Poem 9

My love invites

Welcome all not

Together we feast

In praise for Hera

Marriage she blossoms and dooms

But bless us she will, as long as

We dine to her glory

We drink to her beauty

We succumb to her power

 

Diagram takeaway:

After reading poem 31, I was able to separate the poem into three distinct categories that are all intertwined; love, power, and fear.

I was able to deduce that love has the godly power to do extraordinary things to a person. Like “put the heart in my chest on wings”, mute the tongue, blind the eyes, cause drumming in the ears, and make fire race under the skin. The breaking out in a cold sweat, and the feeling of death are also felt by the narrator who apparently fears the side effects of love. Love is a power wielded by people and causes great joy, but can also cause fear.

I was also able to imagine the ending of the poem as a book end to the beginning.  If the poem infers that man is equal to the gods when dealing in matters of love, then the end would justify the means of going through all these fluctuations in feelings and fear. We see this at the end of the poem; “but all is to be dared because even a person of poverty”, which I would then attempt to paraphrase what the ending could be if completed, ‘can wield the power of gods. All he needs to do is love and be loved.’

 

 

It is actually quite difficult to understand something that was written a long time ago and especially when the existing parts are only in fragments. But what I did notice is that this poem mentions worshipping of Greek gods and goddesses as well as love and suffering of mankind a lot. Since it was written around 600 BC, it is not unusual to Thus, a decent approach to read this poem is to know the gods and goddesses that are mentioned, such as Aphrodite, Zeus, Hera, Helena, and Nereids. Aphrodite is the goddess of love and fertility so the first part might be talking about love. In the middle, she asks for help from Nereids, sea nymphs in Greek mythology, to help her brother to arrive home safe, which means that her brother is sailing through the ocean. Such that knowing these gods and goddesses can help you understand what is going on at least a little. Another approach is to notice the words that are frequently used to get a general understanding like we did in class.

I found it incredibly difficult to truly understand the meaning behind any one poem fragment. What I did to alleviate the burden of rigorously breaking down the context of all fragments was to dissect ones that I thought could stand alone, but also look at the fragments as a whole.
Seeing the repetitive nature of the referencing of gods and goddesses, as well as nature and music, gives us an understanding of the beliefs and hobbies Sappho may have been interested in.

For example, in the first line her calling on Aphrodite the greek goddess of love, portrays that the rest of the poem would be about matters of love. I did this with some other fragments of Sappho’s writing as well to allow me to have some sort of direction while reading, but had most success with the first fragment.

In the first fragment, calling out to Aphrodite for help shows that Sappho believes in the power of gods and goddesses, and has “now again” reached out to Aphrodite before for her help. She shows her respect for Aphrodite by saying “o blessed one” and references the power and respect for Zeus when saying “left your fathers golden house and came”. She is obviously very respectful and believing in the gods and goddesses, something very common at the time, and the handing off of fate to the gods can be something that can be projected onto the remaining fragments.

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.

Whenever reading a text that was written B.C. (specifically between 595-630 B.C.) in the case of Sappho it is hard to be able to imagine her thought process in her poems considering civilization has become beyond advanced in the thousands of years since the time she wrote her works of writing. For example, in the poem Sappho has a line where she says “And listening left your father’s golden house and came, yoking your car”. In modern society somebody mentioning a car would be something very common but in 600 BC what exactly does a car look like? For somebody like me who isn’t familiar with what forms of transportations were made available during her time, so to help me clearly understand the setting my strategy was to look up what modes of transportations were present during the time. What I found was wagons were common for people of regal status and considering she mentions she “left her fathers golden house” it would be safe to assume that the person she is referring to in the story is of regal status as I could imagine her fathers home is not literally made of gold but more representing status. The strategy of putting myself in the shoes of somebody who lived B.C. when times were much more simplier to help interpret potentially what Sappho’s was looking to say. As well as looking to paint the setting of what things potentially looked like back in 600 B.C.  by looking up pictures and readings of things Sapphos mentions in her poem such as the “car”, homes. the holy temple etc. to help get a more clear understanding of Sappho’s vision was the approach I used to help make sense of what Sappho’s was looking to get at in her poem.

Before reading any piece of literature it is important to understand that each piece is a piece of art, it explains meaning differently with the aid of words. Each piece is written by an artist with a purpose to ultimately convey a message. Therefore before reading the piece, I go into it with an open mind, it is important to be accepting of all thoughts and styles to ease the understanding. Another strategy is to break down the artists’ background. A lot of the times there is an introduction explaining the personal life and type of artist they are, this gives a better understanding when approaching the reading so I can connect the words to the author’s character and find the underlying meaning. When it came to Sappho’s Fragments, I have never seen a poem styled like it so I automatically read the background. That is where I found useful information about the artist and was able to create expectation and strategies how to read and understand. Moving forward I read the piece in its entirety, then went back to try and break it down. To break it down my ideas where to find the strengths in the poems, those I consider to be the parts of repetition and subjects. It is important for me to find the subject and point of view so I can read from a perspective to connect with the subjects ideas and feelings. In this poem there was also an extreme use of brackets, these I used as a tool. For example, some lines start with and open or closed bracket, I tried to find first where it was opened and connected it to the first ending bracket, that is where I thought the idea would be closed.

The meaning behind any poem is interpreted based on many tone, meter, and language. Deciphering an author’s message normally involves looking at a combination of these things. When only fragments of a poem are known, the task of interpretation becomes that much more challenging. The poems of Sappho, written thousands of years ago, pose exactly this problem. When reading these poems, I had to devise a strategy in order to try and understand Sappho’s message. When poems contain missing pieces, context becomes an important guide. Some of Sappho’s poems contain more complete lines, and those lines are critical to inferring the rest. For example, Sappho writes in her 16th piece, “…Not possible to happen… to pray for a share…toward… out of the unexpected.” Alone, these lines mean nothing. The previous lines, however, convey a solemn tone. Sappho then writes, “…reminded me now of Anaktoria who is gone. I would rather see her lovely step and the motion of light on her face than chariots of Lydians or ranks of the footsoldiers in arms.” Sappho is comparing seeing the face of a lost loved one to a picture of war. The lines that follow should expand on this idea. Sappho may be hoping for a miracle, to see the face of Anaktoria once again. The key is trying to decide whether the poem’s mood is dark or uplifting, tragic or joyful. From there, educated guesses can be made from the fragments that would otherwise be incomprehensible.

I have two strategies for reading fragments of Sappho poems. The first one is to know her background so you can better interpret her poems though her frame of reference. I tried to understand her frame of reference from orator Libanius saying she is a lesbian. Even though that’s pretty general it helps me understand her poems that are written about her affection towards women, When she refers about women she does not mean it in a friendship, but as lovers. Doing further research about Sappho’s life she is recognized as a symbol of love and desire between woman. My second strategies was looking for patterns in the text. I was looking for words that have more then one meaning or in common or repeating, for example; On page 29 there is also a pattern with the words step and motion because both is the first actions of war, chariot and footsoldiers are a part of a war. Also page 43 I see the pattern of Hermione , Helen, women all have the same thing in common feminine words and then the word you is repeated to talk about a woman. The words Desire and all night long are used in the lines that gives me a clear indication of her love for women in a sexual manner. To make sense of the fragments i would combine the lines that contained the patterned words to form a more descriptive sentence than if read alone. I combined the lines for when I look at you /such a Hermione/ and to yellowhaired Helen I liken you. By combining these lines the word “you” can be defined as a female who looks like Hermione or a yellowhaired Helen.

Dear students, I’m looking forward to our semester together. Here you will find basic information about our course (the syllabus and reading schedule), as well as additional readings in PDFs, assignments, and your own and classmates’ blog posts.

PG