tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/sappho-8774/articlesSappho – The Conversation2022-11-21T13:16:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1919212022-11-21T13:16:48Z2022-11-21T13:16:48Z18th- and 19th-century Americans of all races, classes and genders looked to the ancient Mediterranean for inspiration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492894/original/file-20221101-26-7dbbw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1024%2C651&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In a new land, the ancient past held special meaning.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/objects/1904-15/">'Temple of Aphaea, Aegina' by John Rollin Tilton. Courtesy of Bowdoin College Museum of Art</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ancient world of the Mediterranean has <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674314269">long permeated American society</a>, in everything from museum collections to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3a5PAAAAMAAJ">home furnishings</a>. The design of the nation’s public monuments, buildings and <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/2550/culture-classicism">universities</a>, as well as its <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/first-principles-thomas-e-ricks?variant=33097718530082">legal system and form of government</a>, show the enduring influence of Mediterranean antiquity on American culture. </p>
<p>Until the late 19th century, <a href="https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/objects/portraits-of-greek-and-roman-figures/">Americans encountered the ancient world almost exclusively through reproductions</a> – in books, artwork and even <a href="https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/12/george-washingtons-favorite-play/">popular plays</a>. Very few <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/10869/being-american-europe-1750-1860">could afford to travel abroad</a> to encounter Mediterranean artifacts firsthand. </p>
<p>Yet despite barriers to access, many Americans forged personal connections with the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean – not only the Greeks and Romans, but also the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08905490902981879">Egyptians</a> and Israelites. Perhaps the newness of American culture inspired this deep interest in the ancient past. </p>
<p>One of the most fascinating aspects of Mediterranean antiquity’s influence on America, even before it officially became a country, is how it cut across cultural lines of race, class and gender. Far from being the preserve of a privileged few, the art and literature of the ancients was <a href="https://andscape.com/features/classics-is-a-part-of-black-intellectual-history-howard-needs-to-keep-it/">often embraced by Americans of all stripes</a> – including the enslaved <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley">Black poet Phillis Wheatley</a> (circa 1753-1784) and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sculptor-edmonia-lewis-shattered-gender-race-expectations-19th-century-america-180972934/">Black and Native American sculptor Edmonia Lewis</a> (1844-1907). But the circumstances of these encounters and the way individual Americans thought about antiquity varied greatly. </p>
<p>I’m an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Blli_yUAAAAJ&hl=en">art historian specializing in ancient Mediterranean art and culture</a>. I am particularly fascinated by the way Americans, from the earliest days, made creative connections between past and present, despite being separated by thousands of miles and millennia of history. </p>
<p>In researching and selecting works of art for the exhibit “<a href="https://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/exhibitions/2022/antiquity-and-america.html">Antiquity and America</a>,” on view at the <a href="https://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/">Bowdoin College Museum of Art</a>, I was excited to show an exceptionally diverse range of American encounters with the ancient world, especially in portrait painting.</p>
<h2>Marker of education</h2>
<p>Take, for example, <a href="https://www.library.dartmouth.edu/digital/digital-collections/occom-circle/occom">Samson Occom</a> (1723-1792), a member of the Mohegan nation, Presbyterian minister and one of the first Native Americans <a href="https://collections.dartmouth.edu/occom/html/normalized/768517-normalized.html">to pen an autobiography in English</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491951/original/file-20221026-19-95pfs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of a Native American man in a drapey shirt and cape looking to the right. Trees and sky are in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491951/original/file-20221026-19-95pfs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491951/original/file-20221026-19-95pfs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491951/original/file-20221026-19-95pfs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491951/original/file-20221026-19-95pfs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491951/original/file-20221026-19-95pfs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491951/original/file-20221026-19-95pfs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491951/original/file-20221026-19-95pfs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The portrayal of Samson Occom includes symbols of both the Indigenous identity of the sitter and his connections to Mediterranean antiquity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/objects/1813-4/">Painted by Nathaniel Smibert. Courtesy of Bowdoin College Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His unfinished portrait, painted <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Smibert">by Nathaniel Smibert</a> (1735-1756) in the mid-18th century, alluded to Occom’s Indigenous identity in the coloring of his skin and the styling of his hair. Simultaneously, it also referenced his training in classical literature and oratory, acquired <a href="https://www.dartmouth.edu/library/rauner/exhibits/matter-absolute-necessity-moors-charity.html">by studying with Eleazar Wheelock</a> (1711-1779), a Connecticut Congregational minister.</p>
<p>Occom’s pose and draped cloak recall those found on ancient statues of Roman senators – a portrait convention familiar in early America <a href="https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/objects/portraits-of-greek-and-roman-figures/">from prints circulating at the time</a> – and one that would later become quite popular in American society. </p>
<p>While his learning in Greek and Latin was undoubtedly a source of great pride for Occom – and a way for him to level the playing field with the European colonists – it was used by others to demonstrate the “civilizing” effect of European culture and education in the British Colonies. </p>
<p>In 1776, Eleazar Wheelock sent his former pupil Occom to Great Britain to raise money for a Native American school – funds that were ultimately repurposed for the founding of Dartmouth College. Occom would later charge Wheelock with <a href="https://collections.dartmouth.edu/occom/html/diplomatic/771424-diplomatic.html">using him as a “gazing stock</a>” in Europe while planning all the while to use the funds for the benefit of white settlers. </p>
<h2>Shaping public opinion</h2>
<p>A portrait of Sengbe Pieh, also known as Cinqué, who led the 1839 <a href="https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/slave-ships-12h/rebellion">Amistad slave ship revolt</a>, is an example of Black Americans’ <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/african-americans-and-the-classics-9781350107830/">use of the classical world for political purposes</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491953/original/file-20221026-8248-i3sr1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of a black man holding a bamboo staff in a toga-like outfit looking to the left. The background shows a landscape with a cliff, distant mountain, tropical trees and a moody, cloudy sky." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491953/original/file-20221026-8248-i3sr1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491953/original/file-20221026-8248-i3sr1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491953/original/file-20221026-8248-i3sr1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491953/original/file-20221026-8248-i3sr1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491953/original/file-20221026-8248-i3sr1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491953/original/file-20221026-8248-i3sr1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491953/original/file-20221026-8248-i3sr1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portraying Sengbe Pieh, who led the revolt on the slave ship Amistad, in the pose and garb of an ancient Roman senator was an intentional way to influence public opinion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/objects/2021-15/">Courtesy of Bowdoin College Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Commissioned by <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/purvis-robert-1810-1898/">Robert Purvis</a> (1810-1898), a Black Philadelphian and prominent abolitionist, this striking portrait by John Sartain (1808-1897) was intended to shape the popular image of Pieh and his fellow Africans during their <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/amistad#background">Supreme Court trial for mutiny and murder in 1840-1841</a>.</p>
<p>Pieh’s African identity is made evident not only in the tone of his skin, but in the bamboo staff he holds and the landscape in background depicting his homeland. The white cloak draped over his shoulder would have called to mind the white robes worn by Roman senators and, by extension, the Roman virtues of honor and dignity. </p>
<p>Pieh and his fellow Africans were <a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/sengbe-pieh.htm">ultimately acquitted and returned</a> to the Sierra Leone Colony in 1842. </p>
<h2>Feminist icon</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491958/original/file-20221026-21-e99mc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman posed outdoors in flowing robes holding a lute. In the background are hand written scrolls, the ocean and distant cliffs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491958/original/file-20221026-21-e99mc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491958/original/file-20221026-21-e99mc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491958/original/file-20221026-21-e99mc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491958/original/file-20221026-21-e99mc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491958/original/file-20221026-21-e99mc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491958/original/file-20221026-21-e99mc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491958/original/file-20221026-21-e99mc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At the turn of the 20th century, a portrait of an American woman portrayed as the Greek poet Sappho connected the sitter to themes in the ancient work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/objects/2000-10/">Painted by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1899. Courtesy of Bowdoin College Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p><a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/02/02/92862982.html">Caroline Sanders Truax</a> (1870–1940), one of the first women admitted to the New York state bar, was so enamored by the ancient past she was portrayed as the Greek lyric poet Sappho by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-L%C3%A9on_G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me">painter Jean-Léon Gérôme</a> (1824–1904). </p>
<p>This was a bold choice for a representation of an American woman in 1899. Sappho, whose writing is <a href="https://poets.org/poet/sappho">among the only surviving sources of female authorship from antiquity</a>, was already <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119122661.ch33">an icon of the first-wave feminist movement</a>, and the homoerotic themes of her poetry were well understood. Was the choice the artist’s – or the sitter’s? The most likely answer is it was by mutual agreement, perhaps inspired by Truax’s knowledge of classical language and literature – and her own <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119122661.ch33">interest in composing lyric poetry</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://library.winterthur.org:8001/search/query?term_1=Eva+Purdy+Thomson&theme=winterthur">portrait was a sensation in New York society</a> when it arrived from the artist’s studio in Paris. It was featured in several portrait exhibitions and newspaper articles – and was hung with pride by Truax and her husband in their home. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492895/original/file-20221101-26-omja7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of a man and his daughter walking under an elaborately sculpted Roman arch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492895/original/file-20221101-26-omja7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492895/original/file-20221101-26-omja7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492895/original/file-20221101-26-omja7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492895/original/file-20221101-26-omja7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492895/original/file-20221101-26-omja7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492895/original/file-20221101-26-omja7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492895/original/file-20221101-26-omja7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) walks with his daughter under the Arch of Titus in Rome, with the famed Colosseum in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/objects/0000-2022-1/">Painted by George Healy. Courtesy of Bowdoin College Museum of Art</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>For generations of Americans, the history and literature of Mediterranean antiquity was fertile ground for contemporary comparisons. It was universal enough to be brought into debates about the Constitution and founding principles of democracy, slavery and abolition, and women’s rights and suffrage. It was also of great individual significance for Americans of many different backgrounds – a past they were on intimate terms with, despite the millennia and miles separating the United States from the ancient Mediterranean.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Burrus previously worked for the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. He received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>Americans of all stripes have long embraced the culture of the ancient Mediterranean, using ancient ideals to navigate a new world.Sean P. Burrus, Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow, Bowdoin CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1844592022-08-02T20:13:02Z2022-08-02T20:13:02Z‘Skin and sinew and breath and longing’: reimagining the lives of queer artists and activists, from Sappho to Virginia Woolf<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476642/original/file-20220729-17-4dwcee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3988%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pictured, clockwise from left: Gertrude Stein, Lina Poletti, Sarah Bernhardt, Virginia Woolf, Sappho.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/after-sappho">After Sappho</a>, Selby Wynn Schwartz’s reimagining of the lives of 19th and 20th century women artists, activists and sapphists is a book I’ve always wanted to read. (And it’s <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-prize">just been longlisted</a> for the 2022 Booker Prize.)</p>
<p>Sappho, an Ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, was often called “the Poetess”. Plato called her the tenth Muse. Her writing is intimate, lyrical and sensual. It is unapologetically erotic, and mostly directed towards women. She’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-sappho-a-poet-in-fragments-90823">been called</a> history’s first lesbian. </p>
<p>Who among us lesbians hasn’t wanted to be loved by Sappho, be loved in the Sapphic way? To be Sappho — as in, as Wynn Schwartz writes in the prologue, “inside ourselves”, “sky pouring over”, “leaves of trees shivering”, “everything trembling”, “move when nothing touches”; as in the Sapphic fragment “the opposite/ … daring”? </p>
<p>I remember the first time I became Sappho too.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>A novel in fragments</h2>
<p>After Sappho is a novel in fragments or cascading vignettes. It rolls like water, like waves, introducing the reader to numerous feminists, writers, sapphists, activists and artists from the late 19th and 20th centuries. It is through their work and how they determine to live their own lives that they carve out a way to take control, become themselves, and inspire others to do the same. </p>
<p>The narrative of the book adopts the plural first-person “we” or collective voice, binding us as a community of readers to the pioneering poetry of Sappho and these brilliant women who followed, showing us how to live. We become part of the chorus line, the voices that will never be silenced.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476005/original/file-20220726-16-hvxmgq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sappho has been called history’s first lesbian – and the word itself derives from her home, the island of Lesbos. (Art by Julius Johann Ferdinand Kronberg)</span>
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<p>At first read, I was a little shy; I thought I needed to know everyone and everything before meeting them: a bit like coming out, I needed to demonstrate a solid sense of the self. Bite by bite, Wynn Schwartz introduces us to her characters, folding them together and into us: she lets their voices “wing their way through”; rise on our tongues.</p>
<p>In this work there are the sapphistories of herstorical figures we know well. There’s Radclyffe Hall, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sarah-Bernhardt">Sarah Bernhardt</a>, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf – along with lesser-knowns such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_%22Bricktop%22_Smith">Ada Bricktop Smith</a>, who in 1924 learned what it was like to black up her face (when she was already a black girl) in order to earn a living, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Gray">Eileen Gray</a>, who in the 1920s as an avant garde artist, writer and architect, opened a gallery of her own, full of light and lacquer and glass.</p>
<p>Difficult-to-read counternarrative moments intersect these herstories. Such as the story of Italian poet, playwright and feminist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Poletti">Lina Poletti</a> (said to be one of Italy’s first openly declared lesbians) giving the poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rainer-maria-rilke">Rainer Maria Rilke</a> an unfinished draft of a play she had written. She wrote Arianna at a time when she and her lover, the great actress Eleonora Duse, were “almost winged”. (Poletti and Duse lived with each other for a time; Rilke was obsessed with Duse.) Rilke declared “she wanted too much, her <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ariadne-Greek-mythology">Ariadne</a> was too many things at once”. Poletti suspected Rilke was “lying through his teeth”.</p>
<p>And <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWblackbook.htm">Noel Pemberton Billing’s Black Book</a> (compiled by the British Secret Service, by reports from German agents), listing every lesbian in Britain (although by law they didn’t exist), and denouncing “lesbian ecstasy” and the Cult of the Clitoris – is it “an unsteadiness in the hand”, is it a “trembling in the mouth”? Moments like this plunge any “careful becoming” back centuries, “into history we had barely survived”. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-sappho-a-poet-in-fragments-90823">Guide to the classics: Sappho, a poet in fragments</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A prescient book, for our times</h2>
<p>This book is prescient, written for our times. It’s not just an important re-writing/righting of herstory, or a new view on queer feminists in turn-of-the-century Europe. It’s a warning and a light shone forward, posing an old question we are still asking, especially with the recent Supreme Court overturning of <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-but-for-abortion-opponents-this-is-just-the-beginning-185768">Roe v. Wade</a> in the US. </p>
<p>As Italian suffragist and businesswoman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenia_Rasponi">Eugenia Rasponi</a> argues hotly in 1914, more than 100 years ago: “We are still denying to women the right to their own bodies? It is as if the new century has changed nothing.” Fellow Italian feminist (and writer) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilla_Aleramo">Sibilla Aleramo</a> explains: it’s not democracy, but tyranny. </p>
<p>Dotted throughout this novel is the everywoman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra">Cassandra</a>, who was famously fated to tell the truth but never be believed. She appears in different time periods in this novel, a lantern-bearer and prophetess, modelled by Wynn Schwartz on the Trojan priestess and the poet Anne Carson and her poem “Cassandra Float Can” (from her collection, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/float-9781910702574">Float</a>). Cassandra is also a figure in Virginia Woolf’s writing; she invented a “Cassandra for 1914” to counter the madness of war; Cassandra lights the way to a different kind of future. </p>
<p>We need a modern-day Cassandra, a Cassandra for our time who can scream outside of language, “gash the fabric of normal life, to rend it into strange tatters”. The point and impulse of language is everywhere. A Cassandra who lives in her own future. It is time for women to take language for themselves, as Gertrude Stein argues: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-ZOd2nDVk84?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Anne Carson performs ‘Cassandra Float Can’ – one of many references in this rich novel of reimagination.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Each short section of After Sappho, each next fragment, juxtaposes a new day. A further revelation, “scattershot relief against a landscape”. Wynn Schwartz gives us a grammar of becoming that touches all surfaces “like flash powder”; a kaleidoscope of pleasure; a seeking of verb and tense, shifts and changes. </p>
<p>She brings together her purposefully arranged fragments of herstory of this time and these fierce women to give us hope “of becoming in all our forms and genres”. She tells us, “The future of Sappho shall be us.”</p>
<p>And there we are, among these wonderful foremothers, in first-person plural around the table – you know that game, of wishing guests to a slow degustation. The same table that brings Vita and Virginia together for the first time when Vita breaks in, to get Virginia’s attention: “I think you are Sappho of our time.” We will never be silenced.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/painting-in-circles-and-loving-in-triangles-the-bloomsbury-groups-queer-ways-of-seeing-75438">Painting in circles and loving in triangles: the Bloomsbury Group's queer ways of seeing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Speak desires aloud and inspire’</h2>
<p>This is a book in verb and body, a novel of many parts – it’s fun thinking of its genre (fun writing a review in fragments) – a hybrid of “imaginaries and intimate nonfictions”, “a composition as explanation”, “an alchemical experiment”. In this novel, characters are tracked across pages and different years: some come to the page as more of a sketch (like a first draft) and build up as they return; others appear fully formed from when we first meet them.</p>
<p>Writing this review happened in the pages and margins of the book itself: a jot here, underlinings, arrows, transcription, <em>X X X</em> against passages for extra emphasis. There was so much to remark upon, absorb; my imaginaries interlocking with those on the page. </p>
<p>After Sappho is an unstructured community where everyone is equal and where this community imbues a spirit of its own: a heady fountain of what can happen in a space of togetherness itself, in which the “blush of our inner parts” turn “out towards each other”. Where, as inverts and delinquents, lesbians and viragos, we want to be “everything at once” and believe “this is possible”. Wynn Schwartz invites us to this Sapphic community: right here, right now. “Life itself”, present tense. Where we congregate, speak desires aloud and inspire. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-a-room-of-ones-own-virginia-woolfs-feminist-call-to-arms-145398">Guide to the classics: A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf's feminist call to arms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After Sappho is an ecstatic read, a sapphistory writing ourselves into existence into the lives we want to live – not the lives others want us to live. It is a provocation to become who we want to become. The women in this wondrous novel, a <em>tour de Sappho</em>, are our foremothers, our foresapphists. Birds fly out of its pages. </p>
<p>Selby Wynn Schwartz gives us a dark herstory; one that is hysterically funny, poetic and maddeningly tender. It is skin and sinew and breath and longing. And becoming. Remember to tongue it slowly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francesca Rendle-Short does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Selby Wynn Schwartz’s inventive, poetic reimagining of lives like those of Virginia Woolf and Sarah Bernhardt – against a backdrop of Sappho – has just been longlisted for the Booker Prize.Francesca Rendle-Short, Professor, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1511762021-02-11T21:23:26Z2021-02-11T21:23:26ZLovers of Sappho thrilled by ‘new’ poetry find, but its backstory may have been fabricated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383094/original/file-20210208-13-1bdi9av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C27%2C799%2C455&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fragments of Sappho? The 2014 discovery was of five stanzas of one poem and portions of a second. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">('Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene,'1864, by Simeon Solomon)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Museum of the Bible in Washington recently announced it has <a href="https://www.museumofthebible.org/newsroom/update-on-iraqi-and-egyptian-items">returned 5,000 fragments of ancient papyrus to Egypt</a>. Among them are <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/23850356">fragments of poetry</a> by the ancient Greek poet Sappho the museum had acquired <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/museum-of-the-bible-obbink-gospel-of-mark/610576/">in 2012</a>.</p>
<p>The announcement follows years of questions about the origins of the fragments, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/43909704">and the origins of a fragment from the same papyrus roll</a> that came to public attention in 2014.
Scholars and literary critics were abuzz after <em>The Daily Beast</em> reported on Jan. 28, 2014, that papyrologist Dirk Obbink of the University of Oxford had <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/scholars-discover-new-poems-from-ancient-greek-poetess-sappho.html">identified two new poems by Sappho</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/classical-studies/classical-literature/sappho-new-translation-complete-works?format=HB">Sappho of Lesbos</a> is one of the earliest <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sappho-Greek-poet">Greek lyric poets</a>, famed in antiquity for the polish and elegance of her verse. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/26/books/books-of-the-times-the-mystery-of-sappho-and-her-erotic-legacy.html">Sappho’s legacy extends beyond poetry</a>. Her expressions of female <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3619781.html">same-sex desire</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-sappho-a-poet-in-fragments-90823">(“… sweat pours down me / a tremor shakes me …”)</a> have made <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.0.0008">her an icon</a> for some <a href="https://theithacan.org/media/the-pride-pod-sappho-of-lesbos/">LGBTQ+ communities</a>.</p>
<p>Little of Sappho’s poetry survives, and what does is fragmentary. Obbink’s discovery was remarkable because it preserved the final five stanzas of one poem and portions of a second, making it one of the longest continuous sequences of Sapphic verse. </p>
<p>News of the discovery made <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/29/sappho-ancient-greek-poet-unknown-works-discovered">international headlines</a>, but serious questions about the papyrus’s <a href="https://facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/sappho-papyrology-and-the-media/">origins, acquisition and ownership history</a> — its provenance — did not. Provenance is important for establishing the authenticity and legal status of antiquities.</p>
<p>In the fall, I published <a href="http://doi.org/10.2143/BASP.57.0.3288503">new research</a> into a digital sales brochure produced by the auction house <a href="https://www.christies.com/">Christie’s</a>. My research calls into question the published accounts of the papyrus’s provenance. I believe the accounts of the Sappho papyrus’s origins that Obbink published were fabricated, and that its owner had access to Obbink’s unpublished research and sought to capitalize upon it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="One woman leading another by the hand." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382889/original/file-20210207-21-1tg0a4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382889/original/file-20210207-21-1tg0a4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382889/original/file-20210207-21-1tg0a4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382889/original/file-20210207-21-1tg0a4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382889/original/file-20210207-21-1tg0a4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382889/original/file-20210207-21-1tg0a4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382889/original/file-20210207-21-1tg0a4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Little of Sappho’s oeuvre has survived, but the poet continues to stir people’s imagination.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legal, ethical concerns</h2>
<p>Papyri originate almost without exception in Egypt. In 1983, the Egyptian government passed <a href="https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/egypt_law3_2010_entof.pdf">legislation</a> prohibiting the domestic trade in antiquities, establishing definitively that the country’s archeological heritage is state property. </p>
<p>To combat looting and the illegal antiquities trade, <a href="https://www.papyrology.org/resolutions.html">more than</a> <a href="https://classicalstudies.org/about/scs-statement-professional-ethics">one scholarly</a> association’s <a href="https://www.archaeological.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Code-of-Ethics.pdf">ethical guidelines</a> cite the <a href="https://en.unesco.org/fighttrafficking/1970">1970 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property</a> in condemning the study of newly surfaced antiquities. According to those guidelines, scholars shouldn’t authenticate or publish objects that left their country of origin illegally or prior to the 1970 convention.</p>
<p>How and when the Sappho papyrus left Egypt are pressing legal and ethical questions.</p>
<p><em>The Daily Beast</em> linked to an unpublished, draft article Obbink briefly made available on <a href="https://newsappho.wordpress.com/">a blog</a>. </p>
<p>Regarding the papyrus’s origins, it said only that it was newly uncovered and in the private collection of an anonymous owner.</p>
<h2>Scholarly questions</h2>
<p>Historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes soon reported in London’s <em>Sunday Times</em> that Obbink discovered the papyrus after prising it from <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lover-poet-muse-and-a-ghost-made-real-dwj29ldp8c5">mummy cartonnage — the casing of an Egyptian burial similar to papier-mâché</a>. </p>
<p>Obbink <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/opinion/papyrus-provenance-and-looting.html">corroborated its origin in mummy cartonnage</a> in a <em>Times Literary Supplement</em> article. Hughes stated that the papyrus’s “provenance was obscure” and that it “was originally owned, it seems, by a high-ranking German officer.” Obbink said only that its provenance was both documented and legal.</p>
<p>Scholars <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/09/a-scandal-in-oxford-the-curious-case-of-the-stolen-gospel">questioned the mummy cartonnage narrative because the practice of recycling papyri in the manufacture of cartonnage</a> ceased long before the papyrus was copied. </p>
<p>When Obbink’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23850358">scholarly paper was finally published on April 10, 2014</a>, it didn’t discuss provenance. </p>
<p>A year later, <a href="https://classicalstudies.org/sites/default/files/ckfinder/files/FinalProgramProof.pdf">Obbink revised</a> the papyrus’s origin story at a scholarly conference on Jan. 9, 2015. He said it was recovered from an unpainted fragment of papyrus cartonnage that was purchased at a <a href="https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/a-collection-of-greek-and-coptic-papyri-5504745-details.aspx">2011 Christie’s auction</a>. He did not specify when the recovery took place.</p>
<h2>The Christie’s brochure</h2>
<p>After Obbink’s presentation, Christie’s produced a 26-page brochure advertising the new Sappho papyrus for private sale. It circulated exclusively among Christie’s clientele, and was unknown to scholars. I received a digital copy from Ute Wartenberg Kagan, a scholar of ancient Greek coinage, which she obtained from a client of Christie’s. The brochure contained photographs captioned as “the recovery of the Sappho papyrus.” When I inquired about the brochure, Christie’s responded: “We cannot discuss private sales activities unless authorized to do so.”</p>
<p>I hoped to learn when the files had been created and modified, and to scrutinize what the images depicted more closely. I ran a computer program that examined the brochure and its JPG files, and was able to <a href="https://dataverse.lib.umanitoba.ca/dataverse/sapphometadata">extract the metadata</a> associated with them. </p>
<p>I concluded that the photos presented in the Christie’s brochure were staged and don’t depict the extraction of the Sappho papyrus. In my view, the photos document the story about mummy cartonnage that Hughes and Obbink wrote about. </p>
<p>One photo includes a panel of cartonnage I have identified as <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2008/antiquities-n08500/lot.89.html?locale=en">previously belonging to a high-ranking German officer</a>, as was mentioned in Hughes’s report. The story was never plausible — scholars questioned it and Obbink subsequently revised it. But the brochure, I believe, bears witness to the original narrative. </p>
<p>I also concluded that the anonymous owner of the papyrus had access to Obbink’s unpublished research, and undertook to propose the papyrus for private sale almost immediately after Obbink presented the revised story at the scholarly conference Jan. 9, 2015.</p>
<p>The brochure’s “Provenance” section cited not Obbink’s January presentation but a scholarly article that wasn’t published until June 15, nearly four months after the creation of the brochure.</p>
<p>In response to an article in <em>The Guardian</em> that reported on my research, Christie’s said it: “… <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/09/a-scandal-in-oxford-the-curious-case-of-the-stolen-gospel">would never knowingly offer any works of art without good title or incorrectly catalogued or authenticated</a>. We take our name and reputation very seriously and would take all necessary steps available to address any situation of inappropriate use.” </p>
<h2>Scholarly ethics and antiquities</h2>
<p>Scholars are wary of the antiquities market because academic appraisals add to objects’ commercial value, which can incentivize looting and the illegal trade in antiquities. Scholarship also offers legitimacy.</p>
<p>For this reason, scholars must scrutinize new discoveries carefully before conducting or publishing research, and present their findings transparently. When the media reports on preliminary research, it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-rush-for-coronavirus-information-unreviewed-scientific-papers-are-being-publicized-152912">important to convey its preliminary nature</a>.</p>
<p>Last April, an Oxford student newspaper reported that Obbink had been arrested Mar. 2, 2020, for “<a href="https://www.theoxfordblue.co.uk/2020/04/16/exclusive-christ-church-professor-arrested-over-scandal-of-stolen-papyrus">for alleged theft of ancient papyrus from the Sackler Classics Library in Oxford</a>.” <a href="https://wacotrib.com/news/higher_education/oxford-professor-who-worked-at-baylor-allegedly-stole-ancient-bible-fragments-sold-them-to-hobby/article_52db7c0b-a13f-5fdc-8a09-5ddb1f82af29.html">Obbink has denied</a> those allegations.</p>
<p>Questions remain about the 2014 Sappho papyrus. The Museum of the Bible’s recent announcement acknowledges the “<a href="https://www.museumofthebible.org/newsroom/update-on-iraqi-and-egyptian-items">insufficient reliable provenance information</a>” of its papyri — including its Sappho fragments. The chapter about the museum’s Sappho papyri has concluded, but the status of the Sappho papyrus Obbink discovered is uncertain. The papyrus’s present owner is anonymous and its location is unknown.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151176/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>C. Michael Sampson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 2014, reports of a new discovery of Sappho’s poems were remarkable. New research argues the papyrus had a fabricated backstory.C. Michael Sampson, Associate Professor of Classics, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1304112020-01-31T15:38:55Z2020-01-31T15:38:55ZPoets and lovers: the two women who were Michael Field<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311965/original/file-20200127-81403-1matn7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C750%2C805&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two women, one poet: Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>“Let no man think he can put asunder what God has joined”. So wrote the poet Katharine Bradley in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Michael_Field_The_Poet.html?id=635aDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">a letter of 1886</a>. She was explaining her relationship with her niece Edith Cooper, using the words of the Christian marriage ceremony to affirm their lifelong partnership. </p>
<p>In an era in which Queen Victoria is (erroneously) rumoured to have dismissed <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news-2-15012/background-myth-of-victoria-and-ban-on-homosexuality-1-1499082">lesbianism as an impossibility</a>, these two women declared themselves “closer married” even than Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning – the ultimate <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/03/elizabeth-barrett-browning-birthday/472377/">literary power couple</a> – because, as Bradley <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Michael_Field_The_Poet.html?id=635aDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">explained</a>: “those two poets, man and wife, wrote alone”. Rather than writing separately, Bradley and Cooper decided to create their works as one.</p>
<p>They invented <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Michael+Field">a whole new persona</a> to bind them together. His name was “Michael Field”. Writing together through this male voice, Bradley and Cooper forged a collaboration that was both romantic and creative. Being Field allowed them to express things that, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Michael_Field_The_Poet.html?id=635aDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">in Bradley’s words</a> “the world will not tolerate from a woman’s lips”. As Field, they published hundreds of poems, many of them strikingly erotic. As they <a href="https://michaelfield.dickinson.edu/node/104">wrote defiantly</a> in one poem:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My Love and I took hands and swore,<br>
Against the world, to be<br>
Poets and lovers evermore.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bradley and Cooper certainly had reason to feel that the world was against them. Their early works were enthusiastically received: <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Michael_Field_The_Poet.html?id=635aDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">one reviewer</a> suggested that Field be nominated for poet laureate. But once word got around that this promising writer was two women, rather than one man, their reception took a decidedly dismissive turn – precisely as they had feared.</p>
<h2>Aesthetes and lovers</h2>
<p>Nonetheless, the women still had the support of their friends, many of whom were part of the late-19th-century <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/aesthetic-movement">aesthetic movement</a>. Aestheticism promoted an “art for art’s sake” philosophy, celebrating beauty as free of moral or utilitarian considerations. Aesthetic friends included Oscar Wilde, the art critic Bernard Berenson, and the artists and designers Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, themselves a committed same-sex couple. </p>
<p>Ricketts and Shannon created several beautiful volumes for Bradley and Cooper, using fine paper and stunningly intricate cover designs. Field’s works never sold in huge numbers, but they attracted an elite set of influential admirers and Bradley and Cooper became minor celebrities in the fin-de-siècle literary world.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311857/original/file-20200124-81411-3jonsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311857/original/file-20200124-81411-3jonsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311857/original/file-20200124-81411-3jonsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311857/original/file-20200124-81411-3jonsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311857/original/file-20200124-81411-3jonsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311857/original/file-20200124-81411-3jonsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311857/original/file-20200124-81411-3jonsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cover design for Michael Field’s <em>Wild Honey from Various Thyme</em> (1908) by Charles Ricketts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">[link</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of their earliest volumes, <a href="https://michaelfield.dickinson.edu/longago">Long Ago</a> (1889) took inspiration from <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/girl-interrupted">Sappho of Lesbos</a> – the most celebrated woman poet of Ancient Greece and the origin of the term “lesbian”. Sappho’s poems, which only survive in fragments, address love lyrics to both male and female loved ones. Bradley and Cooper use these fragments as suggestive catalysts for their own poems, celebrating female beauty and intimacy. For example, the fragment “<a href="https://michaelfield.dickinson.edu/node/156">They plaited garlands in their time</a>” becomes a fully-fledged vision of Sapphic community:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They plaited garlands in their time;<br>
They knew the joy of youth’s sweet prime,<br>
Quick breath and rapture:<br>
Theirs was the violet-weaving bliss,<br>
And theirs the white, wreathed brow to kiss,<br>
Kiss, and recapture.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Love in a cold climate</h2>
<p>Both women were deeply interested in classical literature, having studied Latin and Greek at Newnham College and University College, Bristol. The Hellenic world provided them with an example of a society in which homoerotic love was accepted and honoured. But their sexuality (including the incestuous dimension of their partnership) never appeared to trouble them much, as they proudly proclaimed their fellowship throughout their life and works.</p>
<p>Bradley and Cooper were true “Renaissance women”. Every new volume became an exciting new research project into which they threw themselves with gusto. No arena was off limits and their interests stretched from European art, to perfume, ecology, vegetarianism, theology and philosophy. The scope of their artistic ambition is captured in more than 20 verse dramas, as well as lyric poetry. They believed unshakably in their own genius, despite critical indifference and occasional mockery.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313074/original/file-20200131-41503-1nvmsut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313074/original/file-20200131-41503-1nvmsut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313074/original/file-20200131-41503-1nvmsut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313074/original/file-20200131-41503-1nvmsut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313074/original/file-20200131-41503-1nvmsut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313074/original/file-20200131-41503-1nvmsut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313074/original/file-20200131-41503-1nvmsut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Katherine Bradley with Whym Chow, circa 1903.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public Domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps their strangest volume is <a href="https://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Ecavitch/pdf-library/Field_WhymChow.pdf">Whym Chow: Flame of Love</a>, a book of poems dedicated to their beloved dog. They acquired this somewhat domineering chow in 1897 and he quickly became the centre of their world. Following his unexpected early death in 1906, the women were so devastated that they converted to Roman Catholicism, in the hopes that they would be reunited with him in heaven. </p>
<p>Their last volumes, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158003790978&view=1up&seq=7">Mystic Trees</a> (1913) and <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t5m906x7t&view=1up&seq=7">Poems of Adoration</a> (1914), contained Catholic poems that combined their earlier pagan passion with a new devotion to the Virgin Mary. Their faith offered comfort when Cooper was diagnosed with cancer in 1911. She died in 1913, with Bradley following shortly after in 1914.</p>
<h2>Flawed icons</h2>
<p>Michael Field was neglected for the bulk of the 20th century. But, in recent years, interest in their collaboration has grown. This raises the question: what can Bradley and Cooper teach us today? Their joint diaries have recently become available <a href="https://vllc.wordpress.cdhsc.org/the-michael-field-diaries/">online</a>, covering a 26-year period from 1888 to 1914. </p>
<p>These offer a unique insight into the ups and downs of lifelong same-sex partnership in all its complexity. Like <a href="https://www.annelister.co.uk/">Anne Lister’s diaries</a>, recently dramatised as <a href="https://theconversation.com/gentleman-jack-a-gripping-19th-century-tale-of-one-womans-bravery-in-sex-and-politics-116868">Gentleman Jack</a>, Bradley and Cooper’s diary reveals them – potential queer icons that they were – to be deeply flawed: snobbish, over-sensitive, dismissive of women and the working classes. </p>
<p>As we discover their fascinating world for ourselves, they remind us that our LGBTQ historical figures can be both queer – and incorrigibly human – in truly unexpected ways.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130411/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Parker's book Michael Field: Decadent Moderns (2019) is published by Ohio University Press.</span></em></p>Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper were aunt and niece as well as lovers who published under a male pseudonym.Sarah Parker, Lecturer in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literature, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1202572019-07-18T12:35:05Z2019-07-18T12:35:05ZHow women and the moon intertwine in literature<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284721/original/file-20190718-116547-1kbpq3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/full-moon-rising-over-empty-ocean-349544210?src=lfywcWHuOBBXg38koGHRYg-1-78&studio=1">Shutterstock/rangizzz</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the late 17th century, the female English playwright <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/behn_aphra.shtml">Aphra Behn</a> wrote a smash hit play about a man obsessed with the moon, who was constantly travelling there in his imagination. Exactly 282 years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin actually <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/to-the-moon-and-beyond-72729?utm_source=TC&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=moonseries2019&utm_content=homepageb">made that dream a reality</a>. </p>
<p>Their astonishing achievement on July 20, 1969 led <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41387006?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">some to worry</a> that the moon would become an object of purely scientific study – a barren and lifeless body, no longer a source of romantic inspiration. Fortunately, this fear did not come to pass. </p>
<p>For example, in the year that marked the 40th anniversary of the landings ten years ago, the then poet laureate <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carol-Ann-Duffy">Carol Ann Duffy</a> edited <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Moon-Anthology-Lunar-Poems/dp/0330461311">To the Moon: An Anthology of Lunar Poems</a> which gathered together works from ancient to modern, and included her own poem, The Woman in the Moon. </p>
<p>And while no woman has yet stepped on to this celestial body, women have long been associated with the moon – with its tidal pull, and the binary thinking that places it secondary in majesty to the sun. It is no wonder, then, that the moon has stimulated some incredible literature by female writers.</p>
<p>The moon is often envisaged as a female entity, which inspired poems on the theme of her gaze as she looks down on Earth benignly. Way back in antiquity, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sappho-Greek-poet">Greek poet Sappho</a> did just this in her short song describing how: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When, round and full, her silver face, Swims into sight, and lights all space. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This trope continued for millennia and into the 19th century. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louisa-May-Alcott">Louisa May Alcott</a> (author of <a href="https://americanliterature.com/author/louisa-may-alcott/book/little-women/summary">Little Women</a>) wrote <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sPMBb1Ql_9UC&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=Louisa+May+Alcott+the+mother+moon&source=bl&ots=N5iore_ogo&sig=ACfU3U1jeo4DpDtlg2wf1OaL5nrPmwHPtQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiIwu3Do77jAhWQT8AKHaKuCxQQ6AEwEXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Louisa%20May%20Alcott%20the%20mother%20moon&f=false">The Mother Moon</a> in 1856, imagining a benevolent maternal moon looking down on the Earth, occasionally hidden but ultimately undiminished by clouds. Also in the 19th century, American poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-dickinson">Emily Dickinson’s</a> moon similarly shone “Her perfect Face Upon the World below”. </p>
<p>Duffy’s more recent poem contains these familiar elements, being written in the persona of a woman in the moon – one who is incredulous anyone could have believed instead in a man in the moon. The woman in the moon has spent millennia observing Earth and now implores those gazing up at her to reflect on the neglect humans have wrought on planet Earth, repeating the question “What have you done?”</p>
<h2>Shining a light</h2>
<p>Of course, not all female literary responses to the moon have been quite so lyrical. Aphra Behn’s hilarious farce <a href="https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/behn/emperor/emperor.html">The Emperor of the Moon</a>, which took the London stage by storm, is one example. Behn was one of the first English women to earn a sustained living through writing, breaking social barriers and becoming a valued literary role model for later generations of women authors.</p>
<p>Based on a French source, but changed in many ways to make it Behn’s own, the play centres on a doctor, Baliardo, who is tricked into believing he is in the company of men from the moon. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284719/original/file-20190718-116543-3mlgo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284719/original/file-20190718-116543-3mlgo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284719/original/file-20190718-116543-3mlgo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284719/original/file-20190718-116543-3mlgo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284719/original/file-20190718-116543-3mlgo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284719/original/file-20190718-116543-3mlgo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284719/original/file-20190718-116543-3mlgo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aphra Behn (1640-1689), the first known professional English female writer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/aphra-behn-16401689-english-novelist-playwright-239399689?src=rJPHsr6M4JY5GVvPn3uEFA-1-0&studio=1">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He longs to know whether the moon has seas, why it shines so brightly, and whether there is proof to the theory that its atmosphere was so like the Earth’s that it, too, was inhabited. </p>
<p>The obsession makes him so gullible that when his daughter’s mischievous lover pretends to be the “Emperor Iredonzor”, and spouts clever sounding jargon in order to complete the disguise that he is an inhabitant of the moon descended to Earth, the doctor is convinced. </p>
<p>The fake emperor of the moon is then able to convince his future father-in-law that he is conferring a great honour on the family through a conjugal union with his daughter (who is in on the scheme). As the play finishes, the doctor realises that he has conceded to marry his daughter not to a superior creature from another planet, but to the fairly ordinary boy next door. </p>
<p>The farcical plot was spectacular and breathtaking in production and special effects. The original stage directions describe how:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Globe of the Moon appears, first, like a new Moon; as it moves forward it increases, till it comes to the Full. When it is descended, it opens, and shows the Emperor and the Prince. They come forth with all their Train, the Flutes playing a Symphony before him, which prepares the Song. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We can only imagine the audience’s reaction, but the play was an enormous success, staged 130 times by 1749. If Behn had thoughts of space travel, too, she did not commit them to paper. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284579/original/file-20190717-147279-nwto5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284579/original/file-20190717-147279-nwto5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284579/original/file-20190717-147279-nwto5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284579/original/file-20190717-147279-nwto5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284579/original/file-20190717-147279-nwto5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284579/original/file-20190717-147279-nwto5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284579/original/file-20190717-147279-nwto5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 28 phases of the moon in a lunar month. Engraving by P. Miotte, 1646.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/kfzjpurt">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But perhaps as <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/sending-american-astronauts-to-moon-in-2024-nasa-accepts-challenge">NASA ramps up preparations</a> for further lunar exploration, the moon will move out of the purely imaginary. Maybe women will at last be among the exclusive number of humans to have stepped on to the moon and gazed back to Earth for themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women have been there in their imaginations.Sara Read, Lecturer in English, Loughborough UniversityCatie Gill, Lecturer in English, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/908232018-02-12T19:07:20Z2018-02-12T19:07:20ZGuide to the classics: Sappho, a poet in fragments<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203721/original/file-20180129-100929-qd009w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fresco showing a woman called Sappho holding writing implements from Pompeii Naples National Archaeological Museum</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For those who have read the fragmented remains of the Greek poet, <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Sappho_of_Lesbos/">Sappho</a> the loss of most of her poetic corpus is something to regret. With a mere two complete poems extant from nine books of verse, much is left to the imagination in the reconstruction of the output (and life) of this most mysterious of ancient poets.</p>
<p>In a world dominated by male voices whose view of life, the universe and everything was the loudest and most respected, Sappho’s songs were regarded as extraordinary. So revered was she that the ancients called her the Tenth Muse, and her songs were passed down over centuries, inspiring generations of poets, none of whom managed to replicate her command of metre and sensual artistry.</p>
<p>How Sappho managed to acquire the educational acumen to compose her masterpieces has sometimes baffled both ancient and modern scholars. Women lived quiet and controlled lives in ancient Mediterranean cultures with limited, if any, access to formal education. If there were any perceived need to teach a girl basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic, it was only to equip her to run a household once she was married-off. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203718/original/file-20180129-100919-5wq49p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203718/original/file-20180129-100919-5wq49p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203718/original/file-20180129-100919-5wq49p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203718/original/file-20180129-100919-5wq49p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203718/original/file-20180129-100919-5wq49p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203718/original/file-20180129-100919-5wq49p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203718/original/file-20180129-100919-5wq49p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203718/original/file-20180129-100919-5wq49p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fragment of a Sappho poem, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: Part X.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even if a girl demonstrated extraordinary artistic skills, there was usually no avenue to express them, as the aspirations of women were limited to marriage and motherhood. Females who displayed a talent were normally suppressed and regarded with suspicion. Why? Because men were the artists, intellects and leaders. Ergo, for a woman to possess such qualities meant she also possessed a masculinity that set her apart from nature.</p>
<p>So, where did Sappho come from? What strange land or culture gave her birth and permitted her extraordinary skills to flourish? While we know little that is certain of her life, we do know Sappho was born in the city of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mytilene">Mytilene</a> on the Greek island of Lesbos, off the coast of Turkey in the late 7th Century BC. Mytilene appears to have been an enlightened society compared to other communities in Archaic Greece. Sappho’s works clearly indicate that women – at least from her privileged social standing – had access to a formal education that included training in choral composition, musical accomplishment and performance.</p>
<p>Her estimated birth date places her sometime after the composition and transmission of the works of the <a href="https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5942">Homeric poets</a>, which told the stories of the Trojan War and are preserved in the epics known as the Iliad and the Odyssey.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Love of women</h2>
<p>But Sappho was no epic poet, rather she composed lyrics: short, sweet verses on a <a href="http://inamidst.com/stuff/sappho/">variety of topics</a> from hymns to the gods, marriage songs, and mini-tales of myth and legend. She also sung of desire, passion and love – mostly directed towards women – for which she is best known. And it is for such poems that Sappho has come down to us as history’s first lesbian.</p>
<p>Was Sappho a lesbian? An answer depends on how one is defined. If love of women, even in a non-sexual sense, and an exclusive focus on the needs and lives of women define a woman as a lesbian, then – yes – Sappho was a lesbian. However, if a lesbian is defined more narrowly as a woman who has sex with another woman, then evidence to define Sappho as one is harder to establish.</p>
<p>Of course, these two binaries are inherently artificial and without nuance. They are also ignorant of social constructionism, which insists on understanding an individual in her or his historical environment, its values, and its cultural specificities. And, in the society of Archaic Mytilene, Sappho was not defined as a lesbian. After all, the word “lesbian” was not invented until the Victorian age. </p>
<p>Sappho’s contemporaries were not responsible for her synonymy with women-loving. That began with the Greeks and Romans of later centuries, who tended to interpret her skill as stemming from a perverted form of masculinity, which sometimes found expression in representations of her through the lens of a hyper-sexuality. Sappho’s reputation for sexual proclivity initially linked her to passionate relations with men, which later morphed into a stronger association with women.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203720/original/file-20180129-100926-r07120.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203720/original/file-20180129-100926-r07120.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203720/original/file-20180129-100926-r07120.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203720/original/file-20180129-100926-r07120.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203720/original/file-20180129-100926-r07120.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203720/original/file-20180129-100926-r07120.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203720/original/file-20180129-100926-r07120.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203720/original/file-20180129-100926-r07120.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alcaeus (left) and Sappho. Side A of an Attic red-figure kalathos, circa 470 BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Sappho mystique is further confounded by later testimonies such as the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia called the <a href="http://www.stoa.org/sol/">Suda</a> (or the Stronghold), which chronicled the history of the ancient Mediterranean. In one of two entries on Sappho, readers are informed that she was in love with a ferryman by the name of <a href="http://classics.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-4932">Phaon</a> whose rejection of her caused her to leap to her death from the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Leucas-island-Greece#ref1032937">Leucadian Cliff</a>.</p>
<p>This apocryphal history, which emerged in antiquity, went on to inspire artists, poets and playwrights for hundreds of years, despite the strange origins of Phaon as a figure of myth and legend. In the second entry on Sappho in the Suda, it is stated that Sappho was married, had a daughter by the name of Cleis, and was also a lover of women.</p>
<p>Turning to the fragments and scant number of complete poems from Sappho’s canon, there are references to her daughter, and to her close female companions – even her brothers – although the extant verses do not sing of a husband. In Fragment 132, for example, Sappho sings of Cleis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have a beautiful child whose face is like<br>
golden flowers, my beloved Cleis …</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Beauty, caresses and whispers</h2>
<p>Sappho, following the poetic traditions of Archaic Greece, tended towards floral and natural imagery to depict feminine beauty and youth. Elsewhere, she evokes images of garlands, scents and even apples to convey feminine sensuality. Hers was largely a world of beauty, caresses, whispers and desires; songs sung in honour of the goddess <a href="https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/goddesses/aphrodite/">Aphrodite</a>, and tales of mythical love.</p>
<p>In Fragment 16, arguably Sappho’s most sublime poem, fortunately well preserved albeit a little tattered, her definition of beauty anticipates the maxim of the philosopher, <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/protagoras/">Protagoras</a> that “man is the measure of all things”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some say a host of cavalry, others of infantry,<br>
and others of ships, is the most beautiful<br>
thing on the dark earth, but I say it is<br>
whatever a person loves.<br>
It is perfectly easy to make this<br>
understood by everyone: for she who far<br>
surpassed mankind in beauty,<br>
Helen, left her most noble husband<br>
and went sailing off to Troy with no thought at all<br>
for her child or dear parents,<br>
but [love?] led her astray …<br>
lightly …<br>
[and she]<br>
has reminded me<br>
now of Anactoria<br>
who is not here;<br>
I would rather see her<br>
lovely walk and the bright sparkle of her<br>
face than the Lydians’ chariots and armed<br>
infantry …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sappho’s definition of beauty – that which a person loves – privileges the individual over the community. She extends her dictum with the example of the mythical figure of <a href="http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/legend-helen-troy-002076">Helen of Troy</a>, renowned in antiquity as the most beautiful woman in the world. As testimony to Sappho’s unique interpretation of the story, she removes the standard figures of blame for Helen’s role in the Trojan War – <a href="https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Paris/paris.html">Paris</a>, the Trojan prince who abducted her or, in other versions, Aphrodite who forced her to go with him – and gives agency to Helen herself. In Sappho’s world, where love is all, it is Helen who decides to leave her husband and elope with Paris. Consequences be damned!</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204768/original/file-20180205-19915-1adwmog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204768/original/file-20180205-19915-1adwmog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204768/original/file-20180205-19915-1adwmog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204768/original/file-20180205-19915-1adwmog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204768/original/file-20180205-19915-1adwmog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204768/original/file-20180205-19915-1adwmog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204768/original/file-20180205-19915-1adwmog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204768/original/file-20180205-19915-1adwmog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cropped version of Raphael’s 1511 fresco Parnassus, showing the figure of Sappho.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sappho’s thoughts on love and desire extend to a personal reverie on a woman by the name of Anactoria. Sappho reveals that Anactoria is gone and is missed. She compares her, indirectly, to Helen and then evokes her beauty, namely her gait and her sparkling face. Sappho’s lyrics are sensual, gentle, intense. But they are also powerful, as she rejects the world of masculine warfare in preference for beauty and desire.</p>
<h2>‘A tremor shakes me’</h2>
<p>In another well-preserved piece, Fragment 31, Sappho evokes the sensations she experiences as a result of being seated opposite a beautiful woman:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He seems to me equal in good fortune to the <br>
whatever man, who sits on the opposite side to you<br>
and listens nearby to your<br>
sweet replies<br>
and desire-inducing laugh: indeed that<br>
gets my heart pounding in my breast.<br>
For just gazing at you for a second, it is impossible<br>
for me even to talk;<br>
my tongue is broken, all at once a soft<br>
flame has stolen beneath my flesh,<br>
my eyes see nothing at all,<br>
my ears ring,<br>
sweat pours down me, a tremor<br>
shakes me, I am more greenish than<br>
grass, and I believe I am at<br>
the very point of death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The power of the fragment, and indeed the meaning, are substantially derived from the Greek pronouns that denote three players in Sappho’s drama: Sappho, the man, and the woman. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204766/original/file-20180205-19929-playf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204766/original/file-20180205-19929-playf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204766/original/file-20180205-19929-playf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204766/original/file-20180205-19929-playf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204766/original/file-20180205-19929-playf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204766/original/file-20180205-19929-playf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204766/original/file-20180205-19929-playf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204766/original/file-20180205-19929-playf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Sappho by Léon Jean Bazille Perrault, 1891.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The man is god-like because he can be in the presence of the woman and remain unaffected. Sappho, in contrast, is a physical, mental and emotional wreck. The fragmented condition of the piece includes a few words that indicate at least one more stanza followed.</p>
<p>Such was the power of Sappho’s poem that it went on to inspire various intellectuals and poets who followed her. The Roman poet, <a href="http://www.negenborn.net/catullus/">Catullus</a> was so enamoured of Sappho’s work that he reworked Fragment 31, which he would have known in its complete form, into his own version that even rendered the original <a href="http://www.thepoetsgarret.com/2009Challenge/form2a.html">Sapphic hendecasyllabic metre</a> into Latin [Poem 51]. </p>
<p>Translating Sappho is no mean feat. Most of the work is in poor condition, pieced together by papyrologists to make readable texts for scholars to work from. Confronted with the <a href="https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/persephone/dialect-sappho-and-alcaeus-and-dialect-epigraphic-lesbian">Aeolic Greek</a> of the poet, printed neatly on a page, the translator is immediately drawn into emendations, conjectures, broken lines, missing words, incomplete words, hypothetical punctuation and, in short, a philological headache.</p>
<p>And, after persisting, the translator is always dissatisfied. It is impossible to capture the poet’s genius in another language, especially if the translator is simultaneously striving for a metrical equivalent. Catullus, too, was a poetic genius – an artist with complete control over style, metrics and meaning – yet he was humble enough not to replicate Sappho’s words but to imitate them, to compose a response to them, to make them his own as a homage to the Tenth Muse.</p>
<h2>New discoveries</h2>
<p>But despite the hurdles and the intellectual heartache, there are rewards in recent discoveries that continue to add more words, more lines, more stanzas and sometimes even new poems to the canon. In 2004, the discovery of piece of papyrus that completed an existing fragment - thereby making a new poem by Sappho - received <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jun/24/gender.books">international media coverage</a>. The process of repair resulted in <a href="http://kuny.ca/blogs/2010/85/poems/sappho-a-quintet-of-interpretations-of-a-new-poem-fragment-58/">Poem 58</a>, which deals with the themes of youth and old age. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204765/original/file-20180205-19933-1j7vr7q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204765/original/file-20180205-19933-1j7vr7q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204765/original/file-20180205-19933-1j7vr7q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204765/original/file-20180205-19933-1j7vr7q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204765/original/file-20180205-19933-1j7vr7q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204765/original/file-20180205-19933-1j7vr7q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204765/original/file-20180205-19933-1j7vr7q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204765/original/file-20180205-19933-1j7vr7q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sappho’s poem An Old Age (lines 9-20) LB 58. Papyrus from third century BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sappho mourns the passing of her youth, and reminds her audience of the myth of <a href="https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Tithonus/tithonus.html">Tithonos</a>, one of the few mortals to be loved by a goddess. Struck by the beauty of the young man, the goddess <a href="https://www.greekmythology.com/Titans/Eos/eos.html">Eos</a> asks Zeus to permit her to take the young man to live with her eternity. But Eos forgets to ask that Tithonos be granted a second gift: eternal youth. And so, she is left with a lover she quickly finds hideous and repellent, and Tithonos is left alone, trapped in a never-ending cycle of ageing.</p>
<p>More and more of Sappho is emerging. In 2013, more new fragments were discovered that have assisted in reconstructing existing pieces, and bringing to light four previously unknown pieces. One relatively complete poem, <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/new-poems-by-sappho/">Brothers Song</a> is the most significant of the find because of its hitherto unknown status. </p>
<p>The piece is also important because it further develops the image of the poet as an artist whose themes extended beyond the sensual and romantic. While previously extant fragments and details in works such as the Suda reference Sappho’s brothers, the poem provides more insight into Sappho’s familial world. While the first three stanzas are missing, there are five complete ones, the subject of which is a speaker’s concerns for the safe return of her two brothers, Charaxos and Larichos from a maritime trading venture.</p>
<p>The discoveries of this century are testimony to the fascinating and random nature of such finds. Rather than being hidden away in obscure manuscripts in dusty archives or included in elaborate scrolls, the fragments have sometimes come from less salubrious environments. </p>
<p>For example, much of Sappho’s work, along with pieces from poets and writers ranging from Homer, the Greek playwrights, Plato and Saint Paul came from <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oxyrhynchus-ancient-egypts-most-literate-trash-heap">Oxyrhynchus</a> – an ancient garbage dump in Egypt. </p>
<p>And while other pieces were preserved as quotations in more respectable formats, such as books on grammar, composition and philosophy, the 2004 poem originally came from the cartonnage of an Egyptian mummy. </p>
<p>Indeed, cartonnage – a plaster-like material made from material scraps, including papyri that was wrapped around mummified bodies and then decorated – has yielded rich results, Sappho’s fragments being just one example. Hopefully more garbage will be excavated to reveal more of Sappho’s poetic diamonds.</p>
<p><em>For a recent, reliable edition of Sappho’s works, see Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works, translated from the ancient Greek by Diane J. Rayor, with an introduction and notes by André Lardinois (Cambridge University Press).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90823/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sappho sang of desire, passion and love – mostly directed towards women. As new fragments of her work are found, a fuller picture of her is emerging, but she remains the most mysterious of ancient poets.Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/670612016-10-14T05:19:11Z2016-10-14T05:19:11ZExplainer: are Bob Dylan’s songs ‘Literature’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141738/original/image-20161014-3985-qoz7xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is Bob Dylan a poet in the great tradition of Sappho?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">In the days of Sappho, John William Godward</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bob Dylan has won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. The media has reported on this surprising choice by asking musicians, poets, and writers if Dylan’s songs are indeed “literature”. Irvine Welsh, the author of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/135836.Trainspotting">Trainspotting</a> (1993), made it clear on Twitter that he didn’t think they were: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you’re a ‘music’ fan, look it up in the dictionary. Then ‘literature’. Then compare and contrast.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So are song lyrics a type of literature or, more specifically, poetry? The English poet Glyn Maxwell thinks not. In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13236716-on-poetry">On Poetry</a> (2011), he writes that “Songs are strung upon sounds, poems upon silence”. Inhabiting silence makes poetry the harder and more important art form. Music, Maxwell writes, makes lyrics seem better than when they appear on the whiteness of the page.</p>
<p>But many don’t share Maxwell’s position. The critic Christopher Ricks has long championed Dylan’s song lyrics as poetry. In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198951.Dylan_s_Visions_of_Sin">Dylan’s Vision of Sin</a> (2004), he places Dylan’s songs in a poetic tradition that includes Tennyson and Donne.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141747/original/image-20161014-3969-z8ql7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141747/original/image-20161014-3969-z8ql7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141747/original/image-20161014-3969-z8ql7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141747/original/image-20161014-3969-z8ql7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141747/original/image-20161014-3969-z8ql7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141747/original/image-20161014-3969-z8ql7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141747/original/image-20161014-3969-z8ql7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141747/original/image-20161014-3969-z8ql7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bob Dylan: he belongs to the tradition of blues, country and Tin Pan Alley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ki Price/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both Maxwell and Ricks, however, ignore an ancient link between poetry and music. Ancient Greek poetry, such as the epics of Homer or the lyric poems of Sappho, were accompanied by a stringed musical instrument called the lyre. It is from the lyre that we get the words “lyric” and “lyrics”.</p>
<p>Perhaps not surprisingly, the Swedish Academy drew attention to this ancient link between poetry and music when announcing its decision. The permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, pointed out that Homer and Sappho were “meant to be performed, often together with [musical] instruments”.</p>
<p>There are more recent examples, of course. English lute songs of the 16th century set poetry to music. In the 19th century, Schubert and other composers wrote lieder (German “art songs”), which also set poetry to music.</p>
<p>But how accurate is it to compare Dylan with Sappho and composers of art song? Dylan belongs to the tradition of blues, country, and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Tin-Pan-Alley-musical-history">Tin Pan Alley </a>(the commercial American songwriters of the first half of the 20th century). He was central in the rise of “Americana”, a mix of folk and popular American musical forms that have little to do with “elite” musical forms such as opera and lieder.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141746/original/image-20161014-3953-1y9g2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141746/original/image-20161014-3953-1y9g2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141746/original/image-20161014-3953-1y9g2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141746/original/image-20161014-3953-1y9g2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141746/original/image-20161014-3953-1y9g2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141746/original/image-20161014-3953-1y9g2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141746/original/image-20161014-3953-1y9g2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141746/original/image-20161014-3953-1y9g2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bob Dylan took his stage name from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dylan has avoided taking on the mantle of “poet”. He once described himself as a “song ’n’ dance man”. Nevertheless, he famously took the name of a Welsh poet (Dylan Thomas) for his pseudonym. (Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman.) In addition, his songs, as Ricks and others have pointed out, take in numerous literary references, as seen in his many often-playful allusions to the Bible. And while his breakthrough in the early 1960s was as a “folk” singer, Dylan quickly became famous for the complexity and “poetic” quality of his lyrics.</p>
<p>So, do Dylan’s lyrics survive as poetry in the “silence” of the page? You can find out for yourself by reading the 960 pages of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22572014-the-lyrics">Dylan’s The Lyrics: 1961-2012</a> (2014). And you can compare his work with those of other song writers – such as Lou Reed, PJ Harvey, and Paul McCartney – whose lyrics have been published in book form.</p>
<p>Certainly, many people would argue that the lyrics of Dylan’s classic songs from the 1960s do survive as poetry. The strange, surreal, and often funny lyrics from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDgefX2sZRU">Highway 61 Revisited</a> (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966) arguably represent his peak as a lyricist.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG8Hi-fpyLI">Visions of Johanna</a>, from Blonde on Blonde, is a good example of the “literary” Dylan.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet? <br>
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it<br>
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it<br>
Lights flicker from the opposite loft<br>
In this room the heat pipes just cough<br>
The country music station plays soft<br>
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off<br>
Just Louise and her lover so entwined<br>
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Visions of Johanna contains some of Dylan’s most celebrated lyrics, and you can see why. It clearly works on the page.</p>
<p>But should we make the printed page the standard of what counts as “literature”? Bob Dylan’s songs are multimedia things. Lyrics are to songs what scripts are to plays or films. We can read scripts for enjoyment, and to better understand the productions they come from. But to pretend that the play or film is somehow secondary is clearly a mistake. Equally, we can’t ignore the music and performances that accompany Dylan’s song lyrics.</p>
<p>Dylan’s Nobel Prize shows up what the Swedish Academy has so far ignored in their award system: film, popular music, and the emerging forms of digital storytelling.
Perhaps what this Nobel tells us more than anything is that “literature” or “poetry” are categories of our own making. To move beyond the page seems long overdue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David McCooey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ancient poems were accompanied by a musical instrument called the lyre – from which we get the word ‘lyric’. ‘Literature’ and ‘poetry’ are categories of our own making - so moving beyond them in a major award seems long overdue.David McCooey, Professor of Writing and Literature, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226082014-01-30T15:45:11Z2014-01-30T15:45:11ZNew Sappho poems set classical world reeling<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40213/original/63zpkt56-1391089381.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C56%2C725%2C546&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not your average poet.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s a kind of literary miracle. Fragments of <a href="http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/Fragments/Obbink.Sappho7.draft.pdf">two new poems</a> by Ancient Greek poet Sappho have been discovered, making it possible for us to be among the first people to read these texts for more than 1,000 years. </p>
<p>To make matters still more wonderful, the discovery of these poems, first written in the seventh century BC, appears to have happened by pure chance. Apparently, the papyrus that preserved the poems belonged to an anonymous collector who had no idea what it contained, but (fortunately for the world) happened to take it to an expert, Dirk Obbink of Oxford University, who soon realised what he was looking at.</p>
<p>This is the sort of news classical scholars like me normally dream about. In fact, it is the realisation of a game that we spend a lot of time playing over glasses of wine at conference drinks parties: “If you could get back one lost text from any ancient author, which would it be?” And as often as not, Sappho will be the answer.</p>
<p>Why is her work so important? For a start, she’s a wonderful poet, as the ancients recognised when they called her <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/sappho">the Tenth Muse</a>. Though little remains of the nine books of her work that once existed, her poetry stands out for its vivid images, and in particular its descriptions of erotic desire. In one fragment she calls love “limb-loosening”, a “sweetbitter irresistible creepy-crawly”, while in one of her most famous poems she describes her feelings of jealousy and passion as the symptoms of a disease:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My tongue has broken, a light fire runs beneath my skin, my eyes see nothing, my ears ring, sweat pours from me, I tremble all over, I am paler than grass …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Quite apart from the quality of the poetry, Sappho also offers us something very rare: a genuine female voice from the ancient world. And of course, what her poems reveal about the expression of lesbian desire in that period make her a fascinating figure. Tantalising scraps survive that describe passionate feelings for different women: we learn of the “bright sparkle” of <a href="http://department.monm.edu/classics/courses/Clas230/MythDocuments/Sappho16.htm">Anactoria’s face</a>; of Atthis, who has deserted Sappho for a rival named Andromeda and of how Mnasadika has a better figure than <a href="http://sapphofragmentscompleted.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/fragment-82.html">Gyrinno</a>.</p>
<p>But who Sappho actually was, and what circumstances she composed her poems in, has been fiercely debated by scholars, since almost everything about her life is uncertain. Many anecdotes are told by ancient biographers, but separating fact from fiction is virtually impossible.</p>
<p>The best preserved of the new poems will open up these questions again, since it deals with two men named Charaxos and Larichos, names which other ancient writers tell us were those of Sappho’s brothers. Charaxos is described as a sea-trader, and the poem begins by expressing concern about whether he will return successfully from his latest voyage. It then moves on to a more philosophical section, discussing the role of the gods in protecting mortals, and ends by turning to the younger man, Larichos, and the hope that he will grow up to be a man and free his family from “heavy-heartedness”. </p>
<p>The poem as a whole creates a sense of anxiety. There is an implication that the future of both men hangs in the balance, and that the family is oppressed by some kind of crisis. This fits with other hints we have about poems in which Sappho describes problems with her brother, since the historian Herodotus mentions a poem in which Sappho ridiculed Charaxos for his foolish love-affair with a courtesan. </p>
<p>We also have a small scrap of another poem by Sappho in which an unnamed brother is described as having made mistakes and brought grief to his family. The new poem suggests Sappho wrote a sequence of poems about the careers and mistakes of her brothers, and show us that she is a poet interested in power, aristocratic prestige, and economics, as well as in personal love-affairs. Whether or not these stories reflect any kind of biographical truth, or are just a literary invention, is something that scholars will no doubt debate for years to come.</p>
<p>The discovery of an entirely unknown papyrus from around the third century AD also raises hopes as to what else might be left for us to find. There are thousands of unpublished papyrus fragments in university collections. Many of them come from Greco-Roman settlements in Egypt, where the dry sands preserved discarded books and papers that would have rotted in the damp soil of Europe. </p>
<p>Still, it’s rare to find something as substantial and as well preserved as this new discovery, and papyrologists often have to satisfy themselves with a few tattered lines. Undergraduates studying classical literature are often told the depressing statistic that at least 90% of it has been lost. </p>
<p>The thread that connects us to the ancient past is incredibly fragile, and it could be broken each time a medieval monk decided not to copy a text, a fire or flood destroyed a precious manuscript collection, or a book failed to make it onto a school syllabus. But if this papyrus survived, who knows what other lost gems may be waiting in libraries, archives, or tucked away in basements or attics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22608/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Swift does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s a kind of literary miracle. Fragments of two new poems by Ancient Greek poet Sappho have been discovered, making it possible for us to be among the first people to read these texts for more than 1,000…Laura Swift, Lecturer in Classics, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.