The Poetry of Sappho
Event Details
SALON DETAILS:
- Facilitated by Mark Cwik
- 4-week virtual study via Zoom, Wednesday evenings, 6.00-8.00 pm, 2, 9, 23 February and 2 March 2022
- £120 for four meetings, including notes and resources
- Recommended editions: If Not, Winter: Fragments Of Sappho, translated by Anne Carson
in UK: (Virago, 2003) ISBN-13: 978-1844080816
in Canada: (Vintage Canada, 2003) ISBN-13: 978-0676976083
in US: (Vintage, 2003) ISBN-13: 978-0375724510
The poetry of Sappho has entranced readers and listeners from the time she wrote in the 6th century BCE. In Classical Greece, her poems were recognised as among the finest ever written, and Plato is reputed to have called her the Tenth Muse. Though few of her poems survive complete, in Sappho’s poems and fragments we hear the rare voice of a woman from the ancient world, exploring with a wonderful sensitivity, simplicity and intimacy the nature of love, desire, marriage, shame and time.
Over the four weeks of this study, we will look closely and carefully at the poems of Sappho, using the dual-language edition of Canadian classicist and poet Anne Carson. Carson’s straightforward, yet elegant, translations bring across without ornamentation the lightness of Sappho’s verse. We will read selected poems from other poets of the period, as well, to get a feel for the context in which Sappho wrote. And, to explore the challenges of translating Sappho, we will examine one or two her shorter poems in multiple translations — and in the original Greek. No experience with Greek necessary!
Solon of Athens heard his nephew sing a song of Sappho’s over the wine,
and since he liked the song so much he asked the boy to teach it to him.
When someone asked why he said, “So that I may learn it then die.”—Aelian, Fragment 187/190
If you have any questions about this study, please contact the facilitator, Mark Cwik.
