Second poem fragment from third section (Greek original not given in my edition but included anyway for completeness) plus analysis.
| Οὐδ᾽ ἴαν δοκίμοιμι προσίδοισαν φάοσ ἀλίω ἔσσεσθαι σοφίαν πάρθενον ἐισ οὐδένα πω χρόνον τοιαύταν. | I truly do believe no maiden that will live To look upon the brilliance of the sun Ever will be contemplative Like this one. |
| ‘I truly do believe no maiden that will live’ may simply mean: I think no girl will ever be as sophos (clever) as this one.’ However, ‘To look upon the sun’ (a stock epic and tragic phrase meaning simply ‘to live’) raises the register, and the lines may express admiration for a girl who has already come to appreciate all that the sun symbolizes in the preceding poem. The sun here contains, in the abstract, qualities of shiny luxury items – glitter and glamour. | |
Translated poetry is always a bit problematic; you just can’t get the nuances exactly as intended by the original writer – especially when the original writer wrote in a dead language more than two and a half thousand years ago, and most of her known poetry survives only in fragments. But Poochigan seems to me to have made a good effort here. I’m not familiar enough with other translations to make a firm judgement, but I also appreciate his explanatory notes for each poem.
Most of the fragments are short, and have been preserved because of a single arresting image or turn of phrase. A couple of the longer ones jumped out at me. There’s an intense moment of jealousy (pp 22-23 here) when she sees the girl she likes talking to (?flirting with?) a man, and her heart throbs and her tongue “shatters”. The next poem (pp 24-25) is a break-up story, of the last conversation with your lover when you both realise it is over. The langauge is ancient but the sentiments are eternal.
The (very short) book ends with two poems which were very recently discovered on scraps of papyri, one about Sappho’s brother not yet having returned from a sea voyage, one a brief entreaty to Aphrodite about love. Poochigan does not mention it, because the scandal had not yet broken, but both of these passed through the hands of the notorious Dirk Obbink, so their provenance is very murky indeed; on the other hand, scholars do seem united in believing that these are genuine Sappho texts. It is awful and shameful that Obbink muddied the waters so much, both in this case and in the more notorious cases of the New Testament manuscripts.
Anyway, you can get Stung With Love here.
