“Du bist wie eine Blume
So hold und schön und rein:
Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmuth
Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.”
Near as English is to German, incomparably more easy as it is to render
German into English than Greek into English, it may be declared that no
English rendering of this verse conveys, or ever will convey, exactly
the impression of the German original.
In respect of mere musical sound, what other words could run precisely
like those of Coleridge at the opening of _Kubla Khan_, or like
Shelley’s “I arise from dreams of thee”? The case is exactly the same
when we turn to a Greek lyric. Alcæus writes four words which mean
simply “I felt the coming of the flowery spring”; but no juxtaposition
of English words yet attempted to that effect can recall to the student
of Greek the impression of
ἦρος ἀνθεμόεντος ἐπάϊον ἐρχομένοιο.
It is necessarily so with Sappho. She is an embodiment of the typical
Greek genius, which demanded the terse and clear, yet fine and noble,
expression of a natural thought, free, as Addison well says, from
“those little conceits and turns of wit with which many of our modern
lyrics are so miserably infected.” True Greek art detests pointless
elaboration, strained effects, or effects which have to be hunted for.
The Greek lyric spirit would therefore have loved the best of Burns
and would have recognised him for its own. But you cannot translate
Burns. Neither can you translate Sappho. Nevertheless one attempt may
be nearer, less inadequate, than another. Let us take the hymn to
Aphrodite. It is quoted by the critic Dionysius for its “happy language
and its easy grace of composition.”
The first stanza contains in the Greek sixteen words, big and little.
In woeful prose these may be literally rendered “_Radiant-throned
immortal Aphrodite, child of Zeus, guile-weaver, I beseech thee, Queen,
crush not my heart with griefs or cares._”
In turning Greek poetry into English, and so inserting all those little
pronouns and articles and prepositions with which a synthetic language
can dispense, it may be estimated that the number of words will be
greater by about one half,--the little words making the odd half. But
Ambrose Philips makes thirty-four words out of those sixteen--
“O Venus, _beauty of the skies,
To whom a thousand temples rise,
Gaily false in gentle smiles_,
Full of love-perplexing wiles;
O Goddess, from my heart remove
The wasting cares and pains of love.”
The italics should suffice for criticism upon the fidelity of this
“translation.” Mr. J. H. Merivale, though more faithful to the material
contents, finds forty-three words necessary--
“Immortal Venus, throned above
In radiant beauty, child of Jove,
O skilled in every _art of love
And_ artful snare;
_Dread power, to whom I bend the knee,
Release_ my soul and set it free
From _bonds_ of _piercing_ agony
And _gloomy_ care.”
We may perhaps without presumption ask whether the sense is not given
more faithfully, in a more natural English form and rhythm, and in
a shape sufficiently reminiscent of the original stanza, in the
twenty-three words which follow--
“Guile-weaving child of Zeus, who art
Immortal, throned in radiance, spare,
O Queen of Love, to break my heart
With grief and care.”
Keeping to the same principles of strict compression and strict
simplicity we may thus continue with the remainder of the poem--
“But hither come, as thou of old,
When my voice reached thine ear afar,
Didst leave thy father’s hall of gold,
And yoke thy car,
And through mid air their whirring wing
Thy bonny doves did swiftly ply
O’er the dark earth, and thee did bring
Down from the sky.
Right soon they came, and thou, blest Queen,
A smile upon thy face divine,
Didst ask what ail’d me, what might mean
That call of mine.
‘What would’st thou have, with heart on fire,
Sappho?’ thou saidst. ‘Whom pray’st thou me
To win for thee to fond desire?
Who wrongeth thee?
Soon shall he seek, who now doth shun;
Who scorns thy gifts, shall gifts bestow;
Who loves thee not, shall love anon,
Wilt thou or no.’
So come thou now, and set me free
From carking cares; bring to full end
My heart’s desire; thyself O be
My stay and friend!”
The perfection of the Greek style is fine simplicity. We must not
say that this characteristic perfection is more absolutely displayed
in Sappho than in Homer or Sophocles. It is, however, illustrated by
Sappho in that region of verse which pre-eminently demands it, the
lyric of personal emotion. There may be, with different persons and
at different dates, wide differences of interest in regard to the
themes and structures of the epic, the drama, or the triumphal ode.
Most forms of poetry must some time cease to find full appreciation,
because of the peculiar ideas and conventions of their time and place.
But the poetry of the primal and eternal passions of the human heart,
of its experiences and its emotions, carries with it those touches
which make the whole world kin. Love and sorrow are re-born with every
human being. Time and civilisation make little difference. But those
touches are only weakened by far-sought words and elaborate metres, by
recondite conceits and ambitious psychology.
Perhaps the woman who seeks to come nearest to Sappho in poetry is Mrs.
Browning, but she falls far short of her predecessor, not only through
inferior mastery of form, but also through an excessive “bookishness”
of thought. The poet moves by--
“High and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted.”
In the case of songs whose theme is what Sappho calls the “bitter
sweet” of love, their proper style has been determined by the gathering
consensus of humanity, and it is a style simple but powerful, with a
magic recurring in cadences easy to grasp and too affecting to forget.
It is the style of “Ye flowery banks o’ bonnie Doon,” not of the Ode on
St. Cecilia’s Day. Sappho’s songs fulfil all the conditions, and even
of her fragments that is true which her imitator Horace said of her
completer poems, as he more happily possessed them--
“Still breathes the love, still lives the fire
Imparted to the Lesbian’s lyre.”
The virtue of Sappho is supreme art without artificiality, utter truth
to natural feeling wedded to words of utter truth. Let Pausanias,
that ancient Baedeker, declare that “concerning love Sappho sang many
things which are inconsistent with one another.” She is only the more
truthful therefor. No human heart, frankly enjoying or suffering the
“bitter-sweet” moods and experiences of love, ever was consistent.
Consistency belongs only to the cool and calculating brain. If love is
cool and calculating, it is not love.
How much Sappho may have written on other subjects than this, the most
engrossing of all, we shall perhaps never know. But we may be sure that
one of the most priceless poetical treasures lost to the world has been
those other verses which, to quote Shelley on Keats, told of--
“All she had loved, and moulded into thought
From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound.”
There is, we may add, one quality besides beauty in verse which can
never be analysed. It is charm. Sappho is pervaded with charm. And this
suggests that we may conclude by quoting the judgment of Matthew Arnold
upon one defect at least which must make Heine rank always lower than
Sappho:--
“Charm is the glory which makes
Song of the poet divine;
Love is the fountain of charm.
How without charm wilt thou draw,
Poet! the world to thy way?
Not by thy lightnings of wit--
Not by thy thunder of scorn!
These to the world, too, are given;
Wit it possesses and scorn--
Charm is the poet’s alone.”