Is there any evidence from her works that she was bisexual or possibly lesbian or is all that just rumors? I read through most of her anthology a few years ago and I don't remember anything of that kind, though it's possible I missed something
Ancient sources mention she has some poems talking about love for men and a lot of people speculate she was something like a finishing school teacher for young women wanting to become hetaire themselves. It's just super funny to even hint at her being anything but a pure lesbian because it makes people see red.
>That man seems to me to be equal to the gods
who is sitting opposite you
and hears you nearby
speaking sweetly >and laughing delightfully, which indeed
makes my heart flutter in my breast;
for when I look at you even for a short time,
it is no longer possible for me to speak >but it is as if my tongue is broken
and immediately a subtle fire has run over my skin,
I cannot see anything with my eyes,
and my ears are buzzing >a cold sweat comes over me, trembling
seizes me all over, I am paler
than grass, and I seem nearly
to have died. >but everything must be dared/endured, since (?even a poor man) ..."
She fricking sucks anyway. Wtf is this shit?
is clearly about a lesbian woman pining that the girl she loves has been taken away from her by a man. You could argue Sappho is not intended as the narrator however.
Are you adlibbing for a poet who wrote in a completely different style from modern poetry? The frick?
[...]
It's sort of a combination of hearsay, but that's not to say she was not bisexual. Rather, it's the unfortunate consequence of being so far removed from her time period. However, the Greek itself does suggest that she was queer based on her diction and some poems even just say she yearns for another woman.
That poem is expressing her feelings for the man, not the woman.
In any case, yearning for another women can take on many forms, and doesn't inherently make her homosexual. I have a best friend living in another state who I used to spend tons of time with, and we did nearly everything together. I yearn for his companionship and to spend time with him again but that is different than desiring a homosexual relationship with him, which I don't. I'd need to read through her anthology again, but my impression was never that she yearned for a sexual relationship with another woman. It seemed very clear to me that she had strong, erotic feelings for men in her works, and men only.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I was sending the poem to get that moron to shut up about Sappho being a shit poet (she's not).
But, at the same time, I don't want to come off as aggressive towards you anon (xoxo) but the poem is still about yearning for another woman. >φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν
"that man seems to me equal to the gods"
This line establishes that there are two people in the poem, but >ὠς γὰρ ἔς σ᾽ ἴδω βρόχε᾽, ὤς με φώναι-
That single sigma between ἔς and ἴδω is a "συ," which means "you" in Greek. The poem means, basically, "that man is just cooler than I am because he can talk (implied flirt) to you, but whenever I see you I clam up."
>The context of Sappho’s relationships with women is kind of complicated. Sappho ran a thiasos, a sort of informal finishing school for young unmarried women. Upper-class families would send their daughters to these academies for instruction in proper feminine behaviors, as well as music and poetry recital, before they transitioned into married life (Krstovic). Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was the patron deity of the thiasos, and Sappho frequently used symbols of Aphrodite - flowers and garlands, perfumes, incense, and outdoor scenery – as part of her love poetry to the young women under her tutelage (“Sapphos”). Many of Sappho’s poems were actually marriage songs for these girls when they left to marry men. Sappho’s thiasos may be considered the female counterpart to the male education system
Inchresting, so >That man seems to me to be equal to the gods
makes sense in that context
>That man seems to me to be equal to the gods
who is sitting opposite you
and hears you nearby
speaking sweetly >and laughing delightfully, which indeed
makes my heart flutter in my breast;
for when I look at you even for a short time,
it is no longer possible for me to speak >but it is as if my tongue is broken
and immediately a subtle fire has run over my skin,
I cannot see anything with my eyes,
and my ears are buzzing >a cold sweat comes over me, trembling
seizes me all over, I am paler
than grass, and I seem nearly
to have died. >but everything must be dared/endured, since (?even a poor man) ..."
She fricking sucks anyway. Wtf is this shit?
Are you adlibbing for a poet who wrote in a completely different style from modern poetry? The frick?
Is there any evidence from her works that she was bisexual or possibly lesbian or is all that just rumors? I read through most of her anthology a few years ago and I don't remember anything of that kind, though it's possible I missed something
It's sort of a combination of hearsay, but that's not to say she was not bisexual. Rather, it's the unfortunate consequence of being so far removed from her time period. However, the Greek itself does suggest that she was queer based on her diction and some poems even just say she yearns for another woman.
>and some poems even just say she yearns for another woman
I was just gonna point to this. Some scholars argue she might be writing on behalf of others, but not enough of her work survives to make a clear judgment. As is, there's a love poem about a woman.
I’m not one of the rabid anti-translation gays, but, speaking of poetry specifically, I have to bring this up. You’re reading translated poetry. No shit it might be harder to be impressed by it, and, even if you ARE impressed by a translation of poetry, it’s never really the author’s original poetry as intended that you’re being fully impressed by; you’re impressed by the translator themselves, and whatever images, themes, ideas and contents are preserved in the translation, but, again, it’s not the original poem.
A practically certain gauge of how highly the ancients thought of an author is how much of their work they cared to preserve. Of Sappho we have mostly fragments, while Pindar fills two entire volumes of Loebs. Funny that Sappho would become the most popular ancient lyric poet today while nobody reads Pindar anymore outside of academics because he was the Ezra Pound of his day.
I don't know why it is eternally surprising to you that something universal and accessible is more popular than something relatively abstruse and commissioned for a single event and a single family. He was considered difficult even in his own time.
Pindar is great though.
Her popularity is primarily for political reasons though and not the quality of her poetry. If she wasn't a woman, and a lesbian in the eyes of the public, people wouldn't care about her at all just like they don't care about other fragmentary lyric poets writing about how much they want to frick. The problem with Pindar on the other hand is only partly that he's obscure and wrote in a much less accessible genre but also that he's politically quite unfashionable. Kind of like why Ovid is the most popular of the latin big three despite being seen for the longest time as the weakest of the three compared to Virgil and Horace, people want to read about sex and degeneracy more than they want to read nationalist homeric fanfiction or how dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Those factors are responsible for some more or less significant fraction of their current relative popularity, sure. But when you say >people wouldn't care about her at all just like they don't care about other fragmentary lyric poets writing about how much they want to frick
you are necessarily talking about people who lack discernment. Presumably there exist people with poetic discernment who are simultaneously not so detached from human feeling as to have their relative level of interest unaffected by the more directly emotionally resonant nature of Sappho's subject matter. These are the people to whom I was referring. If you want to speculate about how people who don't have taste choose their reading material, go for it, but to me that's not really worthy of discussion.
Best bisexual female writer from antiquity tho
Is there any evidence from her works that she was bisexual or possibly lesbian or is all that just rumors? I read through most of her anthology a few years ago and I don't remember anything of that kind, though it's possible I missed something
Ancient sources mention she has some poems talking about love for men and a lot of people speculate she was something like a finishing school teacher for young women wanting to become hetaire themselves. It's just super funny to even hint at her being anything but a pure lesbian because it makes people see red.
Greeks weren't gay, homosexuality is the result of fluoride in the water.
This
is clearly about a lesbian woman pining that the girl she loves has been taken away from her by a man. You could argue Sappho is not intended as the narrator however.
That poem is expressing her feelings for the man, not the woman.
In any case, yearning for another women can take on many forms, and doesn't inherently make her homosexual. I have a best friend living in another state who I used to spend tons of time with, and we did nearly everything together. I yearn for his companionship and to spend time with him again but that is different than desiring a homosexual relationship with him, which I don't. I'd need to read through her anthology again, but my impression was never that she yearned for a sexual relationship with another woman. It seemed very clear to me that she had strong, erotic feelings for men in her works, and men only.
I was sending the poem to get that moron to shut up about Sappho being a shit poet (she's not).
But, at the same time, I don't want to come off as aggressive towards you anon (xoxo) but the poem is still about yearning for another woman.
>φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν
"that man seems to me equal to the gods"
This line establishes that there are two people in the poem, but
>ὠς γὰρ ἔς σ᾽ ἴδω βρόχε᾽, ὤς με φώναι-
That single sigma between ἔς and ἴδω is a "συ," which means "you" in Greek. The poem means, basically, "that man is just cooler than I am because he can talk (implied flirt) to you, but whenever I see you I clam up."
>The context of Sappho’s relationships with women is kind of complicated. Sappho ran a thiasos, a sort of informal finishing school for young unmarried women. Upper-class families would send their daughters to these academies for instruction in proper feminine behaviors, as well as music and poetry recital, before they transitioned into married life (Krstovic). Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was the patron deity of the thiasos, and Sappho frequently used symbols of Aphrodite - flowers and garlands, perfumes, incense, and outdoor scenery – as part of her love poetry to the young women under her tutelage (“Sapphos”). Many of Sappho’s poems were actually marriage songs for these girls when they left to marry men. Sappho’s thiasos may be considered the female counterpart to the male education system
Inchresting, so
>That man seems to me to be equal to the gods
makes sense in that context
>Many of Sappho’s poems were actually marriage songs for these girls when they left to marry men.
holy cope
t. doesn't know what fragment means
>That man seems to me to be equal to the gods
who is sitting opposite you
and hears you nearby
speaking sweetly
>and laughing delightfully, which indeed
makes my heart flutter in my breast;
for when I look at you even for a short time,
it is no longer possible for me to speak
>but it is as if my tongue is broken
and immediately a subtle fire has run over my skin,
I cannot see anything with my eyes,
and my ears are buzzing
>a cold sweat comes over me, trembling
seizes me all over, I am paler
than grass, and I seem nearly
to have died.
>but everything must be dared/endured, since (?even a poor man) ..."
She fricking sucks anyway. Wtf is this shit?
Are you adlibbing for a poet who wrote in a completely different style from modern poetry? The frick?
It's sort of a combination of hearsay, but that's not to say she was not bisexual. Rather, it's the unfortunate consequence of being so far removed from her time period. However, the Greek itself does suggest that she was queer based on her diction and some poems even just say she yearns for another woman.
>and some poems even just say she yearns for another woman
I was just gonna point to this. Some scholars argue she might be writing on behalf of others, but not enough of her work survives to make a clear judgment. As is, there's a love poem about a woman.
I’m not one of the rabid anti-translation gays, but, speaking of poetry specifically, I have to bring this up. You’re reading translated poetry. No shit it might be harder to be impressed by it, and, even if you ARE impressed by a translation of poetry, it’s never really the author’s original poetry as intended that you’re being fully impressed by; you’re impressed by the translator themselves, and whatever images, themes, ideas and contents are preserved in the translation, but, again, it’s not the original poem.
Can't tell if you're pretending to have bad taste to own le women or you're actually incapable of recognizing greatness.
Pure shit
Hehe ok I gotcha. Carry on lad, as you were.
troony slop
Just learn Greek you fricking cro-magnon and learn to into works that aren't in English monotard
Maybe it’s better in Greek…
translationhatinggays are like
The greeks got the low hanging fruits.
>Judging poetry in translation
womenpoetessessisters, our response?
The same people that whine about trees and paper will print an entire book with 99% of the pages blank lol. What a bunch of cancerous fricktards
“I would not think to touch the sky with two arms”
The Rupi Kaur of antiquity
Not sure if that’s a joke or not but it’s moronic either way. Sappho was one of the greats. Kaur lacks both rhyme and theme with which Sappho excels.
Why is the lack of rhyme bad?
Not that anon but I think what he means is that Kaur just abuses free verse without actually understanding what makes good poetry.
nobody itt can even read attic greek, let alone aeolic
A practically certain gauge of how highly the ancients thought of an author is how much of their work they cared to preserve. Of Sappho we have mostly fragments, while Pindar fills two entire volumes of Loebs. Funny that Sappho would become the most popular ancient lyric poet today while nobody reads Pindar anymore outside of academics because he was the Ezra Pound of his day.
I don't know why it is eternally surprising to you that something universal and accessible is more popular than something relatively abstruse and commissioned for a single event and a single family. He was considered difficult even in his own time.
Pindar is great though.
Her popularity is primarily for political reasons though and not the quality of her poetry. If she wasn't a woman, and a lesbian in the eyes of the public, people wouldn't care about her at all just like they don't care about other fragmentary lyric poets writing about how much they want to frick. The problem with Pindar on the other hand is only partly that he's obscure and wrote in a much less accessible genre but also that he's politically quite unfashionable. Kind of like why Ovid is the most popular of the latin big three despite being seen for the longest time as the weakest of the three compared to Virgil and Horace, people want to read about sex and degeneracy more than they want to read nationalist homeric fanfiction or how dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Those factors are responsible for some more or less significant fraction of their current relative popularity, sure. But when you say
>people wouldn't care about her at all just like they don't care about other fragmentary lyric poets writing about how much they want to frick
you are necessarily talking about people who lack discernment. Presumably there exist people with poetic discernment who are simultaneously not so detached from human feeling as to have their relative level of interest unaffected by the more directly emotionally resonant nature of Sappho's subject matter. These are the people to whom I was referring. If you want to speculate about how people who don't have taste choose their reading material, go for it, but to me that's not really worthy of discussion.
Sappho is an amazing poet. Stop disparaging her.
>reading poetry in its non-native language
ohnononnonononono
99% of people that pretend to like sappho will only have read her in translation
yeah, sappho is one of those things people pretend to like in order to gain some literary clout or whatever. there's nothing there
Sappho is interesting as a museum piece but not much else. "Whoa, this is what we have left of that timeperiod".
Sappho reminds me of a modern woman poet. Reincarnation?