![]() Most of her poems were meant to be sung by one person to the accompaniment of the lyre (hence the name, “ lyric” poetry). Sappho is not only one of the few women poets we know of from antiquity, but also is one of the greatest lyric poets from any age. Her poems about Eros, however, speak with equal force to men as well as to women. Because social norms in ancient Greece differed from those of today and because so little is actually known of her life, it is difficult to unequivocally answer such claims. Her reputation for licentiousness would cause Pope Gregory to burn her work in 1073. This characterization held fast, so much so that the very term “lesbian” is derived from the name of her home island. Three centuries after her death the writers of the New Comedy parodied Sappho as both overly promiscuous and lesbian. In 1914, in Egypt, archeologists discovered papier-mâché coffins made from scraps of paper that contained more verse fragments attributed to Sappho. In 1898, scholars unearthed papyri that contained fragments of her poems. Merely one twenty-eight-line poem of hers has survived intact, and she was known principally through quotations found in the works of other authors until the nineteenth century. Her poems were first collected into nine volumes around the third century BC, but her work was lost almost entirely for many years. It is unclear whether she invented or simply refined the meter of her day, but today it is known as “Sapphic” meter. She was known in antiquity as a great poet: Plato called her “the tenth Muse” and her likeness appeared on coins. The history of her poems is as speculative as that of her biography. Other historians posit that she died of old age around 550 BC. A legend from Ovid suggests that she threw herself from a cliff when her heart was broken by Phaon, a young sailor, and died at an early age. Sappho’s school devoted itself to the cult of Aphrodite and Eros, and Sappho earned great prominence as a dedicated teacher and poet. She spent most of her adult life in the city of Mytilene on Lesbos where she ran an academy for unmarried young women. Evidence suggests that she had several brothers, married a wealthy man named Cercylas, and had a daughter named Cleis. She was born around 615 BC to an aristocratic family on the Greek island of Lesbos. One of the earliest images of Sappho is from c.470 BC, it is an example of Greek red-figure pottery and in it she is depicted holding a lyre and plectrum, turning herself to listen to Alcaeus.Only a handful of details are known about the life of Sappho. Since ancient times Sappho has inspired poets and artists, being one of the few women to be pictured on pottery which is a proof of her recognition in antiquity. And for me, this is the beauty of her poetry. ![]() Even tough people associate her poems with the love between two women, her poetry aspires to make people think about love experience and about the sensations it brings, sensations and feelings that transcend gender. According to scholars, her poems could be considered as “gender fluid” or “blind gender”, which means that the important is not who feels love, but the feeling itself. ![]() This happens because Sappho played with the voice of the poem, forcing us to question “who is speaking? male or female? who is the beloved? male or female?”. But they are presented as they could be applied to everyone. ![]() In Sappho’s poetry the most important subjects are love and sex, they are re everywhere on her poems. Part of one poem survives on a potsherd, it is known as fragment 2. Even tough most of her work is lost, these little fragments are remarkable, those fragments are preserved in manuscripts of other ancient writers or in papyrus. Her poetry made her famous in antiquity, but today we only have small fragments of her poetry. ![]() It is believed that Sappho lived around 630 and 570 BC and that she was born in a wealthy and aristocratic family of the island of Lesbos. Her poems about love and desire have influenced the history of our poetry, some scholars believed that is impossible to express love without Sappho’s influence. Sappho is one of the most famous poets of ancient Greece, despite the little information we have of her life, it is believed that she lived in the 6 th century BC. ![]()
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