Mini Biography

Sappho was born in about 612 BC in either the city of Eresos or Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos. Being from Lesbos, she was geographically a Lesbian, and her love for her women companions became identified as "lesbian love". Sappho was married and had a daughter named Kleis. At one time, under the rule of Pittakos, she and her family were forced into internal political exile. Sappho was a prolific writer, writing seven or nine long books of poetry, but a thousand years of hostility under the early church destroyer most a work. She is preserved in fragments, as citations in the works of classical authors, and on strips of papyrus found in Egypt (in the Oxyrhynchuis Papyri). Her single extant complete poem, "To Aphrodite", Longinus quotes in his essay On the Sublime. While there are many ancient biographical references to her, these come from later periods and are unreliable. The best picture of her life and spirit emerges in the poems. Sappho was esteemed as the greatest lyric poet of Greek and Latin antiquity. Plato called her the tenth muse. In the first century the Latin poet Catullus dedicated his poems to his "Lesbia" (the poet from Lesbos). In Sappho we hear for the first time in the Western world the direct words of an individual woman. Skilled, complex, and powerful, she speaks with elemental and alarming grace. We hear the immediate sound of the lyric voice in love, in pathos, in solitude. It cannot be said that her candid song has ever been surpassed.

1. Aphrodite dressed in an embroidery of flowers,
never to die, the daughter of God,
untangle from longing and perplexities,
O Lady, my heart.

But come down to me, as you came before,
for if ever I cried, and you heard and came,
come now, of all times, leaving
your father's golden house.

In that chariot pulled by sparrows reined and bitted,
swift in their flying, a quick blur aquiver,
beautiful, high. They drew you across steep air
down to the black earth;

fast they came, and you behind them, O
hilarious heart, your face all laughter,
asking, What troubles you this time, why again
do you call me down?

Asking, in your wild heart, who now
must you have? Who is she that persuasion
fetch her, enlist her, and put her into your binding love?
Sappho, who does you wrong?

If she balks, I promise, soon she'll chase you,
if she's turned from your gifts, now she'll give them.
And if she does not love you, she will love,
helpless, she will love.

Come, then, free me from cruelties.
Give me teethered heart its full desire.
Fulfill, and, come, lock your shield with mine
throughout this siege.
3.
Nothing can take the place in my mind
of this beauty of girls.
65.
Percussion, salt and honey,
a quivering in the thighs;
he shakes me all over again,
Eros who cannot be thrown,
who stalks on all fours
like a beast.

Eros makes me shiver again,
strengthless in the knees,
Eros gall and honey,
snake-sly, invincible.
69.
I am Aphrodite of the shifting eyes.
My servants are Eros and you, my Sappho.
72.
And I yearn,
and I hunt.
92.
Sometimes she closed her eyes
all night long.
100.
Eros weaver of myths,
Eros sweet and bitter,
Eros bringer of pain.
108.
You make me hot.
114.
I don't know which way I am running.
my mind is part this way, part that.
146.
I have loved all graceful things and this
Eros has given me, beauty and the light of the sun.
147.
I am willing.
149.
Tenderer than the rose.
180.
A girl plucking a flower just opened.
213.
The moon has set, and the Pleiades.
It is the middle of the night,
hour follows hour. I lie alone.

The moon has gone
to her Endymion,
the Pleiades
their seven lovers please.

Since Esperos glistened
and the moon rose red,
I have listened
alone in my bed.