Rose de la pudeur que l’amour a cueillie,
Votre premier éclat me sera-t-il rendu?
La Virginité.
Ingrate, vous l’avez perdu;
Vous l’avez perdu pour la vie.
The sixth ode is simply Boileau’s translation of the Aphrodite hymn. The
thirteenth, addressed to Atthis, combines two fragments:
La lune au front d’argent et sa cour lumineuse
Echappent à mes yeux;
D’un voile plus obscur la nuit silencieuse
Enveloppe les cieux.
Heure que j’attendais, qui dut m’être si chère,
Tu t’es évanouie, et je suis seule, ô dieux!
The fifteenth ode is a dialogue between Alcaeus and Sappho, and the note
interprets as Sappho’s refusal of Alcaeus the famous fragment of which a
Latin version is given:
Si nobis amicus es, torum accipe junior;
Non enim sustinebo consvescere cum seniore,
Dum junior sim.
Other writers of the end of the eighteenth century who paid tribute to
Sappho were Bernis in his ode _Harmonie_, Lebrun in his epigrams, Parny
in his _Journée champêtre_, La Harpe, who knew only ode II, and M.
Legouvé who writes:
Vois Sapho; par Phaon trahie
Elle rendit son art confident de ses pleurs
Et merita la gloire en chantant ses malheurs.
Other French translators of about this time are Regnier Desmarais,
Ricard, Langeac, Deguerle, Marchena, Blin de Sainmore, Abbé Batteux, and
Gorsse in _Journal des Muses_ III.
In the nineteenth century the echoes and translations of Sappho are even
more numerous. The first of the neo-classicists, André Chénier, follower
of Boileau, owed much of his enthusiasm for the Greeks to his Greek
mother, and imitated Sappho in the ode which he wrote for his love, the
ode so admired by Alfred de Musset, the charming poet who also knew the
sufferings of love:
Fanny, l’heureux mortel qui près de toi respire
Sait, à te voir parler, et rougir, et sourire
De quels hôtes divins le ciel est habité ...
He also used the fragment about Virginity (Latouche edition I, p.
64). Jacques Delille, the famous translator of Virgil, and the great
representative of didactic and descriptive poetry, in his _Poésies
fugitives_ (1802) made a good literal translation. In the same year
Vanderbourg published some verses camouflaged as the _Poésies_ de Madame
Clotilde de Surville, who was supposed to have lived 1405-1495. He gives
a translation of the famous second ode, of which I quote only the last
stanza:
S’ennuagent mes yeux: n’oy plus qu’ennuy, rumeurs,
Je brûle, je languis; chauds frissons dans ma veine
Circulent: je pâlis, je palpite, l’haleine
Me manque, je me meurs.
The two great initiators of Romanticism also knew Sappho. Madame de
Staël wrote (1811) a drama published 1821, _Sapho_, in which Phaon is
divided between love for two different women. Chateaubriand in 1809 in
_Les Martyrs_[174] makes Cymodocée, who was on the point of becoming a
Christian and already betrothed to Eudore, a fervent disciple of Christ,
say to her fiancé: “Dis-moi, puisqu’on peut aimer dans ton culte, il
y a donc une Vénus chrétienne?... Le colère de cette déesse est-elle
redoutable? Force-t-elle la jeune fille à chercher le jeune homme dans
la palestre, à l’introduire furtivement sous le toit paternel? Ta
Vénus rend-elle la langue embarrassée? Répand-elle un feu brûlant, un
froid mortel dans les veines?” Chateaubriand adds here (and also in
_Revolutions Anciennes_) Boileau’s translation and in the same place
he cites the passage from Racine’s _Phèdre_ which we have quoted, p.
163. In 1805 L. Gorsse published _Sapho, poëme en dix chants_.[175] He
defends Sappho’s character (eleven years before the German Welcker) but
believes that her love for Phaon was “un fait incontestable, dont tous
les genres de littérature ont le droit, de s’emparer.” He speaks of the
Abbé Barthélemy, who in _Voyage d’Anacharsis_ paints “les transports et
l’ardeur de Sapho;” also of Lantier, _Voyages d’Anténor_, who had placed
Sappho in such a bright light that he has brought out new beauties in
the subject, which had not been seen previously. Both quote Boileau’s
translation. Gorsse also praises, as possessing a grace which men
can never attain, the fragments of poetry which two ladies, Mesdames
de Beaufort-d’Hautpoul and Caroline Wougne, published under the name
of _Sapho_. On pages 181-187 (Vol. II) he quotes a romance by each,
attributed to Sappho, which deals with her love for Phaon. In that of
Caroline Wougne Sappho meets Phaon on his return from Sicily during a
stormy night in a country house where he is asking for hospitality.
Gorsse has also consulted Madame Pipelet de Salm, who presented Sappho
on the lyric stage with grace and dignity. He himself unites the legends
of her love with those of her writings, and drawing also on Tibullus,
Propertius, Virgil, Lucretius, and especially Ovid, makes Sappho speak
as poetess and lover fifty expanded elegies. There are five in each of
the ten cantos besides a prologue and epilogue. In view of the fact that
none of Sappho’s elegies are extant, the reconstruction, though fanciful,
is extremely interesting. The first five songs picture Sappho’s desire,
contentment, happiness, fear, and calmness. Phaon is jealous of Alcaeus
and proposes to leave Lesbus to dwell in the Vale of Tempe, but Sappho
asks Phaon to share in her poems, which will immortalize their love, and
then reveals to him the origin of music. The second five represent her
suspicion, grief, torment, and pursuit of Phaon to Sicily, her despair
and the Leucadian Leap, after she sees Phaon making eyes at Telesilla.
In the fifth elegy of the first canto is an adaptation of Sappho’s
second ode, in which the first verse addressed to Phaon is taken without
acknowledgment from André Chénier’s _Fanny_. Phaon seems to be the
principal figure, and the legends about him are tremendously expanded
with the help of many Greek myths. As in so many other writers he
becomes a great athlete and must overcome his opponents in the stadium.
The Italian author of _Avventure di Saffo_ had done likewise and made
Phaon win with the same throw which Ulysses used in Homer. The _Voyages
d’Anténor_ had made Phaon first appear to Sappho after winning in the
gymnasium. Likewise Gorsse has Sappho see Phaon for the first time in the
stadium at Mytilene. There she describes the impression Phaon made on
her, when he won the athletic prize. All these writers forget, however,
that women in Sappho’s day were not allowed to witness the nude athletic
contests. Gorsse shows his wide acquaintance with the ancient accounts
of Sappho when in the fourth elegy of the second canto he mentions: “un
foible enfant, Cléis, qui t’est si chère!” With only a few errors he
represents all the many friends and pupils of Sappho,—to whom he gives
classical epithets,—as helping Sappho to preserve Phaon’s love. He is
as keen as the modern critics when he says in a note that Erinna cannot
be the famous poet, but he is wrong in picturing _Brune Andromède_ and
_Blonde Gorgo_ as friends or pupils rather than rivals of Sappho.
O vous, pourtant, qui faites mes délices,
Du noeud sacré qui vous attache à moi,
J’attends encor les plus tendres offices,
Je les réclame au nom de votre foi.
Blanche Cydno, délicate Amynthone,
Douce Pyrine, intéressante Athis,
Brune Andromède, agréable Gellone,
Blonde Gorgo, séduisante Mnaïs!
Par vos attraits, par vos grâces naïves,
Auprès de moi captivez mon amant;
Pour qu’il y trouve un doux enchantement,
Soyez sans cesse à lui plaire attentives.
Vous dont Euterpe anime les accens,
Belle Mégare, adorable Gyrinne,
Docte Gougile, ingénieuse Erinne,
Pour le charmer adressez-lui vos chants.
Vous qui brillez dans l’art de Therpsycore,
Aimable Eunique, élégante Anagore,
Devant ses yeux, avec agilité,
Formez les pas qu’aime la volupté.
Toi, Damophile, ornement de la Grèce,
Dis à Phaon qu’au milieu des neuf Soeurs
J’ai quelquefois, sur les bords du Permesse,
Respiré l’air qu’y parfument les fleurs.
Et toi, surtout, sensible Télésile,
Accorde-moi ton bienfaisant secours,
Pour conserver Phaon à mes amours,
Que ton esprit en moyens soit fertile.
Dans ses regards interroge ses goûts,
De ses desirs occupe-toi sans cesse,
Pour que mon coeur par tes soins les connoisse,
Et qu’aisément il les prévienne tous.
Parmi les sons dont retentit ma lyre,
Répète-lui ceux que Vénus m’inspire;
Et, par l’objet dont il est adoré,
Qu’il ait l’orgueil de se voir honoré.
Toutes, enfin, ô mes tendres amies!
A mon amant composez une cour;
Le doux lien dont nous sommes unies
S’affermira par les noeuds de l’amour.
The second elegy in the fourth canto has a pretty imitation of the famous
third fragment. Sappho dissuades Phaon from his jealousy of Alcaeus,
which of course is not an ancient legend, in the following words:
Comme un léger brouillard fuit aux rayons du jour,
Que ton soupçon expire à la voix de l’amour!
Sois sans crainte, Phaon! Contre un sexagénaire
Est-ce à toi de lutter dans l’art heureux de plaire?
A toi dont la jeunesse et les riants attraits
Du chantre de Lesbos effacent les succès,
Autant qu’on voit Diane effacer la lumière
De ces astres dorés dont se pare la nuit,
Quand l’éclat argenté du char qu’elle conduit
Annonce que des cieux elle ouvre la barrière?
In the third elegy of the same canto is an elaboration of the fragment
on the power of love, the bitter-sweet irresistible creature, and in
the first elegy of the fifth canto there is an echo of the fragment
about wealth without virtue. In long notes on the second elegy of the
fifth book Gorsse cites de Sivry’s or Sauvigny’s verse translations or
paraphrases in French, and Latin versions of a score of other fragments
and of the Pelagon and Timas epitaphs. In the first elegy of the sixth
canto the Sapphic symptoms of love are used:
Je sens mes cheveux se dresser,
Mon sang brûler d’une flamme rapide,
Ou dans mes veines se glacer.
The third elegy of the same canto is an adaptation of the hymn to
Aphrodite and in the notes are given Latin versions by Gorsse himself,
Elias Andreas, and Birkow.
Not many have written elegies on Sappho, but Gorsse was followed in
1812 by Touzet, who wrote _Sapho, poëme élégiaque_. It was in 1816 that
Lamartine wrote his mediocre imitation of Sappho’s great hymn, calling it
_L’élégie antique_. It is in the cold restored pseudo-classical style of
Casimir Delavigne:
Dieux, quels transports nouveaux! ô dieux, comment décrire
Tons les feux dont mon sein se remplit à la fois?
Ma langue se glaça, je demeurai sans voix,
Et ma tremblante main laissa tomber ma lyre.
Here is Lamartine’s own comment: “Un soir, en rentrant d’une de ces
excursions, pendant laquelle nous avions relu la strophe unique, mais
brûlante, de Sapho, sorte de Vénus de Milo, pareille à ce débris
découvert par M. de Marcellus, qui contient plus de beauté dans un
fragment qu’il n’y en a dans tout un musée de statues intactes, je
m’enfermai, et j’écrivis le commencement grec de cette élégie ou de cette
_héroïde_....” In one of his _Nouvelles Méditations poétiques_ (not
printed till 1823) he describes the suffering of the abandoned Sappho and
her last, farewell words to the world and to life, before her suicide;
the last line is: “adieu chère Lesbos à Vénus consacrée.” Lamartine was
followed in his idea of Sappho by Verlaine (1844-1896), the prince of
the French poets after the death of Leconte de Lisle. Verlaine speaks of
Sappho as “furieuse, les yeux caves et les seins roides.” In writing to
his friend Virieu, April 8, 1819, Lamartine mentions the fact that he has
planned an opera on Jephté and adds that he is thinking of writing one
on Sappho, which, however, was never written: “J’en ai un qui me brûle,
c’est une Sapho, superbe sujet d’un opéra pareil.”
In 1815 came _Sapho_, poème en trois chants par C. T. In 1820 Lazare
Carnot published an excellent verse translation of the second ode, _Les
Symptomes d’Amour_, and in 1827 E. Veïssier-Descombes, a translator
also of Anacreon, published his classic rendering. In 1828 followed the
poetical version of Cousin and Girodet; in 1835, Breghot du Lut., in
prose and poetry; in 1836 Alexandre Hope’s _Sapho_, a poem of about ten
pages; in 1843, prose renderings in Michaud’s _Biographie Universelle_;
in 1847, Marullot et Grosset, in verse. In 1842, in the _Cariatides_,
Théodore de Banville, one of the last of the Romantic poets, that Greek
“clown” of France, wrote these verses on Sappho:
Et toi, grande Sappho, reine de Mitylène!
Lionne que l’Amour furieux enchaîna.
Près de la mer grondante, avec son Erinna,
Elle enseignait le rhythme et ses délicatesses
Au troupeau triomphal des jeunes poétesses,
Et glacée et brûlante, au bruit amer des flots
Elle mêlait ses cris de rage et ses sanglots.
O toi qui nous atteins avec des flèches sûres,
De quels feux tu brûlas et de quelles blessures
Son chaste sein meurtri par le baiser du vent!
Mais comme rien ne meurt de ce qui fut vivant,
Sa colère amoureuse et de souffrance avide,
Plus tard devait dicter sa plainte au fier Ovide,
Qui, choisissant l’amour, eût la meilleure part,
Et frémir dans les vers d’Horace et de Ronsard.
Baudelaire (1821-1867), the morbid realist, uses the story of the
Leucadian Leap in his _Lesbos_:
—L’oeil d’azur est vaincu par l’oeil noir que tachète
Le cercle ténébreux tracé par les douleurs
De la mâle Sapho, l’amante et le poète!
Plus belle que Vénus se dressant sur le monde.
In a literary fragment (1845), entitled _Sapho_, he refers to a
famous and remarkable tragedy on Sappho which was to be published
soon afterwards by Arsène Houssaye. He quotes some verses which are
reminiscent of Sappho’s second ode:
Oui, Phaon, je vous aime; et, lorsque je vous vois,
Je perds le sentiment et la force et la voix.
Je souffre tout le jour le mal de votre absence,
Mai qui n’égale pas l’heur de votre présence;
Si bien que vous trouvant, quand vous venez le soir,
La cause de ma joie et de mon désespoir,
Mon âme les compense, et sous les lauriers roses
Etouffe l’ellébore et les soucis moroses.
In 1873 we have a translation by Etienne Prosper Dubois-Gucham, _La
Grecque Pléiade_; in 1878 that of P. L. Courier; in 1882, the verses
of de la Roche. About this time J. Richepin published in his undated
romance, _Grandes Amoureuses_, prose translations of several fragments,
and in 1889 Paul Lenois made a prose version. In 1884, Alphonse Daudet,
after writing a novel on French life and customs as a warning to young
men, and picturing a courtesan carried upstairs in the arms of her lover,
gave the courtesan and the novel the title of _Sapho_. Soon afterwards
appeared anonymously Madame E. Caro’s _Sapho_. In 1895 were heard the
songs of Pierre Louys, who in _Les chansons de Bilitis traduites du Grec
pour la première fois_[176] transforms Mytilene into a modern Sodom and
Sappho into the mistress of a band of _hetaerae_. He pretends that he is
translating Greek poems that were found in excavating the poetess’ grave
on Amathus. He even represents them as published by a Doctor Heim of
Leipzig. Further to mystify the reader Louys tells of some of the poems
that have not been translated and marks restorations in the text, as if
these songs had actually been found marred and mutilated and as if the
archaeologist had restored the missing words. He even uses, to give a
Greek atmosphere, many Greek expressions such as _Kypris Philommeïdès_.
Many of his Greek forms, such as Dzeus, are absurd. Charming as are these
_Bucoliques en Pamphylie_, _Élégies à Mitylène_, _Épigrammes dans l’île
de Chypre_, they belong rather to pornographic literature, as does his
romance called _Aphrodite_, in which the pseudo-Lesbian idea of two girls
marrying one another is to be found. Such bits of perverted Sapphism
as appear in many other French writers have no place in the literature
of the real Sappho, who can now, after the discovery of all the new
papyri, easily be distinguished from the Sappho of romance and legend.
Unfortunately the last French translation by Meunier (1911) does not
include these recent relics.
One of the latest French imitations of Sappho is by that great reviver
of Aristophanes, Maurice Donnay, whose comedies have attracted such
large audiences in Europe. In his _Lysistrata_ (Act I, scene II), Donnay
makes the pretty Hirondelle as she walks along the shore of the violet
sea recite to the accompaniment of the music of the waves the song which
divine Sappho composed for the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis, although we
have no evidence for such a song:
Rhodopis, ton amant est comme
Un dieu: son bonheur me courrouce.
Quand je pense que c’est un homme
Pour qui ta voix se fait si douce,
Et que c’est Charaxos, mon frère,
Qui possède ta chair superbe,
Et ta Beauté dont j’étais fière,
Je deviens plus verte que l’herbe.
Mes yeux se troublent, mes oreilles
S’emplissent de murmures vagues
Et de grandes rumeurs pareilles
Au bruit que fait le choc des vagues.
Et voilà qu’une sueur froide
Inonde tout mon corps qui tremble,
Puis, je reste sans souffle, et froide
Ainsi qu’un cadavre, il me semble
Que je meurs! que je meurs!
This, of course, is an echo of the famous second ode of Sappho which has
influenced all ages and countries and continues so to do. Hardly a year
passes without some translation or reminiscence of it in Greece or Italy,
in France or Germany, in England or America.
XI. SAPPHO IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
Sappho was little read in England and as a writer of poetry probably did
not exist, except for a few Englishmen of great learning, before the
sixteenth century. Even in the seventeenth century Thomas Stanley, a man
of considerable culture, omitted Sappho from his translation of Anacreon
(1650). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the imitations limit
themselves to the Sapphic metre,[177] with the exception of the famous
line in Ben Jonson’s pastoral drama, _The Sad Shepherd_ (Act II, 2):
“But best the dear good angel of the spring, The nightingale,” and of
Sir Philip Sidney, who seems to have been entirely forgotten by modern
writers on Sappho. But it is interesting to note, in the movement led
by Gabriel Harvey in pre-Shakesperian days to write English poetry in
classical metres, that sapphics were attempted by Harvey’s friend, Sir
Philip Sidney, in _The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia_, which was begun
in 1580. One stanza will suffice to show how strained were the strophes
thus manufactured:
If mine eyes can speak to do hearty errand,
Or mine eyes’ language she do hap to judge of,
So that eyes’ message be of her received,
Hope we do live yet.
It is rather strange that Sir Philip did not use this metre in his
translation of the second ode of Sappho, but employed anacreontics.
My Muse, what ailes this ardor?
Mine eyes be dim, my limbs shake,
My voice is hoarse, my throat scorch’d,
My tongue to this my roof cleaves,
My fancy amaz’d, my thoughts dull’d,
My heart doth ake, my life faints,
My soul begins to take leave.
This being a wholly iambic measure does not appear so exotic as the
sapphics. Indeed, the youthful experimenter achieved a noteworthy success
in rhythmic effect by ending each line with a foot composed of one strong
syllable.
Most of the knowledge there was of Sappho in the Elizabethan and
Jacobean times, however, seems to have been superficially based mainly
on the Ovidian legend. Such a wonderful story told by such a wonderful
story-teller interested the early classicists in England, and the Phaon
myth permeated much literature.
Ben Jonson (_Under-Woods_, No. 45) says:
Did Sappho, on her seven-tongu’d lute,
So speak (as yet it is not mute)
Of Phaon’s form?
Thomas Nashe in his novel, _The Unfortunate Traveller_ (1594), is a
typical example: “Golde easily bends, the most ingenious minds are
easiest moved, _Ingenium nobis molle Thalia dedit_, said _Psapho_ to
_Phao_.” It is just possible that Robert Herrick (1591-1674), who
published so many poems to or upon _Sapho_, the name of his own love,
knew from Athenaeus the fragment (E. 62) “much whiter than an egg,” when
he published in _Hesperides_, No. 350 (1648) the verses:
Fain would I kiss my Julia’s dainty leg,
Which is as white and hair-less as an egge.
John Lyly made Sappho an allegorical image of the Virgin Queen: “I will
ever be virgin,” says Sappho. The play, _Sapho and Phao_, was produced
in 1584 in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. Lyly makes Sappho a princess
of Syracuse and takes many liberties with the historical Sappho. Lyly’s
Sappho resembles the Queen, and Phao is supposed to be the Duke of
Leicester, but in such an allegory all reference to the Leucadian Leap
has to be omitted, and there are no echoes of Sappho’s own fragments.
When Phaon comes, Sappho soliloquizes: “Wilt thou open thy love? Yea? No,
Sapho, but staring in his face till thine eyes dazzle and thy spirits
faint, die before his face; then this shall be written on thy tomb,
that though thy love were greater than wisdom could endure, yet thine
honour was such as love could not violate.” Aphrodite interrupts their
love and Phaon says: “This shall be my resolution, where-ever I wander,
to be as I were kneeling before Sapho; my loyalty unspotted, though
unrewarded.... My life shall be spent in sighing and wishing, the one for
my bad fortune, the other for Sapho’s good.” Even Robert Burton in that
famous storehouse of quotations, his _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621), does
not know Sappho as a poetess, and refers only to the _Leucata Petra_:
“Here leaped down that Lesbian Sappho for Phaon on whom she miserably
doted, hoping thus to ease herself and to be freed of her love pangs.”
The first English translation of Sappho’s second ode (1652), quoted by
Edwin Cox, is John Hall’s version in his translation of the _Treatise an
the Sublime_. He does not mention Sidney, and Addison did not know even
Hall’s translation or that of Pulteney, for he says that the versions by
Ambrose Philips in 1711 were the first. In 1675 Edward Phillips in his
_Theatrum Poetarum_ devoted a chapter to Ancient Poetesses and Sappho.
He knew the tradition of a second Sappho, but quoted no fragments. In
1680 Pulteney, who had a knowledge of small Latin and less Greek, gave
a filtered translation from the French of the _Treatise on the Sublime_
and the second Sapphic ode. In 1695 appeared another translation by an
unknown author, but it was not till 1711 that any detailed study of
Sappho began. In that year, in the Spectator (nos. 223, 229, and 233),
Joseph Addison discussed Sappho at length. Even then we have only the
namby-pamby verses of Ambrose Philips, so overpraised by Addison. Soon
followed translations by Herbert in 1713, in his edition of Petronius
(pp. 325-328); and in 1719, by Green. In 1735 John Addison published
the works of Anacreon with Sappho added, in which the _Loeb Classical
Library_ idea of putting the Greek text on one page and the translation
on the opposite page was anticipated. Philips’ version of the Aphrodite
hymn was forty-two lines long, but Addison gives one of his own in
twenty-eight lines, which is the number in the original Greek. His own
rendering is as good as that of Philips, which perhaps is damning it with
faint praise. His translations of the eight fragments which he includes
are also not remarkable. In 1748, we have Tobias Smollett’s version of
the second ode in _Roderick Random_. About 1745, Mark Akenside in his
tenth _Ode on Lyric Poetry_ based a stanza on Sappho’s first ode. In
1760, “a Gentleman of Cambridge” published his verse translations. In
some publications he is considered to be different from Francis Fawkes,
who undoubtedly is the gentleman referred to. In 1768 appeared E. B.
Greene’s free and mediocre translation, in which Aphrodite’s doves become
“feathered steeds,” and which ignores the Sapphic metre. In 1796, Mrs.
Mary Robinson published _Sappho and Phaon_, but these sonnets of hers are
not, as she claims, legitimate descendants of the real Sappho.