The Sappho Project

this blog is part of a project for my gay and lesbian literature class. it's goal is to examine Sappho's influence on literature and culture

[sapphoproject]

is there any book that you would recommend that include most of sappho's poetry or focuses on her poetry?

I personally love Anne Carson’s translation “If not winter” (because it is beautiful and like the price of a regular paperback) but that is missing some of the newly discovered poems (but those are pretty findable online) 

[the-knights-who-say-book]

Anacreon of Teos encountering a lesbian

[badgersprite]

Anacreon, they’re Lesbians

[sapphoproject]

I got my girlfriend a fucking beautiful bouquet of broccoli. The florist looked highly disturbed.

[rebel-rebel]

Oscar Wilde saying his favourite poetess was Sappho was gay/lesbian solidarity

[blackgirlclassicist]

[moon-sappho]

there really is no way to describe that Gay Sadness™ when you hear your family being homo/transphobic

[moon-sappho]

it’s such a fucking wakeup call on how i am in a bubble and my own imaginary world where its okay and normal to be gay, and then reality hits you in the face

[sapphicisms]

sappho, trans. anne carson

[thoodleoo]

honestly one of the most amazing things about sappho is that even after a good 2500 years she’s still one of the most relatable poets to ever live with such smash hits as “I’m Too Gay To Work,” “I’m So Gay I’m Gonna Die,” and “@Aphrodite Bitch Are You Gonna Help Me Get A GF Or Not”

[sapphoproject]

Me: Sappho? I love her, especially the way she [incomplete fragment, untranslatable]

[korrainasamisjacket]

I never really understood mean girls’ “too gay to function” until I was too gay to function

[221cbakerstreet]

“too gay to function”™

- Sappho, ~500 BC, “I cannot weave – slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl.”

[infinite-iterations]

Three Ways Through Sappho

Carson: 

no: tongue breaks and thin/ fire is racing under skin/ and in eyes no sight and drumming/ fills ears and cold sweat holds me/ and shaking/ grips me all, greener than grass/ I am and dead–or almost/I seem to me. 

Miller: 

my tongue grows numb; at once a subtle/ fire runs stealthily beneath my skin:/ my eyes see nothing, my ears/ ring and buzz,/ the sweat pours down, a trembling/ seizes the whole of me, I turn paler/ than grass, and I seem to myself/ not far from dying. 

Dubnoff: 

but my tongue is frozen in silence;/ instantly a delicate/ flame runs beneath my skin;/ with my eyes I see nothing;/ my ears make a whirring noise./ A cold sweat covers me,/ trembling seizes my body,/ and I am greener than grass./ Lacking but little of death do I seem.

[aikaleegrave]

[from translation by anne carson] // expansions on sappho’s fragments

[lesbianbroccoli]

[thegreatsapphicvein]

[Caption: a photo of broccoli with the words, “Bisexual women and lesbians used to give broccoli to the woman they were wooing, symbolizing their “Sapphic” desire. In a poem, Sappho described herself and a lover wearing garlands of broccoli. The giving of broccoli was popular from the 1910s to the 1950s”.]

[succubarbie-deactivated20190205]

*hitting the ceiling with a broom and screaming at aphrodite* where is my gf!! where is she!! the love of my life!! where!!

[kallistoi]

which sappho poem is this

[thoodleoo]

sorry professor, i didn’t do my homework because i was too busy thinking about that gay shit

[thoodleoo]

it was weaving, but you make a good point

put off your chores to do gay shit, it’s what sappho would want

[negativohollow]

[thoodleoo]

this is a conversation, or a poem of sorts, i suppose, that i imagined between sappho and a girl realizing that she loves another girl. it’s a bit of a personal project, i guess; all of sappho’s part in the conversation is taken from the fragments of her poetry, and it’s supposed to symbolize how girls who love girls can find someone like them in sappho.

the lines are, in order, from fragments 138, 118, 57, 156, 104b, 15, 36, 31, 96, 47, and 126. all of those are the lobel-page numberings, with the exception of 15, which is bergk’s numbering and which the lobel-page collection omits.