My ]heart
Is]absolutely
broken ]I can
feel every beat]
Your love ]would be for me
And the Gods would use the sun]to shine in answer
The rays of light on your]face
But the sun did not shine]
Your love ]having been stained
For your love is not for me]

I chose this fragment(4) because I liked how it began with “heart” and ended with “having been stained” with the remains of the piece. I think that the idea of a heart being stained has to do with love and heartbreak and I find that to be a common theme in Sappho’s writing. I think that the remaining words are the bones of a beautiful piece.
Creating the diagram in class helped me further understand the last fragment a lot more. Reading the piece once left me thinking that Sappho was directly addressing the person she loved. But with further consideration, when breaking it down I realized that Sappho had been talking to/about the person who was speaking to the one that she loved. She was praising this person for being so strong and having the courage to face the one she loved face to face and not faltering because of their beauty and grace. She even compares the person to a god, claiming that she would have died had she been in the same situation. The person she loved made her feel ill and weak, and made her “green,” which I interpreted as either green with envy or green, as in physically ill. The diagram allowed me to separate the fragment into pieces that were easier to interpret.

Reading anything from more than a couple hundred years ago is difficult already, but adding the fact that large pieces of the text are missing makes it even more difficult to fully grasp, understand and analyze the text. I believe that one of the best tactics to understand something with so many parts missing like Sappho’s writing is using context clues. By reading all of the words that aren’t missing there are some words and ideas that can be used to ‘fill in the blanks.’ For example, it can be interpreted that on page 4, the lines that include “heart” and “having been stained,” are most likely going to have relation to pain, suffering and love, and once you continue to the next page the context supports that idea. I also believe that it is important to understand who the other is and what the civilization was like during the time the piece was written. In this case, Sappho was a (possibly lesbian) poet who lived on the island Lesbos. She was alive around 600 B.C. At the time, it was not uncommon for homosexuality to be present, so it would not be surprising had she been lesbian. Her history is important to understand also where her mind could have been and what reflections and connections she was making based on her life and the society she was living in. And lastly, I also think that for difficult readings like these, Google is your best friend. Not as a easy way out, but as a way to find and read other people’s ideas and grasp the reading more and be able to form your own opinion.