Poems & Fragments: new expanded edition

By Sappho

This second, expanded edition of Josephine Balmer’s classic translation of the Greek poet Sappho has new, recently-discovered fragments, including the Brothers Poem, the Kypris Song and the Cologne Fragment. In a new essay on these additions she discusses the issues raised in the translating – and in some cases retranslating – of these fragmentary and ever-shifting texts. Poems & Fragments is now the only complete, readily-available translation in English of Sappho’s surviving work.

Sappho was one of the greatest poets in classical literature. Her lyric poetry is among the finest ever written, and although little of her work has survived and little is known about her, she is regarded not just as one of the greatest women poets, but often as the greatest woman poet in world literature.

She lived on the island of Lesbos around 600 BC, and even in her lifetime, her work was widely known and admired in the Greek world. Plato called her 'the tenth muse', and she was a major influence on other poets, from Horace and Catullus to more recent lyric poets. Yet in later centuries, speculation about her sexuality has tended to diminish her poetic reputation. One medieval pope considered her so subversive that her poems were burned.

Some of her poems were written for the women she loved, but her circle of women friends and admirers was not unlike Socrates' circle of followers. She may have been a lesbian in the modern sense, or she may not, but to call her a lesbian poet is an over-simplification. What remains is her poetry, or the fragments which have survived of it, and her intense, sensuous, highly accomplished love poems are among the finest in any language.

First published in 1984 and revised in 1992, Josephine Balmer's edition brings together all the extant poems and fragments of Sappho. In a comprehensive introduction, she discusses Sappho's poetry, its historical background and critical reputation, as well as aspects of contemporary Greek society, sexuality and women.

'Balmer's translations are the best I have read to date. She gives me the trace of a spirited, deed-minded, direct, guileless soul, and she modestly fulfils Boris Pasternak's demand that “ideally translation too will be a work of art; sharing a common text, it will stand alongside the original, unrepeatable in its own right” ' - Christopher Logue, Literary Review

'If Josephine Balmer's new translations can bring Sappho's sensuous clarity, her genius, back into prominence, they will perform an invaluable service not only to us, but to poetry.' - Harriett Gilbert, Sunday Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Aug 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781780374581

Sappho

Mary Barnard (1909–2001) was a prominent American poet, translator, and biographer with many books in her repertoire. She studied Greek at Reed College and began to translate at Ezra Pound's suggestion in the 1930s. Her Assault on Mount Helicon: A Literary Memoir was published by the University of California Press in 1984. Two years later she received the Western States Book Award for her book-length poem, Time and the White Tigress. She also published prose fiction and a volume of essays on mythology as well as the original lyrics gathered in Collected Poems.  

Book preview

SAPPHO

POEMS & FRAGMENTS

translated by Josephine Balmer

This second, expanded edition of Josephine Balmer’s classic translation of the Greek poet Sappho has new, recently-discovered fragments, including the Brothers Poem, the Kypris Song and the Cologne Fragment. In a new essay on these additions she discusses the issues raised in the translating – and in some cases retranslating – of these fragmentary and ever-shifting texts. Poems & Fragments is now the only complete, readily-available translation in English of Sappho’s surviving work.

Sappho was one of the greatest poets in classical literature. Her lyric poetry is among the finest ever written, and although little of her work has survived and little is known about her, she is regarded not just as one of the greatest women poets but often as the greatest woman poet in world literature.

She lived on the island of Lesbos around 600

BC

, and even in her lifetime her work was widely known and admired in the Greek world. Plato called her ‘the tenth muse’, and she was a major influence on other poets, from Horace and Catullus to more recent lyric poets. Yet in later centuries, speculation about her sexuality has tended to diminish her poetic reputation. One medieval pope considered her so subversive that her poems were burned.

Some of her poems were written for the women she loved, but her circle of women friends and admirers was not unlike Socrates’ circle of followers. She may have been a lesbian in the modern sense, or she may not, but to call her a lesbian poet is an over-simplification. What remains is her poetry, or the fragments which have survived of it, and her intense, sensuous, highly accomplished love poems are among the finest in any language.

‘Balmer’s translations are the best I have read to date. She gives me the trace of a spirited, deed-minded, direct, guileless soul, and she modestly fulfils Boris Pasternak’s demand that ideally translation too will be a work of art; sharing a common text, it will stand alongside the original, unrepeatable in its own right’ –

CHRISTOPHER LOGUE

, Literary Review

Cover illustration: Athenian Cup from Chiusi (Etruria), Girl going to wash: early 5th century

BC

(Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels; photo: S. Purin).

SAPPHO

POEMS

& FRAGMENTS

TRANSLATED WITH

AN INTRODUCTION BY

JOSEPHINE BALMER

Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Sappho and Translation

The New Fragments: Texts, Translations and Retranslations

POEMS AND FRAGMENTS

I.Love

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

II.Desire

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

III.Despair

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

IV.Marriage

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

V.Mother and Daughter

74

75

76

77

VI.The Goddess of Love

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

VII.Religion

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

VIII.Poetry and the Muses

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

IX.Nature and Wisdom

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

X.The New Fragments

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

Glossary

Chronological Table

Key to the Fragments

Select Bibliography

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sappho: Poems & Fragments was first published by Brilliance Books in 1984. In 1996 Bloodaxe Books published a revised and corrected edition, for which Josephine Balmer re-wrote much of the introductory material and corrected and altered her translations of the poems. This was reprinted in 1999 and 2014.

This second, expanded edition (2018) includes Josephine Balmer’s translations of eight recently discovered fragments not included in the previous editions along with a new essay, ‘The New Fragments: Texts, Translations and Retranslations’.

INTRODUCTION

Sappho and her Critics

After his nephew had sung one of Sappho’s songs over the wine, Solon of Athens, the son of Execestides, told the lad to teach it to him immediately. When someone asked why he was so eager, Solon replied, ‘So that I may die knowing it.’¹

Solon’s instantaneous and uncomplicated delight in Sappho’s poetry typifies the attitude of the Ancient Greeks to her work. She was considered one of their finest poets, an integral part of their cultural history. Her face was engraved on coinage, her statue erected, her portrait painted on vases. Many ancient commentators praised her literary genius, while Plato, among others, called her ‘the tenth Muse’.²

For the modern reader Sappho’s poetry can be far more difficult. Over the centuries much of her work has been lost and those poems which have survived are fragmentary – a few lines quoted in passing by later writers or pieced together from scraps of papyri excavated in Egypt. Often there is little indication of the context of the piece, of what precedes or follows. Greek literary traditions can also be alienating; the composition and performance of poetry was very different as, more importantly, were its social function and the expectations of its audience.

The greatest problem Sappho’s poetry presents is its eroticism – a problem because so many translators and commentators have found it so. Sappho’s reputation has changed since Solon’s time; today her name is synonymous with ‘unnatural sexual relations between women’, as the OED puts it, rather than artistic excellence. Many studies of her work are preoccupied with her sexuality, with discussing whether she was ‘morally pure’ or a ‘disturbed pervert’, whether she was merely inclined towards ‘inversion’ or whether she practised it as well.

The feminist scholar Mary Lefkowitz has pointed out that these biographical obsessions are typical of the critical treatment of women writers.³ In literary mythology, male genius derives from an overpowering urge to create, a devotion which surpasses the mundane claims of the material world and triumphs admirably over superfluous domestic ties. Female genius, on the other hand, evolves as compensation for the lack of a ‘normal’ domestic life – the correct outlet for women’s creativity. Hence Virginia Woolf is frigid, Emily Dickinson is a frustrated spinster, Charlotte Brontë is disappointed in love and throughout history Sappho has been physically repellent (i.e. unable to attract a sexual partner), promiscuous and passionately jealous.

Because women’s creativity has been so directly linked to the circumstances of their lives, their work is often regarded as autobiographical; an emotional outpouring which is divorced from literary artifice and intellectual precision. One scholar, for example, has written that Sappho’s poetry has the ‘air of reality, of being derived immediately and directly from Sappho’s own experience’. Similarly, in a discussion of No.32 (94LP) in which Sappho describes the parting dialogue of two separated lovers, he comments: ‘it is not hard

Reviews for Poems & Fragments

[amaraduende · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lombardo does it again. Unbelievably beautiful and resonant, miles and centuries away.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Verzameling van fragmenten en gedichten, met korte uitleiding.Vertaling Aart R.P. Wildeboer op basis van werk van Pierre J. Suasso de Lima de PradoVeel korte , soms onbegrijpelijke stukjes

[timjones_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sappho is a great poet, and I enjoyed this book a lot. As translated by Jim Powell, Sappho is a poet who speaks directly to modern sensibilities, which many other poets of the ancient world, however great their achievement, do not.There is nothing a translator can do about the fact that so many of her poems are missing or incomplete, except make the best job of presenting what remains - and in both his translations and the notes that accompany them, Jim Powell does just this.

[aprildt_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love Stanley Lombardo's work, translating and commenting on Sappho. Sappho's existing body of work is pitifully small, but I felt such a resonance within me when I read these poems and fragments: Lombardo does a great job of letting us see the person within the poet, and it doesn't take a large number of poems to achieve this. What is lacking in quantity is made up by quality of language. Some poems from a man's view, some from a woman's. The emotions and feelings exposed in these poems are universal, I believe. Lombardo does his best to make Sappho approachable and real to a modern reader. I love this edition of her poetry.