[52] I would not think to touch the sky with two arms
In my Ancient Greek/Modern Sexuality class, we've been reading a lot of fascinating works (it's the only class I have not had trouble keeping up with). This week we've been focusing on Sappho. In case you don't know, the vast majority of Sappho's work is lost, as they were on papyrus, and that stuff is not resilient. Some poems are so lost that all they have are a simple word, like "danger" [184] or maybe a line: "I used to weave crowns" [125]. There's only one complete poem; the rest are just scraps.
I've never actually sat down and read the works of Sappho before, and considering everything I've heard about her and how prominently she's held as a gay icon, I was really expecting a lot more about her affairs with women, or more explicit descriptions of her desires. There's relatively little of that, especially compared to the work of her contemporaries, who seem almost exclusively to talk about their various sexual flings - many times rather bluntly. (A favorite Theognis poem [lines 1249-52] reads:
Boy, you're like a horse. Just now sated with seed,
You've come back to my stable,
Yearning for a good rider, fine meadow,
An icy spring, shady groves.
Real subtle there, Theo.)
Sappho's work is far more beautiful than I expected, and with the huge gaps missing it felt mysterious and ephemeral. Especially since, in the version we read, the translator would devote a whole page to each fragment, even if it were only a word or line long. This gave it much more of an impact when you saw an entirely blank page except for
[147]
someone will remember us
I say
even in another time
Eerie, right? Maybe that's just me. Well, here are some of my favorites:
[34]
stars around the beautiful moon
hide back their luminous form
whenever all full she shines on the earth
silvery
[47]
Eros shook my
mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees
[105A]
as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch
high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot -
no, not forgot - were unable to reach
[105B]
like the hyacinth in the mountains that shepherd men
with their feet trample down and on the ground the purple flower
[168B]
Moon has set
and Pleiades: middle
night, the hour goes by,
alone I lie.
Also, one of our assignments for the class was a rather silly poetic exercise in which we take one of the fragments and "fill it out" so to speak, either in our own words, or how we imagine Sappho originally wrote, or whatever. A lot of them tried to be mysterious and write in an over-the-top classical way (like me), but some modernized them and wrote about things like Michigan winters or Angelina Jolie, which was cool to see. I was expecting a lot more bad poetry, but either I'm indiscriminate or my class is abnormally full of sophisticated poets because I genuinely enjoyed most of them.
This class is definitely turning out to be one of the favorites of my undergraduate career, so I'm glad I have it to compensate for the PAIN that is Philosophy of Action. Seriously there is no point to that class. It's a bunch of people arguing over petty shit that has NO PRACTICAL APPLICATION. Like, I understand that most people don't believe any philosophy has a practical application, but I honestly feel discussions of ethics or various political theories lends itself to some sort of real world application eventually. The arguments between Kantian ethicists and utilitarians still matter in contemporary fields like medicine, or whether some legal crimes can be justified under certain conditions. Arguments between political theories still matter in that Hobbes and Locke and Marx fucking changed the world and how government works and how people view their role in society and a great deal about the way the world is politically structured today is directly due to their works.
Shit like "if I flick a switch and unintentionally scare a potential robber away, is that an action?" DOES. NOT. MATTER. (I mean, ok, yes, I guess it does matter in terms of assigning responsibility and whether you can be held accountable for unintentional actions, but WHATEVER.) Hate.
Okay, yeah, anyway, the point of this post was that Sappho is cool, I love that class, oh and also, Kim's birthday is tomorrow! Oh my gosh, yay BFF, I love you! I still have to go to the *ahem* toy store and get you your present. When I give it to you I'm going to sing Sesame Street and you can't stop me. I DON'T EVEN CARE IF I BREAK YOUR NON-EXISTENT GLASSES AND EMBARRASS YOU IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR FRIENDS, MWAHAHAHA!!
I've never actually sat down and read the works of Sappho before, and considering everything I've heard about her and how prominently she's held as a gay icon, I was really expecting a lot more about her affairs with women, or more explicit descriptions of her desires. There's relatively little of that, especially compared to the work of her contemporaries, who seem almost exclusively to talk about their various sexual flings - many times rather bluntly. (A favorite Theognis poem [lines 1249-52] reads:
Boy, you're like a horse. Just now sated with seed,
You've come back to my stable,
Yearning for a good rider, fine meadow,
An icy spring, shady groves.
Real subtle there, Theo.)
Sappho's work is far more beautiful than I expected, and with the huge gaps missing it felt mysterious and ephemeral. Especially since, in the version we read, the translator would devote a whole page to each fragment, even if it were only a word or line long. This gave it much more of an impact when you saw an entirely blank page except for
[147]
someone will remember us
I say
even in another time
Eerie, right? Maybe that's just me. Well, here are some of my favorites:
[34]
stars around the beautiful moon
hide back their luminous form
whenever all full she shines on the earth
silvery
[47]
Eros shook my
mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees
[105A]
as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch
high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot -
no, not forgot - were unable to reach
[105B]
like the hyacinth in the mountains that shepherd men
with their feet trample down and on the ground the purple flower
[168B]
Moon has set
and Pleiades: middle
night, the hour goes by,
alone I lie.
Also, one of our assignments for the class was a rather silly poetic exercise in which we take one of the fragments and "fill it out" so to speak, either in our own words, or how we imagine Sappho originally wrote, or whatever. A lot of them tried to be mysterious and write in an over-the-top classical way (like me), but some modernized them and wrote about things like Michigan winters or Angelina Jolie, which was cool to see. I was expecting a lot more bad poetry, but either I'm indiscriminate or my class is abnormally full of sophisticated poets because I genuinely enjoyed most of them.
This class is definitely turning out to be one of the favorites of my undergraduate career, so I'm glad I have it to compensate for the PAIN that is Philosophy of Action. Seriously there is no point to that class. It's a bunch of people arguing over petty shit that has NO PRACTICAL APPLICATION. Like, I understand that most people don't believe any philosophy has a practical application, but I honestly feel discussions of ethics or various political theories lends itself to some sort of real world application eventually. The arguments between Kantian ethicists and utilitarians still matter in contemporary fields like medicine, or whether some legal crimes can be justified under certain conditions. Arguments between political theories still matter in that Hobbes and Locke and Marx fucking changed the world and how government works and how people view their role in society and a great deal about the way the world is politically structured today is directly due to their works.
Shit like "if I flick a switch and unintentionally scare a potential robber away, is that an action?" DOES. NOT. MATTER. (I mean, ok, yes, I guess it does matter in terms of assigning responsibility and whether you can be held accountable for unintentional actions, but WHATEVER.) Hate.
Okay, yeah, anyway, the point of this post was that Sappho is cool, I love that class, oh and also, Kim's birthday is tomorrow! Oh my gosh, yay BFF, I love you! I still have to go to the *ahem* toy store and get you your present. When I give it to you I'm going to sing Sesame Street and you can't stop me. I DON'T EVEN CARE IF I BREAK YOUR NON-EXISTENT GLASSES AND EMBARRASS YOU IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR FRIENDS, MWAHAHAHA!!