Only Lesbos, a dream-like island in the Aegean Sea, endowed with its heights of Leucas, overlooking its splendid Gulf of Kallonis, with its little rivers Kalami and Krioneri, the torrent Xalantra and its large Milopotamos, with enchanting places like Methymna, Thermi, Antissa and the celebrated Mytilene, could give birth in the village of Eresos to the most romantic poetess of all the times; there was born Sappho in early 600 B.C., on this island famous for the beauty of its women, perhaps the prettiest of the whole Ancient Greeek world.
She was naturally endowed with a particular ability of seeing what many others could not see, she was extremely acute in noticing details and nuances that everyone would have instead overlooked, she was extraordinary gifted in reading situations and people and to transform feelings and emotions into verses, actually often even in a few impressive lines, like very few other artists I can think of, or perhaps just one…
Everything in Sappho’s poetry is most definitely personal, deep, and insightful. Every single word is carefully chosen and weighted in order to convey a clear reflection of her inner soul immersed into an aura of refined art and polished beauty. Altogether a gift for which she herself thanked the Muses:
Theirs is all the merit, if clever
I can claim myself in something,
because their own art they gave me as a gift
Sappho was definitely the expression of the ancient Greek temperament and pragmatism, though influenced by Ionian tones and oriental sensibility:
To die is awful: this is
what the Gods actually think.
Or else they would be mortal too.
I love the way she stated quite firmly and clearly her life’s priorities:
Some say the fairest thing on the black earth
is a host of horsemen,
Some say a host of infantry,
others say a fleet of ships
but for me
It is my beloved one.
And additionally:
Beauty I have served,
could there had been
anything else
greater than that?
Thus undoubtedly her supreme goals in life were love and art. Love with its lust, illusions, bliss and disappointments to be combined with her art in pursuing beauty; and this continuous osmotic process became Sappho’s raison d’etre. Living is feeling and feeling is living. Art and love: a continuous transfusion of her life into her verses and a magic blend of lines and rhymes into her life:
She honoured you like a goddess
And delighted in your choral dance.
Now she is pre-eminent among the ladies of Lydia
As the rose-rayed moon after the sinking of the Sun
Surpasses all the stars and spreads it’s light upon the sea
And the flowers of the fields
To beautify the spreading dew, freshen roses
Soft chervil and the flowering maillots …..
Restless, she remembers gentle Atthis –
Perhaps her subtle judgement is burdened
By your fate …..
And more straightforward and effectively:
Love shook my heart
Like the mountain wind
Falls upon trees of oak ….
Or like in this wonderful statement of devotion; this declaration of love, that certainly needs no comment at all:
Awed by her brightness
Stars near the beautiful moon
Cover their own shining faces
When she lights earth
With her silver brilliance
Of love ….
Furthermore Sappho wrote about love not simply and solely by portraying the idyllic moments of contemplation and rhyming, but also the most ardent and passionate feelings and instincts that only desire can originate:
Once again, desire –
That looser of limbs and bitterly sweet –
Makes me to tremble
You are irresistible ….
And again:
I wish this night would never end
I wish this could become two nights in a row
Only another character outstands for her plainly affirmed choice, and for her firm devotion to love and art: the singer Floria Tosca – protagonist of the celebrated Puccini’s Opera. How desperately, and yet delicately, she sings when, in one of the most touching arias ever, she complains about her sad, terrible destiny after an entire life she had dedicated only to art and love. Nothing else vile and earthy had ever appealed her at all, and this notwithstanding her fate has not been just with her – but alas! We all know that unluckily life is not supposed to be necessarily fair:
Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore,
Non feci mai male ad anima viva!
Con man furtiva
Quante miserie conobbi, aiutai.
Sempre con fe’ sincera
La mia preghiera
Ai santi Tabernacoli salì,
Sempre con fe’ sincera
Diedi fiori agli altar.
Nell’ora del dolore perché Signore,
Perché me ne remuneri così?
Diedi gioielli
Della Madonna al manto,
E diedi il canto agli astri, al ciel,
Che ne ridean più belli.
Nell’ora del dolor
Perché Signore,
Perché me ne remuneri così?
Even when Sappho got older (in those days a woman in her fifties was already aged) she never regretted or felt any remorse for a life devoted to art and love, if not lamenting the forces that were inevitably abandoning her:
Age seizes my skin and turns my hair
From black to white:
My knees no longer bear me
And I am unable to dance again
Like a fawn.
What could I do? I am not ageless:
My youth is gone.
Red-robed Dawn, immortal goddess,
Carried Tithanus to earth’s end
Yet age seized him
Despite the gift from his immortal lover ….
I love delicate softness:
For me, love has brought the brightness
And the beauty of the sun ….
Finally, I love to believe that Sappho from the heights of her poetry and with the wisdom of all her experience wishes us all what she considers the most important accomplishment on earth:
May you sleep safe on the chest
of your tender life-companion…
STOA POIKILE 