Sappho
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Wikipedia
Featured visual 
|
Sappho was an Ancient Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos and a cultural icon of lesbianism.
In history and poetry texts, she is sometimes associated with the city of Mytilene on Lesbos (Carson 2002); she was also said to have been born in Eresos, another city on Lesbos. Her birth was sometime between 630 BC and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.
References in modern literature
Lord Byron wrote the following lines about her in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Stanza XXXIX:
- And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot,
- The lover's refuge and the Lesbian's grave.
- Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save
- That breast imbued with such immortal fire?
Charles Baudelaire writes about Sappho in Les Fleurs du mal.
Ezra Pound admired Sappho's work and wrote "'Ιμερρω" (Poetry, September 1916) to Atthis, the subject of many of Sappho's poems.
Lawrence Durrell wrote a play in verse titled Sappho, set in 7th Century BC Lesbos.
Algernon Swinburne wrote a poem concerning Sappho, Sapphics, and another, Anactoria, concerning her and her lover Anactoria, which makes Sappho into a rather hyperbolic sadomasochist. The Sapphic stanza is a poetic form occasionally imitated by modern writers, including Swinburne's Sapphics.
The Italian composer Giovanni Pacini (1796-1867) composed an opera entitled Saffo for the San Carlo Theatre in Naples. It premiered on 29 November, 1840.
The French composer Charles Gounod's first opera entitled Sapho, was about the lyric poet.
Christina Stead wrote a short story about Sappho which is included in her book The Salzburg Tales.
Nancy Freedman wrote a novelisation of Sappho's life entitled Sappho: The Tenth Muse, incorporating surviving fragments of her poetry into the story.
The Polish poet Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska wrote the poems The Roses for Sappho.
Erica Jong wrote a novel about Sappho called Sappho's Leap.
Sappho figures heavily in the later books of William Carlos Williams' Paterson (poem).
Sappho is also a major character in the fictional book Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd by Jeanette Winterson.
Certain early twentieth century poets such as Renee Vivien, H.D., and Natalie Barney rejected the idea that Sappho killed herself because of Phaon. In Barney's Acts d'entr'actes, for example Sappho kills herself because of her love for a girl promised in marriage.<ref>Susan Gubar, "Sapphistries", Signs, Vol. 10. No. 1. (Autumn 1984) pp. 43-62.</ref>
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger, references Sappho in its title and within its text.
See also
Sapho or Sappho may refer to:
- Sapho juice, a fictional drug used by the Mentats, living computers from Frank Herbert's Dune universe
- Sapho, a French singer
- Sapho, a novel by Alphonse Daudet
- SAPHO syndrome, chronic disease with synovitis, acne, pustulosis, hyperostosis and osteitis
- Sappho, the ancient Greek poet
- Sapho, the opera by Jules Massenet
- Sapho, the opera by Charles Gounod
