10/07/2026 • jumps on the bandwagon. so we’re doing double dactyls now i guess
Yooooo this is incredible
This is a loose translation of Sappho 31, done as a series of double dactyls. That in and of itself is impressive enough, but! The double dactyl is a really great way to render the meter of the original Greek. See, Sappho often wrote in a format named for her, Sapphic Stanzas, which, to quote Wiki, “consists of stanzas of three long followed by one short line”—just like a double dactyl!!
hiii and thank you :-) but let it be known: this is actually a translation of catullus 51, catullus' translation of sappho 31 into latin!
catullus 51 is also in sapphic stanzas, so your point about the form (entirely unintentional on my part!) still stands (although the lines of a sapphic stanza do have a specific metrical pattern that is very different to a double dactyl).
i'm being picky about pointing this out because i get people asking if my translations of cat51 are sappho fairly regularly, and this is a good opportunity to talk about some of the differences between the poems. this translation specifically also includes things that are in catullus but not sappho. not an exhaustive list (there are many small differences) but For Example:
the insistence on the man sitting next to the speaker's beloved being really super godlike and also help is it sacrilegious to say that. in sappho 'that man seems to me equal to a god' is one line. in catullus you have that same line and then also like. 'is it divinely acceptable for me to say that the guy could actually defeat the gods.' i really like the use of the word 'fas' (divinely acceptable but also speakable!) because of the turn later in the poem where the speaker (haha) becomes speechless. at the same time: in sappho the (unnamed female) beloved speaks to and laughs at/with the man next to her. in catullus the beloved (lesbia) laughs but does not speak. but arguably catullus is using the triangulation with lesbia to speak to sappho......
'stealing my senses' in my translation is a direct translation of 'eripit sensus mihi' in catullus, which has no equivalent in sappho. sappho does talk about her heartbeat though, and catullus doesn't. i put the bit about the heart skipping a beat in this translation on a whim powered by um. catullus' second stanza is missing its final line, which by comparison with sappho is usually reconstructed as 'vocis in ore' ([there is nothing left of] voice in my mouth). but Who is to say that the missing line of catullus wasn't about his heartbeat? well, me for one. i think the existing reconstruction is good and it's unlikely to be anything else. BUT i like the idea of the poem as a heart, and the missing line as a skipped beat in the pulse of the poem. but i also didn't want a hole in the metre/rhyme scheme of the double dactyls. so i kind of ended up closer to the text of sappho again by trying to translate the imagined similarity inside the difference of the Hole in the text. huh
sappho's fourth stanza (and fragmentary fifth) is completelyyy different from catullus' fourth! sappho's is like. i have died. badly. but it's very much focused on her internal state. catullus' speaker ends by talking generally about 'otium', which is pleasure yes but it's also like. 'not doing the work expected of catullus as an upper class roman man'. and then this sudden swerve to looking back on history thing in the literal final two lines of the poem. i think it would be a stretch to go as far as like, 'catullus' equivalent to sappho feeling like she has died is that the love/self-destruction he experiences around lesbia is powerful enough to prevent him from acting as his gender/class 'should,' and that's kind of city-destroyingly bad to him.' but it's also not not that, yknow? i didn't really do much with this aspect of cat51, but it is a pretty significant departure from sappho 31!
for a lot of other translation choices here though: you have to understand also that i translated this in like half an hour.
