Hegel remarked truly that "in the odes of Sappho
the language of love rises indeed to the point of lyrical inspiration,
yet what she reveals is rather the slow consuming flame of the blood
than the inwardness of the subjective heart and soul." Nor was Byron
deceived: "I don't think Sappho's ode a good example." The historian
Bender had an inkling of the truth when he wrote (183):
"To us who are accustomed to spiritualized love-lyrics after
the style of Geibel's this erotic song of Sappho may seem
too glowing, too violent; but we must not forget that love
was conceived by the Greeks altogether in a less spiritual
manner than we demand that it should be."
That is it precisely. These Greek love-poems do not depict romantic
love but sensual passion. Nor is this the worst of it. Sappho's
absurdly overrated love-poems are not even good descriptions of normal
sensual passion. I have just said that they are purely physiologic;
but that is too much praise for them. The word physiologic implies
something healthy and normal, but Sappho's poems are not healthy and
normal; they are abnormal, they are pathologic. Had they been written
by a man, this would not be the case; but Sappho was a woman, and her
famous ode is addressed to a woman. A woman, too, is referred to in
her famous hymn to Venus in these lines, as translated by Wharton:
"What beauty now wouldst thou draw to love thee? Who
wrongs thee, Sappho? For even if she flies, she shall
soon follow, and if she rejects gifts shall yet give,
and if she loves not shall soon love, however loth.
Pages:
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
1123
1124
1125
1126
1127
1128
1129
1130
1131
1132
1133