esthetic impressions we derive from a page of written verbal art. The great attention paid to the development of special fonts since the days of William Morris is witness to an improved sense of "readability". A poem of D.G. Rosetti printed on fine handmade paper with a specially designed art-font is quite different from the same poem read from an equally spacing typewriter or Courier font, printed out on cheap paper from a mimeograph machine. Looking at the verse few lines of an ancient papyrus, we see that an Alexandrian reader must have had a very different approach to his reading. The large characters with their handwritten irregularities would be slow in reading but easier on the eyes than a small print read fast. The papyrus would be white and clear, the ink from octopus sepia or boiled walnut juice would be a dark and permanent brown, and the book unrolling between two hand held roller sticks would have to be perused in a leisurely manner. There was nothing in the ancient world like Aldo Manutio's little portable pocket-book of the early 16th century, nor the need for a micro-printed Elzevier a century later. Reading means absorbing, imbibing the meaning and also the sound of the text, and this is never done at a glance with a swift scan.
A good example of leisurely reading can be seen in this elegant portrayal of Sappho with a scroll of her poetry:
And what she might be reading would be something like this, if we can imagine a clean sheet of new papyrus elegantly handwritten with dark brown sepia based ink on creamy whitened sheets:
Here is another set of Papyri, much reduced, with a piece of Sappho Pap. Oxyrh. 1787 at the left with parts of three poems. At the right is a letter "to my brother Heracleides..." dated from Tiberius 27 AD, and below from third century: "Eudaimon invites to dine at the gymnasium, crowning of son on 1 st a 8th hour."
Saturday, March 10, 2007
MICROSTRUCTURE OF GREEK
Microstructure
When reading Sappho, we should try to readjust our expectations of how to proceed in reading an ancient poem. We want to pronounce the syllables of a line of her verse with a clear idea of the Durations of the vowels, from short to long to overlong. At the same time we will want to raise the pitch or our voice musically, remembering that poetry for Sappho is SONG, following specifically the Acute and the Circumflex signals posted on our printed text.
Beyond that we will want to read the sounds aloud with a sense of musical enjoyment, reading slowly and carefully as if from a large sheet of papyrus handwritten with the basic letters of the old style Greek alphabet. We are reading to imbibe the spirit of a poetic mind, something which must bedone in a suitably receptive mood or the words will merely be marks on a printed page.
If we find the authentic sounds of Greek verse strange and unfamiliar as here outlined, we must consider the damage we have done to the esthetic of Greek poetry by our clumsy and inauthentic stressing of the delicate articulation of the vowel sounds. Reading Greek as we have been learning it in our schools and colleges might be compared to looking at the paintings of Leonardo in two by three inch black and white textbook illustrations. The identity of the painting is clear, but the whole of the artistry and color are not only gone. They would be completely un-imaginable.
The vowels and consonants have special acoustic properties of their own. The vowels are musical continuants which quite literally "sing" the lines on musical pitches at various tones, while the nasal-liquid sounds ( -l- -m- -n- -r- ) are continuous drones with a great deal of acoustic persistence. The Stop-Consonants are closures at the front of the mouth which snap-off the above sonant-sounds, short and decisive but with much perceptibility since human speech involves the speaker's lips and hearer's eyes at the same time. The "air-sounds" of English are quite different from Greek, first because Aeolic Greek had no initial aspiration whatever, one of its most characteristic marks, and second because the Greek phi was certainly no more than a lightly aspirated pi, nothing like our heavy and breathy dental-aspirated -f-. On the other hand Greek chi was a medium aspirated guttural, hardly transscribable by the usual -ch-. The Greek zeta which we often compare to a Roman Z was in Aeolic pronounced not as -z- + -d-, but the other way around, so a rose is by no means still a rose.
There are other things about ancient Greek pronunciations which we do not know, much that we probably can never know. But various alternations and oppositions of the above mentioned sounds stand as a coherent and readable part of every Greek poem, and it is on the differences and the degrees of difference of the sounds in their configurations that the base level of Greek poetry rests. A little study of basic phonetics of English, even at the elementary level, will go a great way toward the understanding of how the sounds of Sappho's verse work.
In the following pages much attention will be given to a study of the Microstructure of the poetry. This term can best be defined as a way of perceiving and elucidating Meaning as the communicative semantic segment of the writing, while at the same time grasping as Form the configuration of the sounds as sounds, the arrangement of words as constructive elements in the building of verse lines and larger esthetic blocks of form. When this approach becomes familiar it is done at reading speed without hesitation, but initially it is a slow process as this study will show.
Since this is not a familiar method of approach to poetry, I want to mention a few studies which may make thing more clear. A good introduction to this may be found in the essay On Form and Meaning , and more on the use of phonetic analysis in another study The Poet and the Spectrograph. For a good example of analysis on a wide variety of language samples, I would like to refer you to Prof. Calvert Watkins' book "How to Kill a Dragon" Oxford l995, which demonstrates especially in the early chapters how micro- analysis is used to combine linguistic acuity with poetic sensibilities. More of this kind of Form Analysis is bound to appear in the coming years, but it will take time for it to become established in the mainstream of academic criticism, especially in the conservative Classics, and collegetaught English where Meaning with its hairsplits, its allusions and literary references, and its semi-literary engagement with the history of it times, seems likely to reign supreme for the while.
Literary studies which deal exclusively with Meaning in its many subcategories, seem unaware of the Form only as a semi-significant "carrier" of the ideas. This study is devoted to bringing together Form and Meaning as the two significant planes of poetry, in the belief that lacking the one or the other, we lose the whole purpose of the writing of Poetry.
If the Meaning of a poem is the set of messages sent as communicative items from text to reader, then Form is the total configuration of all the discrete lements of the poem as significant artifacts in their own right. The elemental chunks are the sounds out of which words are constructed, the arrangement of the sounds in words as they constitute patterns in phrases, and the shape of the verse-lines both independently and also in relation to what
went before and what goes after. In other words the total tally of everything that occurs within the segment of poetry which we are examining is to be seen as Form, atop which Meaning can be understood as perched. Without the substructure of Form there can be no relaying of Meaning because there is nothing for it to rest on, there is no physical substance for something as transcendental as Meaning to adhere to.
This might be compared to a coin, on which there is impressed a face on the one side and a other information on the obverse. The "meaning" of the coin may be "quarter U.S." and this is all most of us think of when taking it out of a pocket and slipping it into a telephone booth slot.
But there is much more to the coin. The low relief face design is specially contrived to catch light in a realistic way, the detailed work which went into this little piece of relief sculpture is quite astonishing, and the decorative detailing is equally well done. Notice the way the edge is impressed with hundreds of little ridges, originally a way to ensure that silver was not being filed off the coin to sell separately.
Or look at a U.S. dollar bill with its simple message "One Dollar", as against the infinite detailing on front and read, the pyramid with an eye on top, the great seal, the micro-detailing around the edges. All this is the Form of the piece, the part which we can overlook or forget so easily, the part which actually surprises us when we are asked to describe everything that is visible there. The Meaning? Just $1.
Only by paying careful attention to the form of Sappho's poetry that can we get the full thrust of her art, which never lets the denoted informational meanings get separated from the actual form of the words and the phrasing. For a Greek poet Form and Meaning are indissolubly bonded together, because poetry is a performed and acoustic art in which meaning evolves only as the sung-poem is performed aloud. The form is always there first,
whereas in our print-culture where we have learned to scan a workaday text quickly for meaning, we generally pay scant attention to the carrier elements of sound and shape. Sappho's poems, read for meaning without form, leave a thin palette of a few notions, but with the Form in close view we savor the sounds as a interlocking mode of communication with the artist poet.
The approach of this study involves this "Microstructure" of form, pursuing via this path the interpretation of Sappho's few precious poems. If the discussion and commentary seem long in relation to the few lines which they describe, that that is because of our culture's insensitivity to sound and the interweaving of acoustic threads into the fabric of poetry. Taught as we are in our college courses to examine divisions and sub-divisions of meaning with infinite care and subtlety, we are novices in the appreciation of finely wrought sound. The Greek would have thrown up his hands in despair at the crudeness of our approach, probably thinking to himself "superficial Barbarians" who cannot hear the sounds and intonations of the Muses, mere clerks untasted of the founts of Hippocrene.
When reading Sappho, we should try to readjust our expectations of how to proceed in reading an ancient poem. We want to pronounce the syllables of a line of her verse with a clear idea of the Durations of the vowels, from short to long to overlong. At the same time we will want to raise the pitch or our voice musically, remembering that poetry for Sappho is SONG, following specifically the Acute and the Circumflex signals posted on our printed text.
Beyond that we will want to read the sounds aloud with a sense of musical enjoyment, reading slowly and carefully as if from a large sheet of papyrus handwritten with the basic letters of the old style Greek alphabet. We are reading to imbibe the spirit of a poetic mind, something which must bedone in a suitably receptive mood or the words will merely be marks on a printed page.
If we find the authentic sounds of Greek verse strange and unfamiliar as here outlined, we must consider the damage we have done to the esthetic of Greek poetry by our clumsy and inauthentic stressing of the delicate articulation of the vowel sounds. Reading Greek as we have been learning it in our schools and colleges might be compared to looking at the paintings of Leonardo in two by three inch black and white textbook illustrations. The identity of the painting is clear, but the whole of the artistry and color are not only gone. They would be completely un-imaginable.
The vowels and consonants have special acoustic properties of their own. The vowels are musical continuants which quite literally "sing" the lines on musical pitches at various tones, while the nasal-liquid sounds ( -l- -m- -n- -r- ) are continuous drones with a great deal of acoustic persistence. The Stop-Consonants are closures at the front of the mouth which snap-off the above sonant-sounds, short and decisive but with much perceptibility since human speech involves the speaker's lips and hearer's eyes at the same time. The "air-sounds" of English are quite different from Greek, first because Aeolic Greek had no initial aspiration whatever, one of its most characteristic marks, and second because the Greek phi was certainly no more than a lightly aspirated pi, nothing like our heavy and breathy dental-aspirated -f-. On the other hand Greek chi was a medium aspirated guttural, hardly transscribable by the usual -ch-. The Greek zeta which we often compare to a Roman Z was in Aeolic pronounced not as -z- + -d-, but the other way around, so a rose is by no means still a rose.
There are other things about ancient Greek pronunciations which we do not know, much that we probably can never know. But various alternations and oppositions of the above mentioned sounds stand as a coherent and readable part of every Greek poem, and it is on the differences and the degrees of difference of the sounds in their configurations that the base level of Greek poetry rests. A little study of basic phonetics of English, even at the elementary level, will go a great way toward the understanding of how the sounds of Sappho's verse work.
In the following pages much attention will be given to a study of the Microstructure of the poetry. This term can best be defined as a way of perceiving and elucidating Meaning as the communicative semantic segment of the writing, while at the same time grasping as Form the configuration of the sounds as sounds, the arrangement of words as constructive elements in the building of verse lines and larger esthetic blocks of form. When this approach becomes familiar it is done at reading speed without hesitation, but initially it is a slow process as this study will show.
Since this is not a familiar method of approach to poetry, I want to mention a few studies which may make thing more clear. A good introduction to this may be found in the essay On Form and Meaning , and more on the use of phonetic analysis in another study The Poet and the Spectrograph. For a good example of analysis on a wide variety of language samples, I would like to refer you to Prof. Calvert Watkins' book "How to Kill a Dragon" Oxford l995, which demonstrates especially in the early chapters how micro- analysis is used to combine linguistic acuity with poetic sensibilities. More of this kind of Form Analysis is bound to appear in the coming years, but it will take time for it to become established in the mainstream of academic criticism, especially in the conservative Classics, and collegetaught English where Meaning with its hairsplits, its allusions and literary references, and its semi-literary engagement with the history of it times, seems likely to reign supreme for the while.
Literary studies which deal exclusively with Meaning in its many subcategories, seem unaware of the Form only as a semi-significant "carrier" of the ideas. This study is devoted to bringing together Form and Meaning as the two significant planes of poetry, in the belief that lacking the one or the other, we lose the whole purpose of the writing of Poetry.
If the Meaning of a poem is the set of messages sent as communicative items from text to reader, then Form is the total configuration of all the discrete lements of the poem as significant artifacts in their own right. The elemental chunks are the sounds out of which words are constructed, the arrangement of the sounds in words as they constitute patterns in phrases, and the shape of the verse-lines both independently and also in relation to what
went before and what goes after. In other words the total tally of everything that occurs within the segment of poetry which we are examining is to be seen as Form, atop which Meaning can be understood as perched. Without the substructure of Form there can be no relaying of Meaning because there is nothing for it to rest on, there is no physical substance for something as transcendental as Meaning to adhere to.
This might be compared to a coin, on which there is impressed a face on the one side and a other information on the obverse. The "meaning" of the coin may be "quarter U.S." and this is all most of us think of when taking it out of a pocket and slipping it into a telephone booth slot.
But there is much more to the coin. The low relief face design is specially contrived to catch light in a realistic way, the detailed work which went into this little piece of relief sculpture is quite astonishing, and the decorative detailing is equally well done. Notice the way the edge is impressed with hundreds of little ridges, originally a way to ensure that silver was not being filed off the coin to sell separately.
Or look at a U.S. dollar bill with its simple message "One Dollar", as against the infinite detailing on front and read, the pyramid with an eye on top, the great seal, the micro-detailing around the edges. All this is the Form of the piece, the part which we can overlook or forget so easily, the part which actually surprises us when we are asked to describe everything that is visible there. The Meaning? Just $1.
Only by paying careful attention to the form of Sappho's poetry that can we get the full thrust of her art, which never lets the denoted informational meanings get separated from the actual form of the words and the phrasing. For a Greek poet Form and Meaning are indissolubly bonded together, because poetry is a performed and acoustic art in which meaning evolves only as the sung-poem is performed aloud. The form is always there first,
whereas in our print-culture where we have learned to scan a workaday text quickly for meaning, we generally pay scant attention to the carrier elements of sound and shape. Sappho's poems, read for meaning without form, leave a thin palette of a few notions, but with the Form in close view we savor the sounds as a interlocking mode of communication with the artist poet.
The approach of this study involves this "Microstructure" of form, pursuing via this path the interpretation of Sappho's few precious poems. If the discussion and commentary seem long in relation to the few lines which they describe, that that is because of our culture's insensitivity to sound and the interweaving of acoustic threads into the fabric of poetry. Taught as we are in our college courses to examine divisions and sub-divisions of meaning with infinite care and subtlety, we are novices in the appreciation of finely wrought sound. The Greek would have thrown up his hands in despair at the crudeness of our approach, probably thinking to himself "superficial Barbarians" who cannot hear the sounds and intonations of the Muses, mere clerks untasted of the founts of Hippocrene.
INTRO TO THE TEXT "TO APHRODITE"
Poem I
This famous poem is in the form of a prayer to Sappho's deity Aphrodite, the only complete poem we have from her work, and we owe its preservation to the literary critic and historian Dionysos of Halicarnassos, who was writing at Rome around 30 BC. His extensive treatise "On Literary Composition" is especially valuable since it gives a detailed analytical account of how an educated Greek would approach the reading of his classics, but its special contribution here is the quotation of this brilliant poem, the longest one we have from Sappho. Having some papyri in bits and pieces with a few lines from this poem, we see how impossible restoration would have been if we had to "reconstruct" it from the scraps, considering the complete poem as here presented.
But Dionysos gives us not only the poem, but also some most revealing remarks about the way he was reading her poetry. These are worth quoting in full, since what he says is quite different from the way we read and analyze poetry today.
"Here the euphonious effect (euevpia) and the grace (cavri~) of the language arise from the coherence (suneceiva/) and smoothness (leiovteti) of the junctures (aJrmoiw`n). The words nestle close to each other and are woven together (sunuvfantai literally ) according
to certain affinities and natural attractions of the letters.........."
"........As a natural consequence the language has a certain easy flow and softness. The arrangement of the words in no way ruffles the smooth waves of sound."
In the middle section of this quotation he goes into a description of some of the phonetic associations of contiguous sounds, which is different from a modern phonetic description, but very revealing since it shows the acoustic approach which an educated Greek would expect in reading poetry. "Almost through the entire ode, vowels are joined to mutes and semivowels, all those which are naturally prefixed or affixed to one another when pronounced together in one syllable. There are very few clashings of the semi-vowels with semi-vowels or mutes, and of mutes and vowels with one another, such as cause the sound to oscillate. When I review the entire ode, I find in all those sounds and verbs and other kinds of words, only five or perhaps six unions of semi-vowels and mutes which do not naturally blend with one another, and even they do not disturb the smoothness of the language to any great extent. As for juxtapositions of vowels, I find that those which occur in some clauses themselves are still fewer, while those which join the clauses to one another are only a little more numerous." This complicated outline of the Hellenistic approach to the phonetics and acoustics of poetry must represent a standardized method of interpretation common in the schools of the time. Dionysos explains at this point that going into full detail on the sounds would make the treatise overlong with needless repetition.
The above paragraphs might just as well have been written by the editor of this study, but in fact it is from Dionysos' pen some two thousand years ago. I quote it because it shows that a full phonetic analysis of poetry was at that time not only conceivable, but also done in the course of the teaching of literature, and done in a full and detailed manner. In this study we will be able go into some of the detail in the commentary, things which our critic felt he could not find space for in his general review of literary composition. What I stress here is that phonetic and acoustic analysis was to an ancient literary analyst not only worthwhile doing, but was normally done in great detail.
Dionysos continues with a final remark:
"It will be open to you as to anyone else, at your full leisure and
convenience, to take each single point enumerated by me and to
examine and review them with illustration. But really I have no time
for this! It is quite enough to give an adequate indication of my views
to all who will be able to follow in my steps."
It is interesting that the translator of the above passages ( W. Rhys Roberts: Dionysus of Halicarnassos, London l910) comments on the above technical passages: "Dionysus shows good judgment in not subjecting Sappho's Hymn to a detailed analysis, letter by letter." But it is that analysis which would have defined for us the Form on which the Ode (not Hymn) is built, in a verifiably authentic manner!
What is remarkable in this description of Sappho's poem is the very physicalness of the wording, which uses Greek terms like "fair-wording" and "grace" resulting from smoothness of the joinery at the junctures. These words are also used in the description of fine joinery of furniture, with phrases like "smooth to the fingernail", which points to care and delicacy in
the finishing craftsmanship. Dionysos is not using these words in a transferred or poetical sense. It is clear that they are for him technical terms regularly used in describing this kind of poetry, since he is ranging over the various types of composition which he finds in Greek classical literature.
He is dealing with the inner structure of the sounds in terms which are virtually identical to what I call the Microstructure, or inner configuration of the minimal sound-components. We can take a cue for our interpretation from this unusual description of a lyrical poem, the more valuable since it is written from within the cultural and artistic milieu of the Hellenistic world, by a man who would by his profession give a fair estimate of the tone of acceptable ancient literary criticism.
This famous poem is in the form of a prayer to Sappho's deity Aphrodite, the only complete poem we have from her work, and we owe its preservation to the literary critic and historian Dionysos of Halicarnassos, who was writing at Rome around 30 BC. His extensive treatise "On Literary Composition" is especially valuable since it gives a detailed analytical account of how an educated Greek would approach the reading of his classics, but its special contribution here is the quotation of this brilliant poem, the longest one we have from Sappho. Having some papyri in bits and pieces with a few lines from this poem, we see how impossible restoration would have been if we had to "reconstruct" it from the scraps, considering the complete poem as here presented.
But Dionysos gives us not only the poem, but also some most revealing remarks about the way he was reading her poetry. These are worth quoting in full, since what he says is quite different from the way we read and analyze poetry today.
"Here the euphonious effect (euevpia) and the grace (cavri~) of the language arise from the coherence (suneceiva/) and smoothness (leiovteti) of the junctures (aJrmoiw`n). The words nestle close to each other and are woven together (sunuvfantai literally ) according
to certain affinities and natural attractions of the letters.........."
"........As a natural consequence the language has a certain easy flow and softness. The arrangement of the words in no way ruffles the smooth waves of sound."
In the middle section of this quotation he goes into a description of some of the phonetic associations of contiguous sounds, which is different from a modern phonetic description, but very revealing since it shows the acoustic approach which an educated Greek would expect in reading poetry. "Almost through the entire ode, vowels are joined to mutes and semivowels, all those which are naturally prefixed or affixed to one another when pronounced together in one syllable. There are very few clashings of the semi-vowels with semi-vowels or mutes, and of mutes and vowels with one another, such as cause the sound to oscillate. When I review the entire ode, I find in all those sounds and verbs and other kinds of words, only five or perhaps six unions of semi-vowels and mutes which do not naturally blend with one another, and even they do not disturb the smoothness of the language to any great extent. As for juxtapositions of vowels, I find that those which occur in some clauses themselves are still fewer, while those which join the clauses to one another are only a little more numerous." This complicated outline of the Hellenistic approach to the phonetics and acoustics of poetry must represent a standardized method of interpretation common in the schools of the time. Dionysos explains at this point that going into full detail on the sounds would make the treatise overlong with needless repetition.
The above paragraphs might just as well have been written by the editor of this study, but in fact it is from Dionysos' pen some two thousand years ago. I quote it because it shows that a full phonetic analysis of poetry was at that time not only conceivable, but also done in the course of the teaching of literature, and done in a full and detailed manner. In this study we will be able go into some of the detail in the commentary, things which our critic felt he could not find space for in his general review of literary composition. What I stress here is that phonetic and acoustic analysis was to an ancient literary analyst not only worthwhile doing, but was normally done in great detail.
Dionysos continues with a final remark:
"It will be open to you as to anyone else, at your full leisure and
convenience, to take each single point enumerated by me and to
examine and review them with illustration. But really I have no time
for this! It is quite enough to give an adequate indication of my views
to all who will be able to follow in my steps."
It is interesting that the translator of the above passages ( W. Rhys Roberts: Dionysus of Halicarnassos, London l910) comments on the above technical passages: "Dionysus shows good judgment in not subjecting Sappho's Hymn to a detailed analysis, letter by letter." But it is that analysis which would have defined for us the Form on which the Ode (not Hymn) is built, in a verifiably authentic manner!
What is remarkable in this description of Sappho's poem is the very physicalness of the wording, which uses Greek terms like "fair-wording" and "grace" resulting from smoothness of the joinery at the junctures. These words are also used in the description of fine joinery of furniture, with phrases like "smooth to the fingernail", which points to care and delicacy in
the finishing craftsmanship. Dionysos is not using these words in a transferred or poetical sense. It is clear that they are for him technical terms regularly used in describing this kind of poetry, since he is ranging over the various types of composition which he finds in Greek classical literature.
He is dealing with the inner structure of the sounds in terms which are virtually identical to what I call the Microstructure, or inner configuration of the minimal sound-components. We can take a cue for our interpretation from this unusual description of a lyrical poem, the more valuable since it is written from within the cultural and artistic milieu of the Hellenistic world, by a man who would by his profession give a fair estimate of the tone of acceptable ancient literary criticism.
THE TEXT AND ITS FORMAT "TO APHRODITE"
The Text and its Format
Reading classical Greek we might have the impression that we are reading a
book much the same as when it was published in the Hellenistic period,
aside from the few critical text variants at the foot of an Oxford Classics
Text edition. The elegantly clear font of the OCT Series was based on the
handwriting of Richard Porson, the early l9 th century scholar who transcribed
and edited thousands of pages from obscure sources, and it is so
familiar as the traditional font for schoolbooks, that one may be at first surprised
at viewing the upright and shaded fonts used for a century and a half
by the German Teubner editions. And now that we have electronic fonts
available for reading on the web, we have many more fonts available for
our letters, some more rounded, some less shaded, some no longer italic,
and others businesslike and less delicate in shape.
But if we look back a few centuries to the first generation of printed Greek
in the early 1500's, we find an entirely different and virtually unreadable
text, which has characters of different form, abbreviations and ligatures of
several letters bound together, and other conventions drawn from the
manuscript hand of the middle ages. And this in turn looks nothing like the
hand written texts on papyrus sheets which were the reading format of
educated readers throughout the Alexandrian Hellenistic world.
The "accents" were written in for school use since educated native speakers
of Greek knew them as intuitively as a modern Russian knows his pitch
intonations, and ancient readers would read a poem of Sappho in a version
much like this one:
poikiloqron j aqanat j afrodita
pai Dio~ doloploke lissomai se
mh m j asaisi mhd j oniaisi damna
potnia qumon
alla tuid j elq j ai pota katerwta
ta~ ema~ auda~ ai>ousa phlui
eklue~, patro~ de domon lipoisa
crusion elqe~
arm j upadeuxaisa : kaloi de s j agon
wkee~ strouqoi peri ga~ melaina~
pukna dinnente~ pter j ap j wranwiqero~
dia messw,
aiya d jexikonto. su d j, w makaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
hre j otti dhute peponqa kwtti
dhute kalhmmi,
kwtti moi malista qelw genesqai
mainola/ qumw/. tina dhute peiqw
mais aghn e~ Ûsan filotata … ti~ s j w
yapf j, adikhei …
kai gar ei feugei tacew~ diwxei
ai de dwra mh deket, alla dwsei
ai de mh filei tacew~ filhsei
kwuk eqeloisa.
elqe moi kai nun, calepan de luson
ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai
qumo~ imerrei, teleson. su d jauta
summaco~ esso
This is less different than it appears on first sight, once we understand the
use of the "lunar sigma" which is in the shape of a Roman "C", and the
upsilon fashioned after the capital form. In fact it does the mind good to
take some time to read this uncial text, since it must be read slowly and
carefully, much in the manner of an Alexandrian reader of poetry. Our tendency
to scan when reading, discarding the phonetic and euphonic contents
as we search out a file away the 'meaning' as the important part of the message,
does not suit the reading of Greek poetry at all. I suggest mastering
this remarkable poem in the Uncial format as a way to get a new view of
the text, one unencumbered by a shower of diacritic accents (which are not
used by us as pitches !) or by a font which has become easy to scan as we
learned out Greek in school from textbooks. Sappho is emphatically not a
textbooks text. The Aeolic dialect, the problems with readings as well as interpretation,
and the vivid translucence of the poetry demand special attention,
and reading the text in uncials as a kind of "discovery" may be of use
in establishing the atmosphere of specialness which is needed for reading
lyric poetry.
But we also want to have at hand a clearer reading text, for which this one
on th following page seems quite suitable. The diacritical accents have been
stripped away in order to present the clearest and least cluttered appearance
of the words, but with a familiar font . This text is especially good for a
working copy from which to work out the metrical cadencing, since we can
concntrate on the longs and shorts of the Sapphic line, without the reminders
of "stress pronunciation" which our early training in Greek associates
with the Accents.
We should remember that the separation into separate Stanzas is the work of
modern editorial practice, as is the familiar indention of the short line,
which should be read as different from its metrical configuration rather than
from its location on the page.
poikiloqron j aqanat j Afrodita
pai Dio~ doloploke lissomai se
mh m j asaisi mhd j oniaisi damna
potnia qumon
alla tuid j elq j ai pota katerwta
ta~ ema~ auda~ ai>ousa phlui
eklue~, patro~ de domon lipoisa
crusion elqe~
arm j upadeuxaisa : kaloi de s j agon
wkee~ strouqoi peri ga~ melaina~
pukna dinnente~ pter j ap j wranwiqero~
dia messw,
aiya d jexikonto. su d j, w makaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
hre j otti dhute peponqa kwtti
dhute kalhmmi,
kwtti moi malista qelw genesqai
mainola/ qumw/. tina dhute peiqw
mai~ s j aghn e~ san filotata … ti~ s j W
Yapf j, adikhei …
kai gar ei feugei tacew~ diwxei
ai de dwra mh deket, alla dwsei
ai de mh filei tacew~ filhsei
kwuk eqeloisa.
elqe moi kai nun, calepan de luson
ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai
qumo~ imerrei, teleson. su d jauta
summaco~ esso
The following "straight" version seems a very good one for perusing once
we are familiar with the text and its phrase structure, which must be
deduced from the words, not from editorial aides like commas and
semicolons. So I will also give on the next page a standard version with the
accents and paragraphing which we can use as the base for the following
pages of commentary.
Note that the meaningless "smooth breathing" is omitted as well as the
aspirating Rough Breathing, which is not used in the Aeolic dialect which is
characterized by its "psilosis" or Stripping (of aspiration).. The Grave
which only warns not to raise pitch, is a secondary accent and since it can
be confused with a "real" pitch diacritic, it not used in this version. We
have difficult work if we want to get the Durations of Long and Short right
to read verse metrically, and there will be more effort involved in
producing the Pitches according to th diacritics, on top of the durative
metrical patterns.
Changing the transitional appearance of the Greek text by removing
unnecessary accent marks has a single purpose, to clear away space and
prepare the text for a closer examination. Unneeded markings can only
confuse.
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
pai` Divo~ dolovploke livssomaiv se
mhv m j avsaisi mhd j onivaisi davmna
povtnia qu`mon
alla tui`d j evlq j aiv pota katevrwta
ta~ evma~ auvda~ ai>vousa phvloi
evklue~, pavtro~ de dovmon livpoisa
cruvsion h`lqe~
avrm j upadeuvxaisa : kavloi de s j a`gon
wvkee~ strou`qoi peri ga`~ melavina~
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver j ap j wravnwiqero~
dia mevssw,
ai`ya d jexivkonto. su d j, w` mavkaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
hvre j ovtti dhu`te pevponqa kvwtti
dhu`te kavlhmmi,
kvwtti moi mavlista qevlw gevnesqai
mainovla/ quvmw/. tivna dhu`te peviqw
mai`~ s j avghn e~ / san filovtata … tiv~ s j w`
Yavpf j, adikhvei …
kai gar ei feuvgei tacevw~ diwvxei
ai de dw`ra mh devket, alla dwvsei
ai de mh fivlei tacevw~ filhvsei
kwuk eqevloisa.
evlqe moi kai nu`n, calevpan de lu`son
ek merivmnan, ovssa de moi tevlessai
qu`mo~ imevrrei, tevleson. su d jauvta
suvmmaco~ evsso
(Note: There are several Grammatical aides at p. 88 ff.)
And of course I should include a transcription in Roman letters, a practice
somewhat questionably introduced by Perseus throughout its Greek library,
but now so familiar to most of us that it will not seem completely out of
place. It does offer to the reader who has not yet started with the Greek a
chance to experience the sounds and cadences of Sappho's poetry, and for
that alone it is worth the small space it takes in this study.
poikilo-thron' athanat' Aphrodita
pai dios doloploka, lissomai se
me m'asaisi med' oniaisi damna
potnia thumon
alla tuid' elth' ai pota katerota
tas emas audos aioisa peloi
eklues, patros de domon lipoisa
chrusion elthes
arm' updeuxaisa. kaloi de s'agon
okees strouthoi peri gas melainas
pukna dinnentes pter' ap oranothe-
-ros dia messo
aipsa d'exikonto, su de O makaira
meidiaisas' athanato prosopoi
ere' otti deute popontha kotti
deute kalemmi
kotti moi malista thelo genesthai
mainolai thumoi. tina deute peitho
mais agen es san philotata? tis s' O
Psapph' adikeei ?
kai gar ai pheugei, taxeos dioxei
ai de dora me deket', alla dosei
ai de me philei, tacheos philesei
kouk etheloisa.
elthe moi kai nun, chalepan de luson
ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai
thumos imerrei, teleson, su d'auta
summachos esso.
Reading classical Greek we might have the impression that we are reading a
book much the same as when it was published in the Hellenistic period,
aside from the few critical text variants at the foot of an Oxford Classics
Text edition. The elegantly clear font of the OCT Series was based on the
handwriting of Richard Porson, the early l9 th century scholar who transcribed
and edited thousands of pages from obscure sources, and it is so
familiar as the traditional font for schoolbooks, that one may be at first surprised
at viewing the upright and shaded fonts used for a century and a half
by the German Teubner editions. And now that we have electronic fonts
available for reading on the web, we have many more fonts available for
our letters, some more rounded, some less shaded, some no longer italic,
and others businesslike and less delicate in shape.
But if we look back a few centuries to the first generation of printed Greek
in the early 1500's, we find an entirely different and virtually unreadable
text, which has characters of different form, abbreviations and ligatures of
several letters bound together, and other conventions drawn from the
manuscript hand of the middle ages. And this in turn looks nothing like the
hand written texts on papyrus sheets which were the reading format of
educated readers throughout the Alexandrian Hellenistic world.
The "accents" were written in for school use since educated native speakers
of Greek knew them as intuitively as a modern Russian knows his pitch
intonations, and ancient readers would read a poem of Sappho in a version
much like this one:
poikiloqron j aqanat j afrodita
pai Dio~ doloploke lissomai se
mh m j asaisi mhd j oniaisi damna
potnia qumon
alla tuid j elq j ai pota katerwta
ta~ ema~ auda~ ai>ousa phlui
eklue~, patro~ de domon lipoisa
crusion elqe~
arm j upadeuxaisa : kaloi de s j agon
wkee~ strouqoi peri ga~ melaina~
pukna dinnente~ pter j ap j wranwiqero~
dia messw,
aiya d jexikonto. su d j, w makaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
hre j otti dhute peponqa kwtti
dhute kalhmmi,
kwtti moi malista qelw genesqai
mainola/ qumw/. tina dhute peiqw
mais aghn e~ Ûsan filotata … ti~ s j w
yapf j, adikhei …
kai gar ei feugei tacew~ diwxei
ai de dwra mh deket, alla dwsei
ai de mh filei tacew~ filhsei
kwuk eqeloisa.
elqe moi kai nun, calepan de luson
ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai
qumo~ imerrei, teleson. su d jauta
summaco~ esso
This is less different than it appears on first sight, once we understand the
use of the "lunar sigma" which is in the shape of a Roman "C", and the
upsilon fashioned after the capital form. In fact it does the mind good to
take some time to read this uncial text, since it must be read slowly and
carefully, much in the manner of an Alexandrian reader of poetry. Our tendency
to scan when reading, discarding the phonetic and euphonic contents
as we search out a file away the 'meaning' as the important part of the message,
does not suit the reading of Greek poetry at all. I suggest mastering
this remarkable poem in the Uncial format as a way to get a new view of
the text, one unencumbered by a shower of diacritic accents (which are not
used by us as pitches !) or by a font which has become easy to scan as we
learned out Greek in school from textbooks. Sappho is emphatically not a
textbooks text. The Aeolic dialect, the problems with readings as well as interpretation,
and the vivid translucence of the poetry demand special attention,
and reading the text in uncials as a kind of "discovery" may be of use
in establishing the atmosphere of specialness which is needed for reading
lyric poetry.
But we also want to have at hand a clearer reading text, for which this one
on th following page seems quite suitable. The diacritical accents have been
stripped away in order to present the clearest and least cluttered appearance
of the words, but with a familiar font . This text is especially good for a
working copy from which to work out the metrical cadencing, since we can
concntrate on the longs and shorts of the Sapphic line, without the reminders
of "stress pronunciation" which our early training in Greek associates
with the Accents.
We should remember that the separation into separate Stanzas is the work of
modern editorial practice, as is the familiar indention of the short line,
which should be read as different from its metrical configuration rather than
from its location on the page.
poikiloqron j aqanat j Afrodita
pai Dio~ doloploke lissomai se
mh m j asaisi mhd j oniaisi damna
potnia qumon
alla tuid j elq j ai pota katerwta
ta~ ema~ auda~ ai>ousa phlui
eklue~, patro~ de domon lipoisa
crusion elqe~
arm j upadeuxaisa : kaloi de s j agon
wkee~ strouqoi peri ga~ melaina~
pukna dinnente~ pter j ap j wranwiqero~
dia messw,
aiya d jexikonto. su d j, w makaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
hre j otti dhute peponqa kwtti
dhute kalhmmi,
kwtti moi malista qelw genesqai
mainola/ qumw/. tina dhute peiqw
mai~ s j aghn e~ san filotata … ti~ s j W
Yapf j, adikhei …
kai gar ei feugei tacew~ diwxei
ai de dwra mh deket, alla dwsei
ai de mh filei tacew~ filhsei
kwuk eqeloisa.
elqe moi kai nun, calepan de luson
ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai
qumo~ imerrei, teleson. su d jauta
summaco~ esso
The following "straight" version seems a very good one for perusing once
we are familiar with the text and its phrase structure, which must be
deduced from the words, not from editorial aides like commas and
semicolons. So I will also give on the next page a standard version with the
accents and paragraphing which we can use as the base for the following
pages of commentary.
Note that the meaningless "smooth breathing" is omitted as well as the
aspirating Rough Breathing, which is not used in the Aeolic dialect which is
characterized by its "psilosis" or Stripping (of aspiration).. The Grave
which only warns not to raise pitch, is a secondary accent and since it can
be confused with a "real" pitch diacritic, it not used in this version. We
have difficult work if we want to get the Durations of Long and Short right
to read verse metrically, and there will be more effort involved in
producing the Pitches according to th diacritics, on top of the durative
metrical patterns.
Changing the transitional appearance of the Greek text by removing
unnecessary accent marks has a single purpose, to clear away space and
prepare the text for a closer examination. Unneeded markings can only
confuse.
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
pai` Divo~ dolovploke livssomaiv se
mhv m j avsaisi mhd j onivaisi davmna
povtnia qu`mon
alla tui`d j evlq j aiv pota katevrwta
ta~ evma~ auvda~ ai>vousa phvloi
evklue~, pavtro~ de dovmon livpoisa
cruvsion h`lqe~
avrm j upadeuvxaisa : kavloi de s j a`gon
wvkee~ strou`qoi peri ga`~ melavina~
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver j ap j wravnwiqero~
dia mevssw,
ai`ya d jexivkonto. su d j, w` mavkaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
hvre j ovtti dhu`te pevponqa kvwtti
dhu`te kavlhmmi,
kvwtti moi mavlista qevlw gevnesqai
mainovla/ quvmw/. tivna dhu`te peviqw
mai`~ s j avghn e~ / san filovtata … tiv~ s j w`
Yavpf j, adikhvei …
kai gar ei feuvgei tacevw~ diwvxei
ai de dw`ra mh devket, alla dwvsei
ai de mh fivlei tacevw~ filhvsei
kwuk eqevloisa.
evlqe moi kai nu`n, calevpan de lu`son
ek merivmnan, ovssa de moi tevlessai
qu`mo~ imevrrei, tevleson. su d jauvta
suvmmaco~ evsso
(Note: There are several Grammatical aides at p. 88 ff.)
And of course I should include a transcription in Roman letters, a practice
somewhat questionably introduced by Perseus throughout its Greek library,
but now so familiar to most of us that it will not seem completely out of
place. It does offer to the reader who has not yet started with the Greek a
chance to experience the sounds and cadences of Sappho's poetry, and for
that alone it is worth the small space it takes in this study.
poikilo-thron' athanat' Aphrodita
pai dios doloploka, lissomai se
me m'asaisi med' oniaisi damna
potnia thumon
alla tuid' elth' ai pota katerota
tas emas audos aioisa peloi
eklues, patros de domon lipoisa
chrusion elthes
arm' updeuxaisa. kaloi de s'agon
okees strouthoi peri gas melainas
pukna dinnentes pter' ap oranothe-
-ros dia messo
aipsa d'exikonto, su de O makaira
meidiaisas' athanato prosopoi
ere' otti deute popontha kotti
deute kalemmi
kotti moi malista thelo genesthai
mainolai thumoi. tina deute peitho
mais agen es san philotata? tis s' O
Psapph' adikeei ?
kai gar ai pheugei, taxeos dioxei
ai de dora me deket', alla dosei
ai de me philei, tacheos philesei
kouk etheloisa.
elthe moi kai nun, chalepan de luson
ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai
thumos imerrei, teleson, su d'auta
summachos esso.
TRANSLATIONS AND THE TEXT "TO APHRODITE"
Translations and the Text
Before entering into a detailed commentary on Dionysius' Poem I, it seems
useful to talk for a minute about translations, what they are and what they
and intended to do. In the last half of the 20th century, the Classics have
gone through a new phrase in the long history of an ancient philological
discipline, one in which artistic translations of almost every major classical
author have flooded the book market. It is not just a question of getting out
one readable translation so that those who do not study Greek or Latin can
read the writing of classical authors. We now he a choice of half a dozen
translations of each author, some close to the original text, others trying to
recreate the feeling of the original in modern wording. Some translations
are poetic works in their own right, but many are intended for the college
market where copies of a Homer or Vergil are required reading for a
Classics course and can sell tens of thousands of copies.
But there is another side to this. After l950 the number of students studying
the Greek and Latin language in colleges declined severally, many colleges
dropped the Classics as a discipline in those economically tight time. But
soon a way for the field of Classics was discovered as a possible salvation.
Teach courses in "Classics in Translation" to classes of eighty or more
rather than Homer in Greek to a class of five or less.
This caught on and actually saved doomed Classics Departments which had
been teaching on a virtually tutorial level. With more students there could
be more faculty and tenured security re-cementing translation programs into
the stable college curriculum.
With this new and exciting level of activity, more translations appeared, and
in many cases obscured the actual texts which from which they were derived.
Why read Homer in painful dictionary-based Greek when you can
"do Homer" in three weeks in an Epic Course? By the end of the century
people starter to realize that the translations and the original were not at all
the same thing, and there has been a resurgence of interest in the classical
languages, especially in collage Greek in the last decades, as student verge
away from easy discussion courses and seek something which requires effort
to confer mastery.
But there is more to say about Translation as a process. Robert Frost put his
finger on the situation years ago when he said that "Poetry is what is lost in
translation.". If you change the words to another language which has
different word-associations, and you change the phonetics of the words and
phrases, and even the sentence and verse structure (as must often be done to
avoid translation-ese effects), you create a new and separate piece of writing.
You have not trans-lated or "brought it across" at all, you may have
given a fair representation of the overall meaning, but you have demolished
the form in the process. Few translations can afford to be form-conscious
and at the same time readable, it takes too much effort with too little chance
of succeeding.
Coming back to Sappho, the question stands: How does she translate?
I can answer this question best by giving you several translations to examine,
before we go on to look in detail at the Greek. Registering on what the
translation does without the Greek, you can compare your impression with
what you understand after reading through the commentary. There are hundreds
of English translations of Sappho dating back over the last two centuries,
and there will be still many more coming in this present decade.
With patience one could sample them all, and see if they match well with
the Greek.
This should be the acid test: If after examining a number of accepted
translations, we find that the translation and the text only match in general
outline and meaning, and do not have the same detailed traits of sound and
configuration of the words, then we would have to admit that Sappho is
really not at all translatable.
Let me give first a nicely done but flowery late Victorian translation by
A.S. Way, which was considered excellent in its time:
Rainbow-throned immortal one, Aphrodite,
Child of Zeus, spell-weaver, I bow before thee ---
Harrow not my spirit with anguish, mighty
Queen, I implore thee!
Nay, come hither, even as once thou, bending
Down from far to hearken my cry, didst hear me,
From the Father's palace of gold descending
Drewest anear me
Chariot wafted: far over midnight-sleeping
Earth, they fair fleet sparrows, through cloudland riven
Wide by tumultuous wings, came sweeping
Down from thy heaven,
Swittly came: thou, smiling wt those undying
Lips and star-eyes, Blessed One, smiling me-ward,
Said'st, "What ails thee? --- wherefore uprose thy crying
Calling me thee-ward?
Say for what boon most with a frenzied longing
Yearns thy soul --- say whom shall my glamour chaining
Hale thy love's thrall, Sappho --- and who is wronging
Thee with disdaining?
Who avoids thee soon shall be thy pursuer:
Aye, the gift-rejecter the giver shall now be:
Aye, the loveless shall now become the wooer,
Scornful shalt thou be!"
Once again come! Come, and my chains dissever,
Chains of heart-ache! Passionate longings rend me ---
Oh fulfil them! Thou in the strife be ever
Near, to defend me.
The first problem with this translation is linguistic. My spell-check found a
surprising number of words which were not known or in use now, beyond
the archaic "thee/thou" pronouns. Some were poetisms which the author invented
to give a sense of the Greek wording, others were certainly archaic
or bookish even then. Although the language is completely consonant with
the Art Nouveau movement of the early century, and quite nicely done if
one thinks of the floral decorations and intentional archaisms of the post
William Morris period, it is singularly out of step with our stripped, post-
Art Deco, straight and minimalist preferences.
The translator did know the Greek well, he knew that something had to be
done to carry across some of the loveliness of the Greek words and phrasing,
and he did this with the current poetic vocabulary of his time. The result
is quite lovely, given the translator's setting from a century ago. For
most of us, this translation would not work at all. As Sappho is clear and
sharp and direct, Mr. Way is flowery and wordy and indirect. It is useful
however as a reminder of the way language continually changes. Here in the
span of a single decade, we see huge changes in today's TV or our children's
speech patterns. Is translation going to be done over every few years to keep
up with the changes in the way we speak? Yes, and that may be the reason
that we are going to experience such a flood of new translation of the classics,
decade by decade.
Next is a translation which I did a few years ago to accompany an earlier
and much simpler Web version of this Study on Sappho. It was intended to
serve as a translation accompanying the transliteration of Poem I (Greek on
the web was not feasible back then), and I later found that it was linked,
cross referenced, lifted and purloined (with or without my name) throughout
the Internet, which must mean indirectly that it was not considered a
bad translation. Looking it over, I see it has few words or expressions
which deviate far from normal common English usage of the year 2000,
and it may be the "ordinariness" of this translation which is also fairly literal,
which is its best claim to fame.
Many colored throned immortal Aphrodita,
daughter of Zeus, wile-weaver, I beg you
with reproaches and harms do not beat down
O Lady, my soul
But come here, if ever at another time
My voice hearing, from afar
You gave ear, and your father's home leaving
----golden --- you came
Yoking the chariot. And fair, swift
Doves brought you over the black earth
Dense wings whirring, from heaven down
through middle air.
Suddenly they arrived, and you, O Blessed One,
Smiling with your immortal countenance
Asked what hurt me, and for what
Now I cried out.
And what do I want to happen most
In my crazy heart. "Whom then you desire
Persuasion to bring to you, dearest? Who
Sappho hurts you.
And if she flees, soon will she follow,
If she does not take gifts, she will give,
If she does not love, she will love
Despite herself"
Come to me now, the harsh worry
Let loose, what my heart wants to be
Done, do it!, and you yourself be
My battle-ally.
Comment from the translator:
"Many colored" is of course clumsy, but a deficiency in the English
language which has no words for the Greek "poikilos" which corresponds
fairly well with Latin. "varius". "Colored" can be of a single
hue so not suitable. We have had to get along with Joseph's Coat of
Many Colors for centuries, and Mr. Way's suggestion of the "rainbow"
is a fair effort to supply the right term, but entirely too fancy
and not in the Greek at all.
"Wile weaver" does translate 'dolo-ploka' exactly, but the Greek was
probably a common adjective for many a woman, whereas this is
too strong a neologism in English. But many translations have used it
so often that we might almost think it a native English word.
"Beat down" is too brutal and direct, but fits the imperative 'damna',
which means dominate, crush. If a suitable word does not come up, I
would always go with the simplest expression, as here.
"My voice hearing" follows the Greek word order, as "father's home
leaving". This is done to catch the archaic quality of the Greek, it is
still understandable now although word inversions are often not registered
in today's usage.
"Black earth" has to stay exactly as it is, since it is an allusion to the
world of Homer with his own tag expression. Never touch an allusion,
this is no place for poetic invention.
"your immortal face" . Face seems too ordinary and daily, while
"countenance" is formal and evasive for "prosopó " which stands
forth as "pros + op". Nice clear word with immediate meaning but
built in formality in Greek usage.
"Asked what hurt me..." This is kept close since the goddess it talking
like mother to child, "Why are you hurting", better reversed for
English as "who hit you?". But we want to keep the 'hurt' word, the
eternal scraped knee needing a bandaid.
"And if she flees..." This paragraph (stanza as it were) has to retain
the bipartite nature of each line, slowly building tensions between the
present and assured future situations, like a magical incantation
bringing the two parts of a broken relationship tougher inexorably.
The lines have to look inexorable, until the last word, where in the
short line "despite herself" does no justice to the Greek 'ouk etheloisa',
which as "(even) not wishing" modifies and caps the unidentified
"she" of the whole paragraph.
The reading 'etheloisa=ethelousa' as a nom. sg. fem. has been
emended to 3 person plural 'ethelousan' assuming that the person was
a man and both of them were unable to restrain themselves. Such was
the fear of homosexuality in the l850's that a text could be emended
just to change the subject.
The last paragraph has to be translated very simply wiuth a minimum
of words and no decoration, as here done. This was done in the
translation monosyllabically so far as possible, matching the one and
two syllable words of the Greek which express an in-turning of the
feelings, until that last most difficult word "battle ally" for
'symmachos'. This was the special word for a sworn ally in the throes
of battle, whether Homeric goddess Athena or a confederate ally in
the world of Greek politics. She uses the word in a critical sense,
since it is an unexpected word for a woman in that male dominated
society. For this I never found a good translation into English.
So it would appear that some of the clumsiness of this translation was
intentional, in an effort to keep close to the Greek rather than exfoliate
into a rival poem of parallel quality. For this age, this may be the
best way to go. And again the warning that it is the poetry which is
lost in the translation.!
Before entering into a detailed commentary on Dionysius' Poem I, it seems
useful to talk for a minute about translations, what they are and what they
and intended to do. In the last half of the 20th century, the Classics have
gone through a new phrase in the long history of an ancient philological
discipline, one in which artistic translations of almost every major classical
author have flooded the book market. It is not just a question of getting out
one readable translation so that those who do not study Greek or Latin can
read the writing of classical authors. We now he a choice of half a dozen
translations of each author, some close to the original text, others trying to
recreate the feeling of the original in modern wording. Some translations
are poetic works in their own right, but many are intended for the college
market where copies of a Homer or Vergil are required reading for a
Classics course and can sell tens of thousands of copies.
But there is another side to this. After l950 the number of students studying
the Greek and Latin language in colleges declined severally, many colleges
dropped the Classics as a discipline in those economically tight time. But
soon a way for the field of Classics was discovered as a possible salvation.
Teach courses in "Classics in Translation" to classes of eighty or more
rather than Homer in Greek to a class of five or less.
This caught on and actually saved doomed Classics Departments which had
been teaching on a virtually tutorial level. With more students there could
be more faculty and tenured security re-cementing translation programs into
the stable college curriculum.
With this new and exciting level of activity, more translations appeared, and
in many cases obscured the actual texts which from which they were derived.
Why read Homer in painful dictionary-based Greek when you can
"do Homer" in three weeks in an Epic Course? By the end of the century
people starter to realize that the translations and the original were not at all
the same thing, and there has been a resurgence of interest in the classical
languages, especially in collage Greek in the last decades, as student verge
away from easy discussion courses and seek something which requires effort
to confer mastery.
But there is more to say about Translation as a process. Robert Frost put his
finger on the situation years ago when he said that "Poetry is what is lost in
translation.". If you change the words to another language which has
different word-associations, and you change the phonetics of the words and
phrases, and even the sentence and verse structure (as must often be done to
avoid translation-ese effects), you create a new and separate piece of writing.
You have not trans-lated or "brought it across" at all, you may have
given a fair representation of the overall meaning, but you have demolished
the form in the process. Few translations can afford to be form-conscious
and at the same time readable, it takes too much effort with too little chance
of succeeding.
Coming back to Sappho, the question stands: How does she translate?
I can answer this question best by giving you several translations to examine,
before we go on to look in detail at the Greek. Registering on what the
translation does without the Greek, you can compare your impression with
what you understand after reading through the commentary. There are hundreds
of English translations of Sappho dating back over the last two centuries,
and there will be still many more coming in this present decade.
With patience one could sample them all, and see if they match well with
the Greek.
This should be the acid test: If after examining a number of accepted
translations, we find that the translation and the text only match in general
outline and meaning, and do not have the same detailed traits of sound and
configuration of the words, then we would have to admit that Sappho is
really not at all translatable.
Let me give first a nicely done but flowery late Victorian translation by
A.S. Way, which was considered excellent in its time:
Rainbow-throned immortal one, Aphrodite,
Child of Zeus, spell-weaver, I bow before thee ---
Harrow not my spirit with anguish, mighty
Queen, I implore thee!
Nay, come hither, even as once thou, bending
Down from far to hearken my cry, didst hear me,
From the Father's palace of gold descending
Drewest anear me
Chariot wafted: far over midnight-sleeping
Earth, they fair fleet sparrows, through cloudland riven
Wide by tumultuous wings, came sweeping
Down from thy heaven,
Swittly came: thou, smiling wt those undying
Lips and star-eyes, Blessed One, smiling me-ward,
Said'st, "What ails thee? --- wherefore uprose thy crying
Calling me thee-ward?
Say for what boon most with a frenzied longing
Yearns thy soul --- say whom shall my glamour chaining
Hale thy love's thrall, Sappho --- and who is wronging
Thee with disdaining?
Who avoids thee soon shall be thy pursuer:
Aye, the gift-rejecter the giver shall now be:
Aye, the loveless shall now become the wooer,
Scornful shalt thou be!"
Once again come! Come, and my chains dissever,
Chains of heart-ache! Passionate longings rend me ---
Oh fulfil them! Thou in the strife be ever
Near, to defend me.
The first problem with this translation is linguistic. My spell-check found a
surprising number of words which were not known or in use now, beyond
the archaic "thee/thou" pronouns. Some were poetisms which the author invented
to give a sense of the Greek wording, others were certainly archaic
or bookish even then. Although the language is completely consonant with
the Art Nouveau movement of the early century, and quite nicely done if
one thinks of the floral decorations and intentional archaisms of the post
William Morris period, it is singularly out of step with our stripped, post-
Art Deco, straight and minimalist preferences.
The translator did know the Greek well, he knew that something had to be
done to carry across some of the loveliness of the Greek words and phrasing,
and he did this with the current poetic vocabulary of his time. The result
is quite lovely, given the translator's setting from a century ago. For
most of us, this translation would not work at all. As Sappho is clear and
sharp and direct, Mr. Way is flowery and wordy and indirect. It is useful
however as a reminder of the way language continually changes. Here in the
span of a single decade, we see huge changes in today's TV or our children's
speech patterns. Is translation going to be done over every few years to keep
up with the changes in the way we speak? Yes, and that may be the reason
that we are going to experience such a flood of new translation of the classics,
decade by decade.
Next is a translation which I did a few years ago to accompany an earlier
and much simpler Web version of this Study on Sappho. It was intended to
serve as a translation accompanying the transliteration of Poem I (Greek on
the web was not feasible back then), and I later found that it was linked,
cross referenced, lifted and purloined (with or without my name) throughout
the Internet, which must mean indirectly that it was not considered a
bad translation. Looking it over, I see it has few words or expressions
which deviate far from normal common English usage of the year 2000,
and it may be the "ordinariness" of this translation which is also fairly literal,
which is its best claim to fame.
Many colored throned immortal Aphrodita,
daughter of Zeus, wile-weaver, I beg you
with reproaches and harms do not beat down
O Lady, my soul
But come here, if ever at another time
My voice hearing, from afar
You gave ear, and your father's home leaving
----golden --- you came
Yoking the chariot. And fair, swift
Doves brought you over the black earth
Dense wings whirring, from heaven down
through middle air.
Suddenly they arrived, and you, O Blessed One,
Smiling with your immortal countenance
Asked what hurt me, and for what
Now I cried out.
And what do I want to happen most
In my crazy heart. "Whom then you desire
Persuasion to bring to you, dearest? Who
Sappho hurts you.
And if she flees, soon will she follow,
If she does not take gifts, she will give,
If she does not love, she will love
Despite herself"
Come to me now, the harsh worry
Let loose, what my heart wants to be
Done, do it!, and you yourself be
My battle-ally.
Comment from the translator:
"Many colored" is of course clumsy, but a deficiency in the English
language which has no words for the Greek "poikilos" which corresponds
fairly well with Latin. "varius". "Colored" can be of a single
hue so not suitable. We have had to get along with Joseph's Coat of
Many Colors for centuries, and Mr. Way's suggestion of the "rainbow"
is a fair effort to supply the right term, but entirely too fancy
and not in the Greek at all.
"Wile weaver" does translate 'dolo-ploka' exactly, but the Greek was
probably a common adjective for many a woman, whereas this is
too strong a neologism in English. But many translations have used it
so often that we might almost think it a native English word.
"Beat down" is too brutal and direct, but fits the imperative 'damna',
which means dominate, crush. If a suitable word does not come up, I
would always go with the simplest expression, as here.
"My voice hearing" follows the Greek word order, as "father's home
leaving". This is done to catch the archaic quality of the Greek, it is
still understandable now although word inversions are often not registered
in today's usage.
"Black earth" has to stay exactly as it is, since it is an allusion to the
world of Homer with his own tag expression. Never touch an allusion,
this is no place for poetic invention.
"your immortal face" . Face seems too ordinary and daily, while
"countenance" is formal and evasive for "prosopó " which stands
forth as "pros + op". Nice clear word with immediate meaning but
built in formality in Greek usage.
"Asked what hurt me..." This is kept close since the goddess it talking
like mother to child, "Why are you hurting", better reversed for
English as "who hit you?". But we want to keep the 'hurt' word, the
eternal scraped knee needing a bandaid.
"And if she flees..." This paragraph (stanza as it were) has to retain
the bipartite nature of each line, slowly building tensions between the
present and assured future situations, like a magical incantation
bringing the two parts of a broken relationship tougher inexorably.
The lines have to look inexorable, until the last word, where in the
short line "despite herself" does no justice to the Greek 'ouk etheloisa',
which as "(even) not wishing" modifies and caps the unidentified
"she" of the whole paragraph.
The reading 'etheloisa=ethelousa' as a nom. sg. fem. has been
emended to 3 person plural 'ethelousan' assuming that the person was
a man and both of them were unable to restrain themselves. Such was
the fear of homosexuality in the l850's that a text could be emended
just to change the subject.
The last paragraph has to be translated very simply wiuth a minimum
of words and no decoration, as here done. This was done in the
translation monosyllabically so far as possible, matching the one and
two syllable words of the Greek which express an in-turning of the
feelings, until that last most difficult word "battle ally" for
'symmachos'. This was the special word for a sworn ally in the throes
of battle, whether Homeric goddess Athena or a confederate ally in
the world of Greek politics. She uses the word in a critical sense,
since it is an unexpected word for a woman in that male dominated
society. For this I never found a good translation into English.
So it would appear that some of the clumsiness of this translation was
intentional, in an effort to keep close to the Greek rather than exfoliate
into a rival poem of parallel quality. For this age, this may be the
best way to go. And again the warning that it is the poetry which is
lost in the translation.!
THE POEM ITSELF "TO APHRODITE"
The Poem
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
pai` Divo~ dolovploke livssomaiv se
mhv m j avsaisi mhd j onivaisi davmna
povtnia qu`mon
alla tui`d j evlq j aiv pota katevrwta
ta~ evma~ auvda~ ai>vousa phvloi
evklue~, pavtro~ de dovmon livpoisa
cruvsion h`lqe~
avrm j upadeuvxaisa : kavloi de s j a`gon
wvkee~ strou`qoi peri ga`~ melavina~
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver j ap j wravnwiqero~
dia mevssw,
ai`ya d jexivkonto. su d j, w` mavkaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
hvre j ovtti dhu`te pevponqa kvwtti
dhu`te kavlhmmi,
kvwtti moi mavlista qevlw gevnesqai
mainovla/ quvmw/. tivna dhu`te peviqw
mai`~ s j avghn e~ / san filovtata … tiv~ s j w`
Yavpf j, adikhvei …
kai gar ei feuvgei tacevw~ diwvxei
ai de dw`ra mh devket, alla dwvsei
ai de mh fivlei tacevw~ filhvsei
kwuk eqevloisa.
evlqe moi kai nu`n, calevpan de lu`son
ek merivmnan, ovssa de moi tevlessai
qu`mo~ imevrrei, tevleson. su d jauvta
suvmmaco~ evsso
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
pai` Divo~ dolovploke livssomaiv se
mhv m j avsaisi mhd j onivaisi davmna
povtnia qu`mon
alla tui`d j evlq j aiv pota katevrwta
ta~ evma~ auvda~ ai>vousa phvloi
evklue~, pavtro~ de dovmon livpoisa
cruvsion h`lqe~
avrm j upadeuvxaisa : kavloi de s j a`gon
wvkee~ strou`qoi peri ga`~ melavina~
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver j ap j wravnwiqero~
dia mevssw,
ai`ya d jexivkonto. su d j, w` mavkaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
hvre j ovtti dhu`te pevponqa kvwtti
dhu`te kavlhmmi,
kvwtti moi mavlista qevlw gevnesqai
mainovla/ quvmw/. tivna dhu`te peviqw
mai`~ s j avghn e~ / san filovtata … tiv~ s j w`
Yavpf j, adikhvei …
kai gar ei feuvgei tacevw~ diwvxei
ai de dw`ra mh devket, alla dwvsei
ai de mh fivlei tacevw~ filhvsei
kwuk eqevloisa.
evlqe moi kai nu`n, calevpan de lu`son
ek merivmnan, ovssa de moi tevlessai
qu`mo~ imevrrei, tevleson. su d jauvta
suvmmaco~ evsso
A WORD ABOUT METER
A Word about Meter
Let us divide the business of Meter into two segments, that of Durations and the other side of the coin which involves Pitches. Since we have problems with the length-based metrical patterns coming from our corrupted substitution of Stresses for Lengths, and another set of problems involving the Accents used as another set of Stresses for prose only, it seems best to talk about the Durative or length-based metrics here, and leave the superimposed Pitches for another time. The first poem which we will work with is written in a metrical form called the Sapphic stanza, which has three lines in a largely similar pattern, followed by a short line.
< + < <± < + + < + < <±
< + < <± < + + < + < <±
< + < <± < + + < + < <±
< + + < <±
The pattern is not hard to follow, since it has often been used in English, and has a distinctive sound of its own which once heard is easy to remember. Here is a Sapphic strophe in triplex form, since it is a Sapphic in English translating a Sapphic of Horace from his Latin, which in turn is an imitation of Sappho's Greek Sapphic. Perhaps not the best translation
but useful as a metrical example.
Once unarmed I was in a forest roaming,
Singing love lays, when i' the secret gloaming
Rushed a huge wolf, which though in fury foaming
Did not attack me.
In reading, we look for the long vowels eta and o-mega, the diphthongs which are always long, and vowels under a circumflex pitch mark. These will always be Long, but we can also watch for short vowels, the -e-psilon and o-mikron. Furthermore a short vowel before two consonants will generally (sic) be pronounced long as a matter of length compensation.
Between these two searches we can usually get enough of the metrical pattern to read verse decently, perhaps after a try or two, at a normal reading pace. This is what we must aim for, a real-time reading speed which enables us to read aloud, understand and at the same time feel the musical metrics of the verse.
The traditional method of first memorizing the metrical patterns from a written out schema, then pencil marking the little long and short marks over the words in a test, and finally trying to read the Greek with these neo-diacritics in mind ----- this is NOT the way to go about reading Greek verse.
Poetry is a musical experience and must be approached acoustically, best by listening to someone who reads the Greek well aloud, and then trying to approximate his sound or her intonation. Listening is the first step, doing some intelligent guess-work comes next, and finally the whole procedure will snap into place on day as you read line after line of your Homeric
dactyls and wonder why it has suddenly become so easy.
Remember that you can do in cold and read long/short as you do, and you will come out with the pattern as above outlined for the Sapphic strophe. The sounds are a part of the words and the best way is to derive them from the words as you are reading them. The worst way is to memorize the meter and try to apply the text to it.
Would you condor memorizing the rhythmics of Bach's Brandenberg # I first, and then tapping the pattern out with your finger while listening to the recording?
Let us divide the business of Meter into two segments, that of Durations and the other side of the coin which involves Pitches. Since we have problems with the length-based metrical patterns coming from our corrupted substitution of Stresses for Lengths, and another set of problems involving the Accents used as another set of Stresses for prose only, it seems best to talk about the Durative or length-based metrics here, and leave the superimposed Pitches for another time. The first poem which we will work with is written in a metrical form called the Sapphic stanza, which has three lines in a largely similar pattern, followed by a short line.
< + < <± < + + < + < <±
< + < <± < + + < + < <±
< + < <± < + + < + < <±
< + + < <±
The pattern is not hard to follow, since it has often been used in English, and has a distinctive sound of its own which once heard is easy to remember. Here is a Sapphic strophe in triplex form, since it is a Sapphic in English translating a Sapphic of Horace from his Latin, which in turn is an imitation of Sappho's Greek Sapphic. Perhaps not the best translation
but useful as a metrical example.
Once unarmed I was in a forest roaming,
Singing love lays, when i' the secret gloaming
Rushed a huge wolf, which though in fury foaming
Did not attack me.
In reading, we look for the long vowels eta and o-mega, the diphthongs which are always long, and vowels under a circumflex pitch mark. These will always be Long, but we can also watch for short vowels, the -e-psilon and o-mikron. Furthermore a short vowel before two consonants will generally (sic) be pronounced long as a matter of length compensation.
Between these two searches we can usually get enough of the metrical pattern to read verse decently, perhaps after a try or two, at a normal reading pace. This is what we must aim for, a real-time reading speed which enables us to read aloud, understand and at the same time feel the musical metrics of the verse.
The traditional method of first memorizing the metrical patterns from a written out schema, then pencil marking the little long and short marks over the words in a test, and finally trying to read the Greek with these neo-diacritics in mind ----- this is NOT the way to go about reading Greek verse.
Poetry is a musical experience and must be approached acoustically, best by listening to someone who reads the Greek well aloud, and then trying to approximate his sound or her intonation. Listening is the first step, doing some intelligent guess-work comes next, and finally the whole procedure will snap into place on day as you read line after line of your Homeric
dactyls and wonder why it has suddenly become so easy.
Remember that you can do in cold and read long/short as you do, and you will come out with the pattern as above outlined for the Sapphic strophe. The sounds are a part of the words and the best way is to derive them from the words as you are reading them. The worst way is to memorize the meter and try to apply the text to it.
Would you condor memorizing the rhythmics of Bach's Brandenberg # I first, and then tapping the pattern out with your finger while listening to the recording?
INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS OF "TO APHRODITE"
Interpretation and Analysis
Now we can approach the poem itself, and examine the details of its
language, its sounds and configuration of words, and the way its esthetic
components are interwoven with the communicative meaning of the poem
as a whole.
Let us begin reading carefully, line by line as the text unfolds:
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
"color throned immortal Aphrodita"
poikilo-thron' athanat' Aphrodita
With that first difficult word "you of the many colored throne", clumsily
handling the clear Greek adjective 'poikilos', we start off on a tour of the
poem's visual imagery. This initial adjective is in fact the keyword to the
setting of the whole poem, and three elements are involved: The coloration,
the throne on which the color is painted, and the goddess who is connected
with (seated on) the throne.
The seated statue of a goddess is found in several museum holdings of work
from Sappho's archaic period. The figure of the deity is carved integral
with the rectangular block of marble. This is early statuary and the whole
sculpture is heavy and primitive --- one must not think of the later freestanding
and lithe Aphrodites. Years ago in Greece I noticed clear traces of
several colors of paint on the sides of such block-statues, which didn't seem
surprising since I knew that the Greeks regularly painted all statues, the
metopes of buildings, they waxed columns to a tan for color and waterproofing.
In short their temple world was a blaze of strong, earth-colors. And so here,
the word "many-color-throned" is not an example of imaginative wordpainting,
it is an exact visual term.
The setting of this poem is clear, since statues are in temples, located in the
separated rear-chamber of a small rectangular temple with pillars in front,
much like the small temple of Nike at the entrance to the acropolis on the
right side. For lack of a complete reconstruction, I am going to take the
Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi, which is a small Doric style temple as
a model for this discussion. The public did not enter temples, the sacrifice
was done out in front, only the priest or special person in charge alone
could enter within. Picture now Sappho proceeding from the outside altar
where a sacrifice could be done, into the temple itself as she is about to enter
the inner chamber where the statue of the seated Aphrodite stands.
This is an approaching front view of an early Doric temple from 515 BC,
the Athenian Treasury at Delphi, which should give a fair idea of the kind
of temple in which this poem is set. Behind the front columns is a front
chamber, there will be in Sappho's temple an interior wall with a doorway,
leading into the inner chamber in which the seat statue of the goddess is located.
Any initial sacrifice would have been done in the foreground of this
picture on an alter on the stone pavement.
Since Sappho is directly addressing the goddess of stone on the painted
statue base,. As a person in some special relationship to the religious
requirements, she can enter the temple and must be in the doorway of the
inner wall and now approaching the statue.
In the back chamber before the seated statue she kneels, her eyes level with
the painted designs on the throne. In fact mentioning the "painted throne"
puts her in the chamber bending low to see the throne, eyes cast down before
she dares look at the goddess' countenance. She must be close to the
statue, kneeling before it, since she sees the colors of the statue's polychrome
paint. Now the words of her prayer will continue to unfold:
Her prayer begins, as Greek prayers must, with proper identification of the
god, but there are two specifications which set sets out first:
aqanat j Afrodita
"Immortal Aphrodite"
athanat' Aphrodita
The word "immortal" might seem hardly needed in addressing the goddess,
since she is by definition one of the immortal ones, just as we are all the
mortals, the "thnetoi" or "mortales" of Latin. But remember that this is a
formal prayer, and there are certain ritual words which must be spoken if
the addressed deity is to hear the words, as Sappho notes : "If you have ever
heard.me before..." We can take 'athanata' as a title, a ritual part of the
goddess' name, thus Aqanat j Afrodita, perhaps like the Christian invoking
"Holy Mary".
"O Daughter of Zeus"....but she adds the curious word doloplok, as we
somewhat tentatively translate it "Weaver of Wiles". This is interesting expression,
in English it may be taken as somewhat charming, or beguiling,
but in Greek the noun 'dolos' refers to a "snare, a trap, an ambush" and has
clear associations with hunting. the m,ilitaru and even with treachery. The
Greek who knew Aphrodite as lovely and delightful could remember that
her path was mined with traps and snares for the unaware lover, and it is
this dangerous pathway which Sappho knows she is now treading. Is this insulting
to the goddess whom she is now begging for mercy? No, it is the
nature of Love, and as she cringes and begs release from pain, she surreptitiously
refers to her Lady of Pain very quickly, as the truth of the matter.
pai Dio~ doloploke lissomai se
"child of Zeus, wile-weaver, I entreat you"
pai dios, doloploka, lissomai se
"Child of Zeus" is needed for the identification of the suppliant, since one
has to get the right access code and that depends on knowing the proper
terminology of the address. This will expand later in the poem before
Aphrodite can leave the golden halls of heaven, her it is just a word to
establish the initial contact. Child is perhaps the better word, since daughter
is familiar and human. We only need the relationship to Zeus here, nothing
more.
mh m j asaisi mhd j oniaisi damna
potnia qumon
"do not with pains and reproachs crush
O Lady, my soul"
mé m'asaisi med' oniaisi damna
potnia thumon
Do not crush me down, with "harms" and with "reproaches", but these
words have more than shows here. The Greek verbal stem 'aaó' does mean
"harm" but this is never physical, always purely mental. The noun used here
'asa' is unusual, a shortened from what would actually be 'aasa'. Whether the
word is connected with the Greek verb 'aa-zó' meaning breathe out a sigh
"Ah!" is not clear, but Sappho would know that sighs are not far away.
Now 'onia' as "grief, distress" is a word which shows the distribution of
variants in the literary dialects, with an Attic form 'ania', beside the Ionic
'anié' and this Aeolic has a vowel shift to -o-, as 'onia'. Furthermore Epic
and Sappho make the -i- long, whereas later authors can use it as long or
short as the meter requires. I mention this to make clear that there is no
"standard" Greek language until we come to a much later period. Part of the
standardization we use stems from medieval scribes and even from modern
text editors. And beyond this, words in different periods may have different
associations, which makes the use of the Liddel-Scott-Jones dictionary, even
with its many columns in small print, absolutely indispensable.
O Lady, Potnia! The Homeric title potnia, powerful Lady, coming from the
world of Epic, is used here with specific emphasis, since it stands as a
majestic title right in the middle of a sorrowful and wailing complaint about
the plights of a lover. Even in this first paragraph of the address to the goddess,
there are two strong terms used, one with 'dolor' which traps and ensnares,
and the other Lady 'Potnia', which has a complicated and widespread
linguistic history. The root from IE "pot-" means "rule" and a despot is the
'* dems-pot-es" or ruler of the house, ruler of the social group. It occurs
with females as 'despoina' whether goddesses of women, meaning "O Lady,
Madame, Ma'am" but used alone as Potnia the powerful element of the root
rules. There is even a verb in later use 'despoiniazó' meaning "cry out in
distress or alarm 'O My Lady ", used by both men and women.
So when Sappho says "Potnia", especially in this painful situation, she is
really crying out " do not crust me down OH MY GOD completely". This
is at the same time a proper word of address in prayer, but it is also a cry of
desperation, even a scream. We can understand the imperative of the verb
'damna' as crushing down or even "dominating". But the physical crushing
does not work here, the word means mental crushing l, as when Zeus in the
Iliad 5, 893 it talking about his difficulty controlling his lady Hera, says:
.........thn men egw spoudh` / davmnhmi evpessi
"her with effort I control with my words"
ten men ego spoude damnemi epessi
It is this kind of emotional control which Sappho is speaking about, it is not
the complaint of a battered wife.
The word qumo~ is not a simple as it seems, when translated as "soul". We
might try to translate as "heart" but that would be a bad mistake following
the Aristotelian error of assuming that the heart was the seat of the mind
and emotions. We find it more convenient to say "Yes, with all my heart"
rather than "With all my brain", but that is a local problem for English!
The Greek for 'thumos' is based in air, mist and smoke, cognate with Skt.
dhumas "mist" and Latin fumus or "smoke", and it can be used for a wide
range of notions, from anger, heart felt feelings, even desire. English
"mind" might be what Sappho is saying here. If you think of soul as part of
your mind, that would be reasonable, but not Soul as the personalized part
of the self which has a separate identity here and in heaven. This wword
'thumos' is not a theological Soul.
Now let us look at the internal Form or Microstructure of this first stanza,
which stands complete in itself.
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
pai` Divo~ dolovploke livssomaiv se
mhv m j avsaisi mhd j onivaisi davmna
povtnia qu`mon
"Many colored throned immortal Aphrodita,
daughter of Zeus, wile-weaver, I beg you
with reproaches and harms do not beat down
O Lady, my soul"
poikilo-thron' athanat' Aphrodita
pai dios doloploka, lissomai se
me m'asaisi med' oniaisi damna
potnia thumon
The first thing to strike us is the number and regular succession of Acute
pitched syllables in this passage, a full dozen as against only two circumflexes.
Since the first whole line is an addressing statement, the actual
grammar of the sentences starts with the first word of line 2, which is 'pai'
"child / daughter" .Then we flow with continually up-rising major fifth
pitches (the rest being relegated down to base), and ending with that critical
word 'thumon' crowned with the overlong and melismatic tone curl of circumflex
accentuation.
This is not a matter of academic diacritics, is it a musical score on the basis
of which Sappho performed the song with voice and lyre, following in
artistic sequence the pitches where are here marked out. This has to be
practiced in reading out loud, only when that is made familar by practice
can we sit back and listen to the sound ringing in our ears. This is the way
to read Greek poetry, which is not a paper phenomenon, any more than a
Mozart Symphony is a graphic design written on score sheet. We have to
recreate the score for the musicality of the poem, but with pitches clearly
marked out, this will be entirely feasible.
Of course there are problems. The Aeolic dialect is much less known to us
than the later Attic Greek. Eustathius (515.37-8) discusses the dialects
which did not employ the rough breathing, calling this 'psilosis' or stripping
off, and he states that Aeolic was known as one of those dialects. So there
are no "rough breathings", whether as sign or as sound. As to accentuation
the metricist writer Choreoboskos remarks at various points "The Aeolians
accent this differently...", not generally specifying exactly how. We suspect
that the accentuation we find in our printed Sappho may not actually be that
which she used. On the other hand, since we have the printed accents to
work with, we can proceed tentatively with these, observing how they work
out in actual recited performance.
The vowel sequencing is always of paramount importance in reading Greek,
not only because Greek has a full and pellucid set of vowels, unlike Sanskrit
which has suffered considerable vowel consolidation, but because the
historical vowel changes within Greek often have grammatical meaning and
therefore call for careful attention. The vowel clarity of Greek is one of its
esthetic strong points, and they give a certain clarity to the language which
is especially brillliant in poetic diction.
Note in this first line the location of the -o- vowels:
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
poikilo-thron' athanat' Aphrodita
The first word has three -o- based syllables, while the last word sandwiches
an -o- between two -a-'s. But the whole line sandwiches the word 'athanta'
with its three (+ elided) -a- vowels between the other two -o- bearing
words. This is a very balanced and carefully assembled line of verse
But the next line
pai` Divo~ dolovploka livssomaiv se
pai dios doloploka lissomai se
goes the other way with four -o- sounds in the middle words, while the first
and next-last syllables in the line have the strong diphthong -ai-. Intuitively
conscious of the balance of the first line, the poet alters the arrangement of
the second line to avoid humdrum repetition. And in the third line
mhv m j avsaisi mhd j onivaisi davmna
me m'asaisi med' oniaisi damna
we find, poised on a pivotal center word "nor", two rhyming words with
their ringing -aisi-, each based on an vowel initial stem (aasa / ania = onia).
Then comes the powerful and potent word "Potnia" in a prayerful gasp of
breath, culminating in the pitch-heavy sprit-word 'thumon'.
__________________________
The prayer now goes into the second segment. Sappho is establishing the
identity of the goddess being called upon, using the right ritual words in the
traditional formula, as was done by the priest Chryses in the Homeric
prayer in Iliad I 36 ff:
klu`qi meu, argurovtox j, oJ~ Cruvshn amfibevbhka~
Kivllan et za-qevhn, Tenevdoio te i`fi anavssei~
Sminqeu`....
Hear me, O Silver Bow, who encircles Chrysa
And Killa the holy, and rule with might over Tenedos,
(Mouse-God) Smintheus........
Now having established the address identity, the priest goes on to the second
critical segment of any serious and proper prayer with a reminder of
services performed in the past in the god's honor:
....... eiv potev toi carivent j epi nhon evreya
h ei dhv potev toi kata pivona mhriv j evkha
tauvrwn hde aigw`n --- tovde moi krhvhnon eevldwr
.............if every for you I roofed over pleasing temple
or ever I kindled fat thigh pieces for you
of bull orgoat -----now grant me this wish.
It is not a matter of evening up the score and giving me this for that, it is
the mutual contact with a superior power, who when approached in proper
ritual mode. As further key to the situation, when the litigant actually establishes
that it is HE who is here doing the soliciting ---- then the actual
prayer as prayer can take place and reasonably be expected to reach the deity's
ear.
This Homeric example of a properly tendered and worded prayer was for
Archaic Greece a classic example of how to go about such business, and
Sappho follows the formula with remarkable exactness.
alla tui`d j evlq j aiv pota katevrwta
ta~ evma~ auvda~ ai>vousa phvloi
evklue~.........
"But come hither, if ever at another time
My voice hearing from afar off
You did listen....."
One of the difference between the anxious priest Chryses and the suppliant
Lady Sappho is that whereas he lists his accomplishments of roofing and
legs of goat and bull in workmanlike detail, she says nothing more than that
god listened to her once, at some other time and situation . She compacts all
that into one telling word 'kai-heterota' as "at some other time". This is
archly and deftly done, even to the sutured elision, it saves time and space
as this agitated woman goes to the heart (thumos) of the situation directly,
wasting no words on the unessential.
ta~ evma~ auvda~ ai>vousa phvloi
evklue~.........
These words are all auaral and auditory, there is an acoustic poattern to
them, moving from words based on the -s- vowel (1 - 4) but encapsulating
diphthongs -ae- and -ou- (3 4), then shifting to a long -e- vowel and in
'eklues' shor -e-. If initially the vowel thread is based on -a-, it amplifies
and then shifts to the fronted and much higher -e- series. And there is a corresponding
pattern in the meaning, which shifts the focus:
"my voice -----hearing ----(for off) you heard"
Following the re-focused attention on the listening goddess, we move to a
scene of motion and action, looking toward to an imaginary sun in her mind
s eye, all in the darkness of the inner chamber of the Doric temple.
patro~ de domon lipoisa
crusion elqe~
arm j upasdeuksaisa
your father's home leaving
---golden --- you came
yoking the chariot.
patros de domon lipoisa
chrusion elthes
arm' updeuxaisa.
The golden home of the Father is of course Zeus in his original role as
supreme (= overhead) Sun God. This original function is corroborated by
the cognate words Latin 'dies' and Skt. 'dyaus' as the Sun itself and "day".
The Greek myths moved slowly from nature forces to divine Persons in a
humanizing direction, as suited the anthropocentric Greeks. In this word the
original function of Sun shines through, along with "golden" which visually
calls up the orb of the bright shining sun.
Some have felt that the adjective "golden" could go with the "chariot" as
'arma' or the 'domon' as home of the goddess in the heaven, but best not
consider this an either / or situation. The chariot is a visual burst of the
material of the sun, a ''sun spot" as it were leaping out of the mass of burning
hydrogen.
And the word "golden" can equally well describe the glorious chariot which
carries the Sun-born goddess from there to here. Since the "home" comes
first, we can attach the "golden " to it and then trail its color onto the
moving 'arma' chariot as it leaves home.
The vowels leave a trail too, from the -l- 's of the first of the above lines
via the swift -e- 's of 'elthes' as Aphrodite prepares to travel, to the yoking
of the chariot with that odd pair of high sounding diphthongs ( -eu- -ai- )
and inside that very word 'upa-sdeuks-aisa' , with the slick -s- 's of the verb
'zeugnumi'.
Note the re-spelling in the above version: First the zeta or -z- was
certainly pronounced -s- + -d- rather than as later reversed. Then the
sigmatic aorist -s- is only graphically combined with the -g- of the
stem, so we should see it as -k- + -s-, matching the compounded zeta
before it.
But from Sappho's angle, kneeling in the dark room before the great seated
statue of her protecting (stone) goddess Aphrodite, it is a swirl of visual
imagery. Hermind goes up to heaven, sees the wheel of the sun, sees that
bursting off as wheel of the celestial chariot, sees Aphrodite the daughter
connecting up the chariot for an appearance on earth, about to fly.....
kaloi de s j agon
wvkee~ strou`qoi peri ga`~ melavina~
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver j ap j wravnwiqero~
dia mevssw.
ai`ya d jexivkonto
"And fair, swift
Doves brought you over the black earth
Dense wings whirring, from heaven down
through middle air.
Suddenly they arrived"
kaloi de s'agon
okees strouthoi peri gas melainas
pukna dinnentes pter' ap oranothe-
-ros dia messo
aipsa d'exikonto
.........but immediately the flight of the flaring chariot disappears, and the
scene shifts to the outside of the temple walls, where as Sappho hears, from
the inner chamber a flight of pigeons swirling around the temple roof, with
the fluttering noise of many wings together.
What are the birds 'strouthoi"? It is almost impossible to identify
birdsand plants, as D'Arcy Thompson demonstrated in his studies
years ago,. The strouthoi would seem to be relatively small birds in
Iliad 2.311 since a snake is devouring down eagerly all eight finding
them of them in a nest. On the other hand 'strouthos megas' is an
"ostrich" or in Latin 'avis strix', for the mise en scene unthinkable
here! I opt for the pigeons since they fly in groups and you can hear
the sound of their wings fairly clearly as they swirl in groups.
While considering these philological minutiae, look at the word
'pteron /. ptera" which is originally a feather, as in Odyssey 7.36
wkei`ai w~ ei pteron he novhma "fast as a feather or a thought".
But it is also used for the "wings" as Iliad 23.879 sun ptera pukna
livasqen with the same adjective 'puknos / pukinos' which cannot be
exactly put into English.
The core meaning of this word 'pukna' is "dense, compact, solid,
clever ?, wise ?" in some uses, but Homer uses it for wings as does
Sappho, so it must have a meaning which lies outside English usage.
Something like "en masse, mass" but not "massive" might do it, but
there seems to be no perfect translation.
It is the acoustically massed sound of fluttering wings which Sappho hears
winging around the temple roof, a sign that the goddess is approaching on
her pathway down from heavenly home to the temple where she is drawn
by the prayer of an ardent devotee, calling upon her name.
wvkee~ strou`qoi peri ga`~ melavina~
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver j ap j wravnwiqero~
dia mevssw.
ai`ya d jexivkonto
Looking at this section again, we see massed motions of several sorts, the
swiftness of the birds in flight, then their motion over the Homeric "black
earth", then the actual sounds of fluttering wings, then direction again:
Sappho has to look back to the world of Homer, which is the same world as
hers in one sense, but as a world of spear and warfare an entirely different
world in fact. The reference to Homer's "dark earth" is actually a forwardgoing
allusion, since it prepares the poem for the next-last word in the last
stanza, the military and Homeric word: 'summachos' or "battle ally".
Aphrodite flies swiftly over this over-warred earth in her flight to a woman's
love-trapped heart, but the note on the geographical identity is a sign of
the shift in sense and sensibilities from the epic world to her new one of the
emotions and the heart.
"...from heaven through the middle air", a curious but intentional combination
of words giving us 'ourano + aithér', here combined as 'óran-aitheros'
with dialect shifts of vowels. The combination gives an additional sense of
swiftness, as if heaven and middle air are somehow combined in one mad
dash, as the sun-chariot swirls in a flash from the upper levels of 'ouranos'
down through the middle-air or 'aither', the air-space in which we live our
human lives.
With airplane travel we have moved into this middle range between the
upper reaches of orbiting shuttles, and now use the term "airspace" again
for the territory of powered flight. Sappho was speaking of powered flight
in her airspace also, but it was goddess powered for her the, and the vehicle
did not have to be pressurized.
The phrase 'peri gas melainas' as over Homer's black earth doesn't need
phonetic reinforcement since it is such a familiar phrase out of the Epic
vocabulary, with its own set of images. But look at the birds:
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver
"dense whirring wings"
pukna dinnentes ptera
This almost untranslatable trio is poised on the central whirring word
'dinnentes', with an untranslatable 'pukna' (whooshing?) of "wings" on
either side. But aside from the formal arrangement, there is sheer soundwriting
in these three words, as Sappho inside listens to the whirrrrrr of
wings outside, as they swing the temple roof again and again, until.......
ai`ya d jexivkonto
"There they are..."
aipsa d' exikonto
What is critical here is the rate of speed in the passage from sun to the
temple grounds, the holy 'temenos', as the scene changes from the birds and
sound of fluttering wings, to black earth below and middle brightness
(aither) above and then, all of a sudden : They are arrived.
They have landed, that is the first part of the line. But immediately the
words shift focus: "and you......the Blessed One"
ai`ya d jexivkonto. su d j, w` mavkaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
"they arrived. And you, Belssed One,
smiling with your immortal face"
aipsa e'exikonto. su d', O Makaira
mediaisais' athanato prosopo
The word which I have translated tentatively as "Blessed" is 'makaira' derived
from 'makar' which Homer uses often of the Gods. But this is not the
same as English "blessed" which has a special meaning in a Western
Christian society, which is quite different from the Hellenic world. The
"theoi makares" are not so much religiously blessed as "happy, rejoicing" in
a special world which knows no pain or responsibility or death. One might
better say "beatific" for their existence, or even call them "the hedonistic
heavenly ones" , but these connotations are all wrong. Later the Greek decided
that "the happy ones" or 'makarioi' mean the blessed dead, those who
have passed on to the fields of flowers, and this meaning which is not found
in Epic, becomes the only regular use of the word.
What seems critical is to establish the inner sense of 'makaira' as a word
belonging to Aphrodite's joyful and celestially blessed existence, here
leading us to that expansive word in the next line, the ethereal Smile of the
goddess, which becomes the visual focus of the whole poem.
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
"smiling with that celestial smile"
mediaisais' athanato prosopo
Obviously I have trouble with 'athanatos' again, which I established at the
start of the poem as "holy", but now I find it completely out of place. This
is no nun's placid and holy smile, the sign of acceptance of role and a sense
of total forgiveness. It is a smile which goes with something entirely different,
a beatific smile from a jorful and celestial heaven. And it is also something
else. It is a smile which has found a place in our century as the.......
Archaic Smile.
Now we can approach the poem itself, and examine the details of its
language, its sounds and configuration of words, and the way its esthetic
components are interwoven with the communicative meaning of the poem
as a whole.
Let us begin reading carefully, line by line as the text unfolds:
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
"color throned immortal Aphrodita"
poikilo-thron' athanat' Aphrodita
With that first difficult word "you of the many colored throne", clumsily
handling the clear Greek adjective 'poikilos', we start off on a tour of the
poem's visual imagery. This initial adjective is in fact the keyword to the
setting of the whole poem, and three elements are involved: The coloration,
the throne on which the color is painted, and the goddess who is connected
with (seated on) the throne.
The seated statue of a goddess is found in several museum holdings of work
from Sappho's archaic period. The figure of the deity is carved integral
with the rectangular block of marble. This is early statuary and the whole
sculpture is heavy and primitive --- one must not think of the later freestanding
and lithe Aphrodites. Years ago in Greece I noticed clear traces of
several colors of paint on the sides of such block-statues, which didn't seem
surprising since I knew that the Greeks regularly painted all statues, the
metopes of buildings, they waxed columns to a tan for color and waterproofing.
In short their temple world was a blaze of strong, earth-colors. And so here,
the word "many-color-throned" is not an example of imaginative wordpainting,
it is an exact visual term.
The setting of this poem is clear, since statues are in temples, located in the
separated rear-chamber of a small rectangular temple with pillars in front,
much like the small temple of Nike at the entrance to the acropolis on the
right side. For lack of a complete reconstruction, I am going to take the
Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi, which is a small Doric style temple as
a model for this discussion. The public did not enter temples, the sacrifice
was done out in front, only the priest or special person in charge alone
could enter within. Picture now Sappho proceeding from the outside altar
where a sacrifice could be done, into the temple itself as she is about to enter
the inner chamber where the statue of the seated Aphrodite stands.
This is an approaching front view of an early Doric temple from 515 BC,
the Athenian Treasury at Delphi, which should give a fair idea of the kind
of temple in which this poem is set. Behind the front columns is a front
chamber, there will be in Sappho's temple an interior wall with a doorway,
leading into the inner chamber in which the seat statue of the goddess is located.
Any initial sacrifice would have been done in the foreground of this
picture on an alter on the stone pavement.
Since Sappho is directly addressing the goddess of stone on the painted
statue base,. As a person in some special relationship to the religious
requirements, she can enter the temple and must be in the doorway of the
inner wall and now approaching the statue.
In the back chamber before the seated statue she kneels, her eyes level with
the painted designs on the throne. In fact mentioning the "painted throne"
puts her in the chamber bending low to see the throne, eyes cast down before
she dares look at the goddess' countenance. She must be close to the
statue, kneeling before it, since she sees the colors of the statue's polychrome
paint. Now the words of her prayer will continue to unfold:
Her prayer begins, as Greek prayers must, with proper identification of the
god, but there are two specifications which set sets out first:
aqanat j Afrodita
"Immortal Aphrodite"
athanat' Aphrodita
The word "immortal" might seem hardly needed in addressing the goddess,
since she is by definition one of the immortal ones, just as we are all the
mortals, the "thnetoi" or "mortales" of Latin. But remember that this is a
formal prayer, and there are certain ritual words which must be spoken if
the addressed deity is to hear the words, as Sappho notes : "If you have ever
heard.me before..." We can take 'athanata' as a title, a ritual part of the
goddess' name, thus Aqanat j Afrodita, perhaps like the Christian invoking
"Holy Mary".
"O Daughter of Zeus"....but she adds the curious word doloplok, as we
somewhat tentatively translate it "Weaver of Wiles". This is interesting expression,
in English it may be taken as somewhat charming, or beguiling,
but in Greek the noun 'dolos' refers to a "snare, a trap, an ambush" and has
clear associations with hunting. the m,ilitaru and even with treachery. The
Greek who knew Aphrodite as lovely and delightful could remember that
her path was mined with traps and snares for the unaware lover, and it is
this dangerous pathway which Sappho knows she is now treading. Is this insulting
to the goddess whom she is now begging for mercy? No, it is the
nature of Love, and as she cringes and begs release from pain, she surreptitiously
refers to her Lady of Pain very quickly, as the truth of the matter.
pai Dio~ doloploke lissomai se
"child of Zeus, wile-weaver, I entreat you"
pai dios, doloploka, lissomai se
"Child of Zeus" is needed for the identification of the suppliant, since one
has to get the right access code and that depends on knowing the proper
terminology of the address. This will expand later in the poem before
Aphrodite can leave the golden halls of heaven, her it is just a word to
establish the initial contact. Child is perhaps the better word, since daughter
is familiar and human. We only need the relationship to Zeus here, nothing
more.
mh m j asaisi mhd j oniaisi damna
potnia qumon
"do not with pains and reproachs crush
O Lady, my soul"
mé m'asaisi med' oniaisi damna
potnia thumon
Do not crush me down, with "harms" and with "reproaches", but these
words have more than shows here. The Greek verbal stem 'aaó' does mean
"harm" but this is never physical, always purely mental. The noun used here
'asa' is unusual, a shortened from what would actually be 'aasa'. Whether the
word is connected with the Greek verb 'aa-zó' meaning breathe out a sigh
"Ah!" is not clear, but Sappho would know that sighs are not far away.
Now 'onia' as "grief, distress" is a word which shows the distribution of
variants in the literary dialects, with an Attic form 'ania', beside the Ionic
'anié' and this Aeolic has a vowel shift to -o-, as 'onia'. Furthermore Epic
and Sappho make the -i- long, whereas later authors can use it as long or
short as the meter requires. I mention this to make clear that there is no
"standard" Greek language until we come to a much later period. Part of the
standardization we use stems from medieval scribes and even from modern
text editors. And beyond this, words in different periods may have different
associations, which makes the use of the Liddel-Scott-Jones dictionary, even
with its many columns in small print, absolutely indispensable.
O Lady, Potnia! The Homeric title potnia, powerful Lady, coming from the
world of Epic, is used here with specific emphasis, since it stands as a
majestic title right in the middle of a sorrowful and wailing complaint about
the plights of a lover. Even in this first paragraph of the address to the goddess,
there are two strong terms used, one with 'dolor' which traps and ensnares,
and the other Lady 'Potnia', which has a complicated and widespread
linguistic history. The root from IE "pot-" means "rule" and a despot is the
'* dems-pot-es" or ruler of the house, ruler of the social group. It occurs
with females as 'despoina' whether goddesses of women, meaning "O Lady,
Madame, Ma'am" but used alone as Potnia the powerful element of the root
rules. There is even a verb in later use 'despoiniazó' meaning "cry out in
distress or alarm 'O My Lady ", used by both men and women.
So when Sappho says "Potnia", especially in this painful situation, she is
really crying out " do not crust me down OH MY GOD completely". This
is at the same time a proper word of address in prayer, but it is also a cry of
desperation, even a scream. We can understand the imperative of the verb
'damna' as crushing down or even "dominating". But the physical crushing
does not work here, the word means mental crushing l, as when Zeus in the
Iliad 5, 893 it talking about his difficulty controlling his lady Hera, says:
.........thn men egw spoudh` / davmnhmi evpessi
"her with effort I control with my words"
ten men ego spoude damnemi epessi
It is this kind of emotional control which Sappho is speaking about, it is not
the complaint of a battered wife.
The word qumo~ is not a simple as it seems, when translated as "soul". We
might try to translate as "heart" but that would be a bad mistake following
the Aristotelian error of assuming that the heart was the seat of the mind
and emotions. We find it more convenient to say "Yes, with all my heart"
rather than "With all my brain", but that is a local problem for English!
The Greek for 'thumos' is based in air, mist and smoke, cognate with Skt.
dhumas "mist" and Latin fumus or "smoke", and it can be used for a wide
range of notions, from anger, heart felt feelings, even desire. English
"mind" might be what Sappho is saying here. If you think of soul as part of
your mind, that would be reasonable, but not Soul as the personalized part
of the self which has a separate identity here and in heaven. This wword
'thumos' is not a theological Soul.
Now let us look at the internal Form or Microstructure of this first stanza,
which stands complete in itself.
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
pai` Divo~ dolovploke livssomaiv se
mhv m j avsaisi mhd j onivaisi davmna
povtnia qu`mon
"Many colored throned immortal Aphrodita,
daughter of Zeus, wile-weaver, I beg you
with reproaches and harms do not beat down
O Lady, my soul"
poikilo-thron' athanat' Aphrodita
pai dios doloploka, lissomai se
me m'asaisi med' oniaisi damna
potnia thumon
The first thing to strike us is the number and regular succession of Acute
pitched syllables in this passage, a full dozen as against only two circumflexes.
Since the first whole line is an addressing statement, the actual
grammar of the sentences starts with the first word of line 2, which is 'pai'
"child / daughter" .Then we flow with continually up-rising major fifth
pitches (the rest being relegated down to base), and ending with that critical
word 'thumon' crowned with the overlong and melismatic tone curl of circumflex
accentuation.
This is not a matter of academic diacritics, is it a musical score on the basis
of which Sappho performed the song with voice and lyre, following in
artistic sequence the pitches where are here marked out. This has to be
practiced in reading out loud, only when that is made familar by practice
can we sit back and listen to the sound ringing in our ears. This is the way
to read Greek poetry, which is not a paper phenomenon, any more than a
Mozart Symphony is a graphic design written on score sheet. We have to
recreate the score for the musicality of the poem, but with pitches clearly
marked out, this will be entirely feasible.
Of course there are problems. The Aeolic dialect is much less known to us
than the later Attic Greek. Eustathius (515.37-8) discusses the dialects
which did not employ the rough breathing, calling this 'psilosis' or stripping
off, and he states that Aeolic was known as one of those dialects. So there
are no "rough breathings", whether as sign or as sound. As to accentuation
the metricist writer Choreoboskos remarks at various points "The Aeolians
accent this differently...", not generally specifying exactly how. We suspect
that the accentuation we find in our printed Sappho may not actually be that
which she used. On the other hand, since we have the printed accents to
work with, we can proceed tentatively with these, observing how they work
out in actual recited performance.
The vowel sequencing is always of paramount importance in reading Greek,
not only because Greek has a full and pellucid set of vowels, unlike Sanskrit
which has suffered considerable vowel consolidation, but because the
historical vowel changes within Greek often have grammatical meaning and
therefore call for careful attention. The vowel clarity of Greek is one of its
esthetic strong points, and they give a certain clarity to the language which
is especially brillliant in poetic diction.
Note in this first line the location of the -o- vowels:
poikilovqron j aqanavt j Afrovdita
poikilo-thron' athanat' Aphrodita
The first word has three -o- based syllables, while the last word sandwiches
an -o- between two -a-'s. But the whole line sandwiches the word 'athanta'
with its three (+ elided) -a- vowels between the other two -o- bearing
words. This is a very balanced and carefully assembled line of verse
But the next line
pai` Divo~ dolovploka livssomaiv se
pai dios doloploka lissomai se
goes the other way with four -o- sounds in the middle words, while the first
and next-last syllables in the line have the strong diphthong -ai-. Intuitively
conscious of the balance of the first line, the poet alters the arrangement of
the second line to avoid humdrum repetition. And in the third line
mhv m j avsaisi mhd j onivaisi davmna
me m'asaisi med' oniaisi damna
we find, poised on a pivotal center word "nor", two rhyming words with
their ringing -aisi-, each based on an vowel initial stem (aasa / ania = onia).
Then comes the powerful and potent word "Potnia" in a prayerful gasp of
breath, culminating in the pitch-heavy sprit-word 'thumon'.
__________________________
The prayer now goes into the second segment. Sappho is establishing the
identity of the goddess being called upon, using the right ritual words in the
traditional formula, as was done by the priest Chryses in the Homeric
prayer in Iliad I 36 ff:
klu`qi meu, argurovtox j, oJ~ Cruvshn amfibevbhka~
Kivllan et za-qevhn, Tenevdoio te i`fi anavssei~
Sminqeu`....
Hear me, O Silver Bow, who encircles Chrysa
And Killa the holy, and rule with might over Tenedos,
(Mouse-God) Smintheus........
Now having established the address identity, the priest goes on to the second
critical segment of any serious and proper prayer with a reminder of
services performed in the past in the god's honor:
....... eiv potev toi carivent j epi nhon evreya
h ei dhv potev toi kata pivona mhriv j evkha
tauvrwn hde aigw`n --- tovde moi krhvhnon eevldwr
.............if every for you I roofed over pleasing temple
or ever I kindled fat thigh pieces for you
of bull orgoat -----now grant me this wish.
It is not a matter of evening up the score and giving me this for that, it is
the mutual contact with a superior power, who when approached in proper
ritual mode. As further key to the situation, when the litigant actually establishes
that it is HE who is here doing the soliciting ---- then the actual
prayer as prayer can take place and reasonably be expected to reach the deity's
ear.
This Homeric example of a properly tendered and worded prayer was for
Archaic Greece a classic example of how to go about such business, and
Sappho follows the formula with remarkable exactness.
alla tui`d j evlq j aiv pota katevrwta
ta~ evma~ auvda~ ai>vousa phvloi
evklue~.........
"But come hither, if ever at another time
My voice hearing from afar off
You did listen....."
One of the difference between the anxious priest Chryses and the suppliant
Lady Sappho is that whereas he lists his accomplishments of roofing and
legs of goat and bull in workmanlike detail, she says nothing more than that
god listened to her once, at some other time and situation . She compacts all
that into one telling word 'kai-heterota' as "at some other time". This is
archly and deftly done, even to the sutured elision, it saves time and space
as this agitated woman goes to the heart (thumos) of the situation directly,
wasting no words on the unessential.
ta~ evma~ auvda~ ai>vousa phvloi
evklue~.........
These words are all auaral and auditory, there is an acoustic poattern to
them, moving from words based on the -s- vowel (1 - 4) but encapsulating
diphthongs -ae- and -ou- (3 4), then shifting to a long -e- vowel and in
'eklues' shor -e-. If initially the vowel thread is based on -a-, it amplifies
and then shifts to the fronted and much higher -e- series. And there is a corresponding
pattern in the meaning, which shifts the focus:
"my voice -----hearing ----(for off) you heard"
Following the re-focused attention on the listening goddess, we move to a
scene of motion and action, looking toward to an imaginary sun in her mind
s eye, all in the darkness of the inner chamber of the Doric temple.
patro~ de domon lipoisa
crusion elqe~
arm j upasdeuksaisa
your father's home leaving
---golden --- you came
yoking the chariot.
patros de domon lipoisa
chrusion elthes
arm' updeuxaisa.
The golden home of the Father is of course Zeus in his original role as
supreme (= overhead) Sun God. This original function is corroborated by
the cognate words Latin 'dies' and Skt. 'dyaus' as the Sun itself and "day".
The Greek myths moved slowly from nature forces to divine Persons in a
humanizing direction, as suited the anthropocentric Greeks. In this word the
original function of Sun shines through, along with "golden" which visually
calls up the orb of the bright shining sun.
Some have felt that the adjective "golden" could go with the "chariot" as
'arma' or the 'domon' as home of the goddess in the heaven, but best not
consider this an either / or situation. The chariot is a visual burst of the
material of the sun, a ''sun spot" as it were leaping out of the mass of burning
hydrogen.
And the word "golden" can equally well describe the glorious chariot which
carries the Sun-born goddess from there to here. Since the "home" comes
first, we can attach the "golden " to it and then trail its color onto the
moving 'arma' chariot as it leaves home.
The vowels leave a trail too, from the -l- 's of the first of the above lines
via the swift -e- 's of 'elthes' as Aphrodite prepares to travel, to the yoking
of the chariot with that odd pair of high sounding diphthongs ( -eu- -ai- )
and inside that very word 'upa-sdeuks-aisa' , with the slick -s- 's of the verb
'zeugnumi'.
Note the re-spelling in the above version: First the zeta or -z- was
certainly pronounced -s- + -d- rather than as later reversed. Then the
sigmatic aorist -s- is only graphically combined with the -g- of the
stem, so we should see it as -k- + -s-, matching the compounded zeta
before it.
But from Sappho's angle, kneeling in the dark room before the great seated
statue of her protecting (stone) goddess Aphrodite, it is a swirl of visual
imagery. Hermind goes up to heaven, sees the wheel of the sun, sees that
bursting off as wheel of the celestial chariot, sees Aphrodite the daughter
connecting up the chariot for an appearance on earth, about to fly.....
kaloi de s j agon
wvkee~ strou`qoi peri ga`~ melavina~
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver j ap j wravnwiqero~
dia mevssw.
ai`ya d jexivkonto
"And fair, swift
Doves brought you over the black earth
Dense wings whirring, from heaven down
through middle air.
Suddenly they arrived"
kaloi de s'agon
okees strouthoi peri gas melainas
pukna dinnentes pter' ap oranothe-
-ros dia messo
aipsa d'exikonto
.........but immediately the flight of the flaring chariot disappears, and the
scene shifts to the outside of the temple walls, where as Sappho hears, from
the inner chamber a flight of pigeons swirling around the temple roof, with
the fluttering noise of many wings together.
What are the birds 'strouthoi"? It is almost impossible to identify
birdsand plants, as D'Arcy Thompson demonstrated in his studies
years ago,. The strouthoi would seem to be relatively small birds in
Iliad 2.311 since a snake is devouring down eagerly all eight finding
them of them in a nest. On the other hand 'strouthos megas' is an
"ostrich" or in Latin 'avis strix', for the mise en scene unthinkable
here! I opt for the pigeons since they fly in groups and you can hear
the sound of their wings fairly clearly as they swirl in groups.
While considering these philological minutiae, look at the word
'pteron /. ptera" which is originally a feather, as in Odyssey 7.36
wkei`ai w~ ei pteron he novhma "fast as a feather or a thought".
But it is also used for the "wings" as Iliad 23.879 sun ptera pukna
livasqen with the same adjective 'puknos / pukinos' which cannot be
exactly put into English.
The core meaning of this word 'pukna' is "dense, compact, solid,
clever ?, wise ?" in some uses, but Homer uses it for wings as does
Sappho, so it must have a meaning which lies outside English usage.
Something like "en masse, mass" but not "massive" might do it, but
there seems to be no perfect translation.
It is the acoustically massed sound of fluttering wings which Sappho hears
winging around the temple roof, a sign that the goddess is approaching on
her pathway down from heavenly home to the temple where she is drawn
by the prayer of an ardent devotee, calling upon her name.
wvkee~ strou`qoi peri ga`~ melavina~
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver j ap j wravnwiqero~
dia mevssw.
ai`ya d jexivkonto
Looking at this section again, we see massed motions of several sorts, the
swiftness of the birds in flight, then their motion over the Homeric "black
earth", then the actual sounds of fluttering wings, then direction again:
Sappho has to look back to the world of Homer, which is the same world as
hers in one sense, but as a world of spear and warfare an entirely different
world in fact. The reference to Homer's "dark earth" is actually a forwardgoing
allusion, since it prepares the poem for the next-last word in the last
stanza, the military and Homeric word: 'summachos' or "battle ally".
Aphrodite flies swiftly over this over-warred earth in her flight to a woman's
love-trapped heart, but the note on the geographical identity is a sign of
the shift in sense and sensibilities from the epic world to her new one of the
emotions and the heart.
"...from heaven through the middle air", a curious but intentional combination
of words giving us 'ourano + aithér', here combined as 'óran-aitheros'
with dialect shifts of vowels. The combination gives an additional sense of
swiftness, as if heaven and middle air are somehow combined in one mad
dash, as the sun-chariot swirls in a flash from the upper levels of 'ouranos'
down through the middle-air or 'aither', the air-space in which we live our
human lives.
With airplane travel we have moved into this middle range between the
upper reaches of orbiting shuttles, and now use the term "airspace" again
for the territory of powered flight. Sappho was speaking of powered flight
in her airspace also, but it was goddess powered for her the, and the vehicle
did not have to be pressurized.
The phrase 'peri gas melainas' as over Homer's black earth doesn't need
phonetic reinforcement since it is such a familiar phrase out of the Epic
vocabulary, with its own set of images. But look at the birds:
puvkna dvinnente~ ptver
"dense whirring wings"
pukna dinnentes ptera
This almost untranslatable trio is poised on the central whirring word
'dinnentes', with an untranslatable 'pukna' (whooshing?) of "wings" on
either side. But aside from the formal arrangement, there is sheer soundwriting
in these three words, as Sappho inside listens to the whirrrrrr of
wings outside, as they swing the temple roof again and again, until.......
ai`ya d jexivkonto
"There they are..."
aipsa d' exikonto
What is critical here is the rate of speed in the passage from sun to the
temple grounds, the holy 'temenos', as the scene changes from the birds and
sound of fluttering wings, to black earth below and middle brightness
(aither) above and then, all of a sudden : They are arrived.
They have landed, that is the first part of the line. But immediately the
words shift focus: "and you......the Blessed One"
ai`ya d jexivkonto. su d j, w` mavkaira,
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
"they arrived. And you, Belssed One,
smiling with your immortal face"
aipsa e'exikonto. su d', O Makaira
mediaisais' athanato prosopo
The word which I have translated tentatively as "Blessed" is 'makaira' derived
from 'makar' which Homer uses often of the Gods. But this is not the
same as English "blessed" which has a special meaning in a Western
Christian society, which is quite different from the Hellenic world. The
"theoi makares" are not so much religiously blessed as "happy, rejoicing" in
a special world which knows no pain or responsibility or death. One might
better say "beatific" for their existence, or even call them "the hedonistic
heavenly ones" , but these connotations are all wrong. Later the Greek decided
that "the happy ones" or 'makarioi' mean the blessed dead, those who
have passed on to the fields of flowers, and this meaning which is not found
in Epic, becomes the only regular use of the word.
What seems critical is to establish the inner sense of 'makaira' as a word
belonging to Aphrodite's joyful and celestially blessed existence, here
leading us to that expansive word in the next line, the ethereal Smile of the
goddess, which becomes the visual focus of the whole poem.
mediaisai~ j aqanatw/ proswpw/
"smiling with that celestial smile"
mediaisais' athanato prosopo
Obviously I have trouble with 'athanatos' again, which I established at the
start of the poem as "holy", but now I find it completely out of place. This
is no nun's placid and holy smile, the sign of acceptance of role and a sense
of total forgiveness. It is a smile which goes with something entirely different,
a beatific smile from a jorful and celestial heaven. And it is also something
else. It is a smile which has found a place in our century as the.......
Archaic Smile.
AN ACADEMIC INTERLUDE
Academic Interlude
We must unfortunately pause at this critical crux in the poem to examine
several things which pertain directly to our interpretation, but will return to
this very point as soon as we have finished the required discussion.
The above portrait is a good example of a sculptural configuration which is
noted in the world of Academe as the "Archaic Smile". This curious uplifting
of the edges of the mouth was regularly used in sculpture around 600-
500 BC, and constitutes one of the easily recognizable marks of art of the
archaic period. But for some reason which I find inexplicable, the term
"Archaic Smile" seems to have captured the ear and imagination of our
modern world, as a quick search on the Internet shows. There are some
1220 search results on this exact phrase, which range from a band, a men's
choral group, a T-shirt manufacturer, a volume of poetry, several Japanese
websites which I cannot fathom, and other assorted appearances which seem
to have nothing in common beyond the use of these two words in their
name.
It is as if every person who had ever taken a course in Greek Art remembered,
if nothing else from the syllabus, this one phrase as memorable,
and many continued to employ it in later some personal fashion.
Exactly what this Archaic Smile originally was and why it was used then
and later suddenly changed to a normal, relaxed mouth counter is not easy
to say, but a quick survey of the mechanics of the situation may be of use
here: Smiling is a complex facial adjustment involving a number of specialized
muscles, which are used in concert to effect the social notion which we
identify as a SMILE. Important musculature includes:
Musculus orbicularis oris, a muscle which goes around the mouth
aperture and is able to construct the lips into a circle or pour. This is
actually a muscle similar in function to the anal sphincter, but more
mobile and probably more communicative in most social situations.
The M. quadr. labii superioris raises the upper lip, and is one of the
components of the photograph smile which is evoked by saying the
word CHEESE for the photographer.
The M. caninus is which is named after the dog's angry lifting of the
upper lip showing the teeth as a warning, usually preceding attack.
The M. zygomaticus as attached to the zygomatic arch reaching from
eye socket back to the skull laterally, swings down toward the mouth.
The M. risorius as a laugh-actuator pulls the mouth laterally, one on
each side to create a laugh as a further development of the simple
smile. Of course several of these muscles will work in concert to
produce the classic smile.
It is interesting that the analogous musculo-facial operation in a dog, usually
accompanied by a threatening growl, means anger and danger.
Chimpanzees have almost the same smile as ours, but it generally denotes
irritation preceding anger, although by clever manipulation of camera shots
a chimp may seem to be laughing with us, or even learn to give the gesture
as a smile for human approval. Smiling too much and especially laughing at
a dog makes him very nervous and often angry, and he will return the smile
with his very different dental version.
The smile is a universal human gesture which seems to transcend social,
cultural and racial frontiers, although it can have different functions
in different social settings. The friendly Mid-Western social
smile toward strangers is quite different from the conservative girl's
apologetic smile. A smile in a singles bar has one meaning, while the
silent smile to a waiter means a call for attention in the U.S., but
might mean a homosexual come-on in another setting. Many French
people regard the American automatic smile as foolish, but this may
be merely part of a larger anti-American feeling. The Romans felt the
same way about unnecessary smiling, as in Catullus' poem 39 about
the Spaniard with white teeth who smiled broadly at all occasions
(incidentally one who used urine as his mouthwash!).
The eyes and the mouth are the primary contacts in dealing with another
person, which applies equally to artwork of all kinds. The
Greeks understood how hard it is to portray eyes realistically in stone,
and at timea resorted to ceramic or glazed inserts for the eyeball.
Certainly eyes were painted, presumably with colored iris. But the
mouth is also very important, since innervation and musculature
around the mouth is very complicated. Someone watching or listening
to a speaker has equally complex nerve connections called "proprioceptive"
, which give visual signals to the brain ahead of the
hearing and decoding of the sound signals.
Carving in marble a mouth which represents a real mouth is much
more complicated that it would seem. Anything short of a true representation
will appear strange, unnerving and perhaps even threatening.
Carving a mouth requires awareness of musculature and the underlying
bone formation, and since the mouth is an extremely expressive
organ, slight changes of shape can suggest sarcasm, a sneer,
risibility, unpleasant determination, or gloom. Later sculptors learned
how to design a neutral mouth, earlier ones who must have been discouraged
by ruining a face with a two millimeter deviation from
what was needed, must have found the Archaic Smile not only useful
as an artist's salvation, but also as potentially carrying a live-contact
impression.
So the question stands, why did the Greeks in that archaic period
decide to use the SMILE on their sculpture? Was it that the Greek
sculptors could not make a normal mouth contour, a view which
many traditional art historians have espoused without explanation? As
the Greeks developed their sculpture they incorporated anatomical
details which the fast developing medical science had defined, and
such matters as the complex knee joint with associated musculature
were soon understood and carved into the marble figures. If the knee
which is complex, why not the mouth which is very simple?
If you go to a museum and stand before a statue with Archaic Smile, stare
at it for several minutes without moving your eyes, until the face becomes
normalized and familiar, your eyes will eventually blink, and then you will
see in a flash the statue smiling back at you. I have done this many times in
the GHreek collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and have asked
others go there to take a look and test it out. It is a real psycholgico-visual
reaction, and it really works.
I believe that all this is bears on to Sappho's use of the smile on the face of
Aphrodite. The visual "apparition" of unconsciously animating the face
which although carved in immobile stone, can seem to move and respond
with a smiling gesture, would have been a wonderful experience for prayerful
litigants in the seventh century BC. But like many a devotional process,
it would have been overused to the point of finally becoming trite, and this
would explain the abandonment of the Smile after 550 BC. Another factor
in its disappearance could stem from the increasing accuracy of the medical
art in describing the external appearance of the human body, which would
make non-typical rendition of surface features somewhat objectionable.
Overused, over-contemplated in prayer and ritual, and a finally mere
feature of ordinary temple stonework, it would have lost its original use and
meaning. It may have scared children and believers who feared something
about a moving stone face, but it seems to have had a definite period of
constant use, and if it disappeared over one or two generations, that too
cannot have been accidental and without a reason..
End Academic Interlude
We must unfortunately pause at this critical crux in the poem to examine
several things which pertain directly to our interpretation, but will return to
this very point as soon as we have finished the required discussion.
The above portrait is a good example of a sculptural configuration which is
noted in the world of Academe as the "Archaic Smile". This curious uplifting
of the edges of the mouth was regularly used in sculpture around 600-
500 BC, and constitutes one of the easily recognizable marks of art of the
archaic period. But for some reason which I find inexplicable, the term
"Archaic Smile" seems to have captured the ear and imagination of our
modern world, as a quick search on the Internet shows. There are some
1220 search results on this exact phrase, which range from a band, a men's
choral group, a T-shirt manufacturer, a volume of poetry, several Japanese
websites which I cannot fathom, and other assorted appearances which seem
to have nothing in common beyond the use of these two words in their
name.
It is as if every person who had ever taken a course in Greek Art remembered,
if nothing else from the syllabus, this one phrase as memorable,
and many continued to employ it in later some personal fashion.
Exactly what this Archaic Smile originally was and why it was used then
and later suddenly changed to a normal, relaxed mouth counter is not easy
to say, but a quick survey of the mechanics of the situation may be of use
here: Smiling is a complex facial adjustment involving a number of specialized
muscles, which are used in concert to effect the social notion which we
identify as a SMILE. Important musculature includes:
Musculus orbicularis oris, a muscle which goes around the mouth
aperture and is able to construct the lips into a circle or pour. This is
actually a muscle similar in function to the anal sphincter, but more
mobile and probably more communicative in most social situations.
The M. quadr. labii superioris raises the upper lip, and is one of the
components of the photograph smile which is evoked by saying the
word CHEESE for the photographer.
The M. caninus is which is named after the dog's angry lifting of the
upper lip showing the teeth as a warning, usually preceding attack.
The M. zygomaticus as attached to the zygomatic arch reaching from
eye socket back to the skull laterally, swings down toward the mouth.
The M. risorius as a laugh-actuator pulls the mouth laterally, one on
each side to create a laugh as a further development of the simple
smile. Of course several of these muscles will work in concert to
produce the classic smile.
It is interesting that the analogous musculo-facial operation in a dog, usually
accompanied by a threatening growl, means anger and danger.
Chimpanzees have almost the same smile as ours, but it generally denotes
irritation preceding anger, although by clever manipulation of camera shots
a chimp may seem to be laughing with us, or even learn to give the gesture
as a smile for human approval. Smiling too much and especially laughing at
a dog makes him very nervous and often angry, and he will return the smile
with his very different dental version.
The smile is a universal human gesture which seems to transcend social,
cultural and racial frontiers, although it can have different functions
in different social settings. The friendly Mid-Western social
smile toward strangers is quite different from the conservative girl's
apologetic smile. A smile in a singles bar has one meaning, while the
silent smile to a waiter means a call for attention in the U.S., but
might mean a homosexual come-on in another setting. Many French
people regard the American automatic smile as foolish, but this may
be merely part of a larger anti-American feeling. The Romans felt the
same way about unnecessary smiling, as in Catullus' poem 39 about
the Spaniard with white teeth who smiled broadly at all occasions
(incidentally one who used urine as his mouthwash!).
The eyes and the mouth are the primary contacts in dealing with another
person, which applies equally to artwork of all kinds. The
Greeks understood how hard it is to portray eyes realistically in stone,
and at timea resorted to ceramic or glazed inserts for the eyeball.
Certainly eyes were painted, presumably with colored iris. But the
mouth is also very important, since innervation and musculature
around the mouth is very complicated. Someone watching or listening
to a speaker has equally complex nerve connections called "proprioceptive"
, which give visual signals to the brain ahead of the
hearing and decoding of the sound signals.
Carving in marble a mouth which represents a real mouth is much
more complicated that it would seem. Anything short of a true representation
will appear strange, unnerving and perhaps even threatening.
Carving a mouth requires awareness of musculature and the underlying
bone formation, and since the mouth is an extremely expressive
organ, slight changes of shape can suggest sarcasm, a sneer,
risibility, unpleasant determination, or gloom. Later sculptors learned
how to design a neutral mouth, earlier ones who must have been discouraged
by ruining a face with a two millimeter deviation from
what was needed, must have found the Archaic Smile not only useful
as an artist's salvation, but also as potentially carrying a live-contact
impression.
So the question stands, why did the Greeks in that archaic period
decide to use the SMILE on their sculpture? Was it that the Greek
sculptors could not make a normal mouth contour, a view which
many traditional art historians have espoused without explanation? As
the Greeks developed their sculpture they incorporated anatomical
details which the fast developing medical science had defined, and
such matters as the complex knee joint with associated musculature
were soon understood and carved into the marble figures. If the knee
which is complex, why not the mouth which is very simple?
If you go to a museum and stand before a statue with Archaic Smile, stare
at it for several minutes without moving your eyes, until the face becomes
normalized and familiar, your eyes will eventually blink, and then you will
see in a flash the statue smiling back at you. I have done this many times in
the GHreek collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and have asked
others go there to take a look and test it out. It is a real psycholgico-visual
reaction, and it really works.
I believe that all this is bears on to Sappho's use of the smile on the face of
Aphrodite. The visual "apparition" of unconsciously animating the face
which although carved in immobile stone, can seem to move and respond
with a smiling gesture, would have been a wonderful experience for prayerful
litigants in the seventh century BC. But like many a devotional process,
it would have been overused to the point of finally becoming trite, and this
would explain the abandonment of the Smile after 550 BC. Another factor
in its disappearance could stem from the increasing accuracy of the medical
art in describing the external appearance of the human body, which would
make non-typical rendition of surface features somewhat objectionable.
Overused, over-contemplated in prayer and ritual, and a finally mere
feature of ordinary temple stonework, it would have lost its original use and
meaning. It may have scared children and believers who feared something
about a moving stone face, but it seems to have had a definite period of
constant use, and if it disappeared over one or two generations, that too
cannot have been accidental and without a reason..
End Academic Interlude
THE END OF "TO APHRODITE"
Returning to Sappho and the beatifically celestial face of Aphrodite,
we must remember that at the start of the poem Sappho was praying
to her goddess, kneeling before an seated stone sculpture, which with
its painted poly-coloration as suited for all sculpture of that period,
was probably a monolith with the seatedgoddess carved out of one
piece with the rectilinear marble block.
Now Sappho raises her eyes to behold the sacred face of the Goddess
again, seeing her features more closely as she nears the base of the
statue. Al the workings of her mind in the pervious part of the poem
aare operating on her psyche simultaneously, from the prayer with
the ritual words to the vision of the SUN and Aphrodite the Beatific
and Immortal winging her way down through the sky and middle
aither, with the sound of her chariot birds whirring winds, and then
the SMILE appears.
She stares at the smile for what seems an infinitely long moment of
time, as she gazes at the lovely features tinted with a lifelike light tan
beeswax skin, thinking of deity and love and longing. But when her
mind leaves the statue of stone, suddenly something happens.
There is a transformation, the goddess of marble is no longer cold
stone, but a living apparition, a live apotheosis of the goddess has
come to talk with her, and walk with her and speak with her
alone......Not the first time or last a god has appeared to an island
woman in distress or a farmer in the wheatfield, or anyone who prays
thus earnestly and with a full heart.
And you
smiling
with that immortal face
asked:
Sappho...
What's hurts you?
hvre j ovtti dhu`te pevponqa kvwtti
dhu`te kavlhmmi,
"You asked --- what do I suffer and
what do I ask for,
ere' otti deute popontha kotti
deute kalemmi
The apothesis is now complete in the flash of the moment. Sappho
has seen the living face of the goddess before her eyes, and since this
is as real as her own being, she now can hear the Lady of Love
speaking to her in personal and intimate terms, talking the language
of a mother whose child has been hurt, the comforting words which
only a mother can offer.
It is the mothering words which make this passage real. It is spelled
out in short phrases which write across the paragraph ends and even
across the verse line, in a state of agitated verbal excitement which
contrasts with the quiet tone of the reassuring and mothering language.
The simultaneous tension between these two modes of speech
is brilliant, absolutely perfect for the agitated girl Sappho with her
mothering divine spiritual aide.
hvre j ovtti dhu`te pevponqa kvwtti
dhu`te kavlhmmi,
kvwtti moi mavlista qevlw gevnesqai
mainovla/ quvmw/.
"and what do you I want to happen
with this crazy heart....?
The last two words are somehow different, a quote from what
Sappho would say about herself, my love mad heart, somehow
slipped into the dream world of the divine interview. It brings the
situation back into focus, these are not really two person talking but
two parts of the same consciousness which sees both persons with the
same vision.
Look at the word phrasing, which written across the verse will have
the feeling of daily communication:
ovtti dhu`te pevponqa
kvwtti dhu`te kavlhmmi
kvwtti moi mavlista qevlw gevnesqai
"What hurts
Why calling
What do I want to happen?"
otti deute pepontha
kotti deute kalemmi
kotti moi malista thelo genesthai?
And it continues with the same fast pacing phrasing:
tivna dhu`te peviqw
mai`~ avghn e~ / san filovtata …
"Whom then do you want
Peitho to bring to you, dearest?
tina deute Peitho
mais agen es san philotata?
which can also be rephrased more clearly in question form this way:
tivna dhu`te peviqw mai`~ avghn e~ / san v filovtata …
"Whom do you want Peitho to bring back to you, dearest?"
There is a problem with this line and the meaning of 'peitho'. The
text has been questioned about first word of the following line. If we
follow the reading of P (Parisinus) which has mai saghnessan (bai
corr.) and follow Bergk's old correction to mai~ and then divide the
words thus aghn e~ san, we get a reading which makes sense and
follows the MS fairly well, as above.
The FE reading of 'kai' for 'mai' substitutes an easy word for an less
common one (maomai = *maó), while the correcting hand in P which
wrote 'bai' points phonetically and visually to 'mai' not to 'kai'. With
the verb 'mais' as 2 singular from a unused root verb *maó, not
elsehwere attested but listed in LSJ asthe source of the regular middle
verb 'maomai', 'peitho' has to be a noun and thus the name of the
goddess of pesuasion, Peitho (and not the verb first singular
indic./subj. ! So far as the above reading and translation, my opinion
is: stet !
tiv~ s j w Yavpf j, adikhvei …
"Who, Sappho, does you harm?"
tis s' O Sappho adikéei
This last paragraph was highly agitated, first because of Sappho's frantic
state of mind, second as a result of the epiphanic appearance of the goddess
as a lifelike Vision, one which is not only optically there but can also talk
with her.
What Aphrodite says comes in broken clauses, not because Aphrodite is
agitated herself, but because she is speaking in the short phraseology which
mothers traditionally use when talking to their children.
But this in turn reflects the condition of Sappho's own mind, her agitation
as a hurt child to whom her mother is speaking above her broken sobs. This
incoherence is here artistically coherent and suits the temper of that moment.
But right after that, everything changes, Aphrodite re-assumes her arch and
royal manner and make a series of very orderly statements, in fact
predictions, which are voiced in an "if.....then" mode, reassuringly:
kai gar ei feuvgei tacevw~ diwvxei
ai de dw`ra mh devket, alla dwvsei
ai de mh fivlei tacevw~ filhvsei
kwuk eqevloisa.
"Even if she flees, quickly will she follow
If she gives not gifts, she will give them
If she does not love, she will love
Despite herself"
kai gar ai pheugei, taxeos dioxei
ai de dora me deket', alla dosei
ai de me philei, tacheos philesei
kouk etheloisa.
The arrangement of sounds in this passage is extraordinary. In the first line
above, the balanced array of 'pheugei ......(tacheos) .......dioxei' is doubly
complex, since the two verbs are opposites, virtually reciprocals. And they
rhyme with their final '-ei ' diphthongs, while a thread goes through with
' -eu ' + ( eó- ) ' -ó-' showing back and heavy sounding vowels.
But the next line breaks into an entirely different patterns, with three ' -d- '
sounds virtually anticipating Beowulvian alliteration with:
dw`ra devket dwvsei
while retaining the opposition between receiving and giving gifts.
Then the third line goes back to the compact configuration of the first line
with 'philei........(tacheos)........philesei', emphatically using the same verb
in present and then future tense, with a structural device of "bringing
together" the wording, as subliminally bringing together the two lovers.
This change of mood and manner of speaking is the turning point of the
prayer and a promise of fulfillment, while artistically it stands as severely
contrastive to the emotional closeness and concern of the previous section.
Here is a formal pronouncement in the royal style of a Goddess.
But the last two words must not be under-emphasized. Seen from the
goddess' point of view, IF the situation is to be controlled, it must be
controlled absolutely, and it must be enforced, and that is the meaning of
chukka eqevloisa.. There will be no choice here, willing or not she will
do it this way.
Traditional Classicists have had a problem with this word 'etheloisa' on
what seemed then a textual problem but was certainly more of a sexual than
textual matter. Smyth (Greek Lyric Poets, p.233) summed it up at the turn
of that century, thus:
"Blomfield's eqevloisan was strenuously defended by
Welcker RM 11.266, who held that the subject of filhvsei
was a man. No MS whose readings were known before l892
settled the dispute. Now Piccolomini's VL show eqevloisa
(Hermes 27)"
This mixture of arguments based on MS authority along with Victorian
sensibilities, is interesting, and a caution to anyone involved with the
interpretation of a questionable text. One might quote Horace's remark
("Nulla ne habes vitia....?) and wonder if there are any prejudices in our
times which we are not aware of. It may be that some equally culpable proprejudices
can be found in our 21st century thinking, perhaps an overly
confident trust in an Oedipal interpretation in one situation, of a Lesbian in
another. Best not smile at the Victorians too hard, remembering that the
future will be laughing at some of our positive pronouncements.
And so the interview with the Vision concludes, vanishing away in the turn
of an instant, as is made clear by the tone of the following stanza. The clue
for a return is the very first word 'elthe' ...... "Come (back) to me now..."
evlqe moi kai nu`n, calevpan de lu`son
ek merivmnan, ovssa de moi tevlessai
qu`mo~ imevrrei, tevleson. su d jauvta
suvmmaco~ evsso
"Come to me now, release the hard
Agitation. What my heart wants
Done, do it! And you yourself,
Be my "Battle Ally".
elthe moi kai nun, chalepan de luson
ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai
thumos imerrei, teleson, su d'auta
summachos esso.
With the disappearance of her Saintly Guide, Sappho's agitation appears
again. There is a string of short words
evlqe moi kai nu`n, su d jauvta evsso........
but beyond that, the phrases cross the verse line abruptly, something that
Greek lyric poetry does not do by chance or mistake:
calevpan de lu`son
ek merivmnan,
ovssa de moi tevlessai
qu`mo~ imevrrei
su d jauvta
(suvmmaco~) evsso
In this subdued and checked mood the prayer-poem comes to an end, with
only one last thing to consider, the special meaning of that critical word,
which is clumsily and dysphonetically translated here as "Battle Ally".
The verb 'sum-machein' ,or more usually in the historians
'summachesthai' as a medio-passive form, means literally "fight along
with....". It is not used in Epic language, so there can be no Homeric
allusion to search for when Sappho uses the word in a poem. In fact
this is basically a military and political word, used extensively by
Herodotus (e.g. I.102) and Thucydides passim. The regular use of the
form 'summachos' is adjectival "allied", although as with most
adjectives it can be used as a noun "an Ally", as here.
It is surprising is that on a verbal level, Sappho chooses a key word without
Epic antecedent, furthermore that she elects a word which would later appear
as he keyword for the interminable associations and dissociations of all
sorts of political parties in the unstable world of early Greek politics. On
the other hand, the fact that Ally is her word for an alliance with the powerful
partner Aphrodite, points to her estimate of herself as a real person in
the newly developing Archaic world. As with all alliances. she is capable of
making connections and treaties with powerful forces .
An Epic hero must have a deic partner, and someone like Ajax who has
none is doomed from the start. Sappho struggles to connect herself with a
protecting force, seeking alliance in the battle of life, and not illogically she
chooses the same word as political writer later use for states aligning themselves
with others in warfare.
What is the battle that Sappho faces? It is the battle of a woman of talent,
intent on living a life of heart and emotion, in a world of confused political
happenings. If any alliance were possible, it would have to be outside the
normal frame of reference, it would have to be spiritual and approached
with a religious sentiment, and for the poet whose life is devoted to beauty,
it would have to be an alliance with beauty itself, with none other than
Aphrodite.
So ends a remarkable poem, one which was selected for discussion by the
able and sensitive critic Dionysos of Halicarnassos as a prime example of
fine lyric poetry, out of a library which contained all of Sappho's writing
and a host of other lyric authors of whom we know little more than names.
The poem is so fine and delicate, even with the interpretational problems
which we have to face in reading it, that it needs no recommendation from
Dionysos or any other critic. It is worth noting that his choice means that
the educated Greeks of the Hellenistic period recognized this poem as a
prime example of lyric art, and this recognition can serve as validation for
the long analysis and detailed evocation of this study.
What is perhaps of greater importance is the way Dionysos does his analysis,
proceeding from meaning and overall form, down to the microanalysis
of the sounds as esthetically acoustic items. For him, this represents the way
Greeks approached their poetry, seeing a poem as a woven web of sounds
and forms, in short a textural art. This is something which our modern
criticism has not understood, concentrating on unraveling and sifting the
multiple layers of meaning. The Form generates inner meanings and subtle
innuendoes of its own, which stand beside and within the level of the
communicated message.
Reading Sappho without this awareness, you have nice little love poems
which you can read in a minute or two. Reading Sappho with an awareness
of the inner workings of her writing and the faithful care with which she
put her words together, you find an entirely different and much richer result.
But this is not only important as the way to read Greek poetry. It is a
warning to us that unless we devote ourselves to a slower and more inspective
method in reading the poetry of our own time, we are likely to miss the
depth which the art of poetry can possess. Reading too much, scanning too
fast, rushing to the Meaning, we even lose the need for having poetry in our
lives at all. When we read Sappho in depth, we get a sense of the possibilities
of the poetic art.
we must remember that at the start of the poem Sappho was praying
to her goddess, kneeling before an seated stone sculpture, which with
its painted poly-coloration as suited for all sculpture of that period,
was probably a monolith with the seatedgoddess carved out of one
piece with the rectilinear marble block.
Now Sappho raises her eyes to behold the sacred face of the Goddess
again, seeing her features more closely as she nears the base of the
statue. Al the workings of her mind in the pervious part of the poem
aare operating on her psyche simultaneously, from the prayer with
the ritual words to the vision of the SUN and Aphrodite the Beatific
and Immortal winging her way down through the sky and middle
aither, with the sound of her chariot birds whirring winds, and then
the SMILE appears.
She stares at the smile for what seems an infinitely long moment of
time, as she gazes at the lovely features tinted with a lifelike light tan
beeswax skin, thinking of deity and love and longing. But when her
mind leaves the statue of stone, suddenly something happens.
There is a transformation, the goddess of marble is no longer cold
stone, but a living apparition, a live apotheosis of the goddess has
come to talk with her, and walk with her and speak with her
alone......Not the first time or last a god has appeared to an island
woman in distress or a farmer in the wheatfield, or anyone who prays
thus earnestly and with a full heart.
And you
smiling
with that immortal face
asked:
Sappho...
What's hurts you?
hvre j ovtti dhu`te pevponqa kvwtti
dhu`te kavlhmmi,
"You asked --- what do I suffer and
what do I ask for,
ere' otti deute popontha kotti
deute kalemmi
The apothesis is now complete in the flash of the moment. Sappho
has seen the living face of the goddess before her eyes, and since this
is as real as her own being, she now can hear the Lady of Love
speaking to her in personal and intimate terms, talking the language
of a mother whose child has been hurt, the comforting words which
only a mother can offer.
It is the mothering words which make this passage real. It is spelled
out in short phrases which write across the paragraph ends and even
across the verse line, in a state of agitated verbal excitement which
contrasts with the quiet tone of the reassuring and mothering language.
The simultaneous tension between these two modes of speech
is brilliant, absolutely perfect for the agitated girl Sappho with her
mothering divine spiritual aide.
hvre j ovtti dhu`te pevponqa kvwtti
dhu`te kavlhmmi,
kvwtti moi mavlista qevlw gevnesqai
mainovla/ quvmw/.
"and what do you I want to happen
with this crazy heart....?
The last two words are somehow different, a quote from what
Sappho would say about herself, my love mad heart, somehow
slipped into the dream world of the divine interview. It brings the
situation back into focus, these are not really two person talking but
two parts of the same consciousness which sees both persons with the
same vision.
Look at the word phrasing, which written across the verse will have
the feeling of daily communication:
ovtti dhu`te pevponqa
kvwtti dhu`te kavlhmmi
kvwtti moi mavlista qevlw gevnesqai
"What hurts
Why calling
What do I want to happen?"
otti deute pepontha
kotti deute kalemmi
kotti moi malista thelo genesthai?
And it continues with the same fast pacing phrasing:
tivna dhu`te peviqw
mai`~ avghn e~ / san filovtata …
"Whom then do you want
Peitho to bring to you, dearest?
tina deute Peitho
mais agen es san philotata?
which can also be rephrased more clearly in question form this way:
tivna dhu`te peviqw mai`~ avghn e~ / san v filovtata …
"Whom do you want Peitho to bring back to you, dearest?"
There is a problem with this line and the meaning of 'peitho'. The
text has been questioned about first word of the following line. If we
follow the reading of P (Parisinus) which has mai saghnessan (bai
corr.) and follow Bergk's old correction to mai~ and then divide the
words thus aghn e~ san, we get a reading which makes sense and
follows the MS fairly well, as above.
The FE reading of 'kai' for 'mai' substitutes an easy word for an less
common one (maomai = *maó), while the correcting hand in P which
wrote 'bai' points phonetically and visually to 'mai' not to 'kai'. With
the verb 'mais' as 2 singular from a unused root verb *maó, not
elsehwere attested but listed in LSJ asthe source of the regular middle
verb 'maomai', 'peitho' has to be a noun and thus the name of the
goddess of pesuasion, Peitho (and not the verb first singular
indic./subj. ! So far as the above reading and translation, my opinion
is: stet !
tiv~ s j w Yavpf j, adikhvei …
"Who, Sappho, does you harm?"
tis s' O Sappho adikéei
This last paragraph was highly agitated, first because of Sappho's frantic
state of mind, second as a result of the epiphanic appearance of the goddess
as a lifelike Vision, one which is not only optically there but can also talk
with her.
What Aphrodite says comes in broken clauses, not because Aphrodite is
agitated herself, but because she is speaking in the short phraseology which
mothers traditionally use when talking to their children.
But this in turn reflects the condition of Sappho's own mind, her agitation
as a hurt child to whom her mother is speaking above her broken sobs. This
incoherence is here artistically coherent and suits the temper of that moment.
But right after that, everything changes, Aphrodite re-assumes her arch and
royal manner and make a series of very orderly statements, in fact
predictions, which are voiced in an "if.....then" mode, reassuringly:
kai gar ei feuvgei tacevw~ diwvxei
ai de dw`ra mh devket, alla dwvsei
ai de mh fivlei tacevw~ filhvsei
kwuk eqevloisa.
"Even if she flees, quickly will she follow
If she gives not gifts, she will give them
If she does not love, she will love
Despite herself"
kai gar ai pheugei, taxeos dioxei
ai de dora me deket', alla dosei
ai de me philei, tacheos philesei
kouk etheloisa.
The arrangement of sounds in this passage is extraordinary. In the first line
above, the balanced array of 'pheugei ......(tacheos) .......dioxei' is doubly
complex, since the two verbs are opposites, virtually reciprocals. And they
rhyme with their final '-ei ' diphthongs, while a thread goes through with
' -eu ' + ( eó- ) ' -ó-' showing back and heavy sounding vowels.
But the next line breaks into an entirely different patterns, with three ' -d- '
sounds virtually anticipating Beowulvian alliteration with:
dw`ra devket dwvsei
while retaining the opposition between receiving and giving gifts.
Then the third line goes back to the compact configuration of the first line
with 'philei........(tacheos)........philesei', emphatically using the same verb
in present and then future tense, with a structural device of "bringing
together" the wording, as subliminally bringing together the two lovers.
This change of mood and manner of speaking is the turning point of the
prayer and a promise of fulfillment, while artistically it stands as severely
contrastive to the emotional closeness and concern of the previous section.
Here is a formal pronouncement in the royal style of a Goddess.
But the last two words must not be under-emphasized. Seen from the
goddess' point of view, IF the situation is to be controlled, it must be
controlled absolutely, and it must be enforced, and that is the meaning of
chukka eqevloisa.. There will be no choice here, willing or not she will
do it this way.
Traditional Classicists have had a problem with this word 'etheloisa' on
what seemed then a textual problem but was certainly more of a sexual than
textual matter. Smyth (Greek Lyric Poets, p.233) summed it up at the turn
of that century, thus:
"Blomfield's eqevloisan was strenuously defended by
Welcker RM 11.266, who held that the subject of filhvsei
was a man. No MS whose readings were known before l892
settled the dispute. Now Piccolomini's VL show eqevloisa
(Hermes 27)"
This mixture of arguments based on MS authority along with Victorian
sensibilities, is interesting, and a caution to anyone involved with the
interpretation of a questionable text. One might quote Horace's remark
("Nulla ne habes vitia....?) and wonder if there are any prejudices in our
times which we are not aware of. It may be that some equally culpable proprejudices
can be found in our 21st century thinking, perhaps an overly
confident trust in an Oedipal interpretation in one situation, of a Lesbian in
another. Best not smile at the Victorians too hard, remembering that the
future will be laughing at some of our positive pronouncements.
And so the interview with the Vision concludes, vanishing away in the turn
of an instant, as is made clear by the tone of the following stanza. The clue
for a return is the very first word 'elthe' ...... "Come (back) to me now..."
evlqe moi kai nu`n, calevpan de lu`son
ek merivmnan, ovssa de moi tevlessai
qu`mo~ imevrrei, tevleson. su d jauvta
suvmmaco~ evsso
"Come to me now, release the hard
Agitation. What my heart wants
Done, do it! And you yourself,
Be my "Battle Ally".
elthe moi kai nun, chalepan de luson
ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai
thumos imerrei, teleson, su d'auta
summachos esso.
With the disappearance of her Saintly Guide, Sappho's agitation appears
again. There is a string of short words
evlqe moi kai nu`n, su d jauvta evsso........
but beyond that, the phrases cross the verse line abruptly, something that
Greek lyric poetry does not do by chance or mistake:
calevpan de lu`son
ek merivmnan,
ovssa de moi tevlessai
qu`mo~ imevrrei
su d jauvta
(suvmmaco~) evsso
In this subdued and checked mood the prayer-poem comes to an end, with
only one last thing to consider, the special meaning of that critical word,
which is clumsily and dysphonetically translated here as "Battle Ally".
The verb 'sum-machein' ,or more usually in the historians
'summachesthai' as a medio-passive form, means literally "fight along
with....". It is not used in Epic language, so there can be no Homeric
allusion to search for when Sappho uses the word in a poem. In fact
this is basically a military and political word, used extensively by
Herodotus (e.g. I.102) and Thucydides passim. The regular use of the
form 'summachos' is adjectival "allied", although as with most
adjectives it can be used as a noun "an Ally", as here.
It is surprising is that on a verbal level, Sappho chooses a key word without
Epic antecedent, furthermore that she elects a word which would later appear
as he keyword for the interminable associations and dissociations of all
sorts of political parties in the unstable world of early Greek politics. On
the other hand, the fact that Ally is her word for an alliance with the powerful
partner Aphrodite, points to her estimate of herself as a real person in
the newly developing Archaic world. As with all alliances. she is capable of
making connections and treaties with powerful forces .
An Epic hero must have a deic partner, and someone like Ajax who has
none is doomed from the start. Sappho struggles to connect herself with a
protecting force, seeking alliance in the battle of life, and not illogically she
chooses the same word as political writer later use for states aligning themselves
with others in warfare.
What is the battle that Sappho faces? It is the battle of a woman of talent,
intent on living a life of heart and emotion, in a world of confused political
happenings. If any alliance were possible, it would have to be outside the
normal frame of reference, it would have to be spiritual and approached
with a religious sentiment, and for the poet whose life is devoted to beauty,
it would have to be an alliance with beauty itself, with none other than
Aphrodite.
So ends a remarkable poem, one which was selected for discussion by the
able and sensitive critic Dionysos of Halicarnassos as a prime example of
fine lyric poetry, out of a library which contained all of Sappho's writing
and a host of other lyric authors of whom we know little more than names.
The poem is so fine and delicate, even with the interpretational problems
which we have to face in reading it, that it needs no recommendation from
Dionysos or any other critic. It is worth noting that his choice means that
the educated Greeks of the Hellenistic period recognized this poem as a
prime example of lyric art, and this recognition can serve as validation for
the long analysis and detailed evocation of this study.
What is perhaps of greater importance is the way Dionysos does his analysis,
proceeding from meaning and overall form, down to the microanalysis
of the sounds as esthetically acoustic items. For him, this represents the way
Greeks approached their poetry, seeing a poem as a woven web of sounds
and forms, in short a textural art. This is something which our modern
criticism has not understood, concentrating on unraveling and sifting the
multiple layers of meaning. The Form generates inner meanings and subtle
innuendoes of its own, which stand beside and within the level of the
communicated message.
Reading Sappho without this awareness, you have nice little love poems
which you can read in a minute or two. Reading Sappho with an awareness
of the inner workings of her writing and the faithful care with which she
put her words together, you find an entirely different and much richer result.
But this is not only important as the way to read Greek poetry. It is a
warning to us that unless we devote ourselves to a slower and more inspective
method in reading the poetry of our own time, we are likely to miss the
depth which the art of poetry can possess. Reading too much, scanning too
fast, rushing to the Meaning, we even lose the need for having poetry in our
lives at all. When we read Sappho in depth, we get a sense of the possibilities
of the poetic art.
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