sappho - nature

• Loeb 1 - Aphrodite, goddess of the embroidered throne 


  Asks Aph to come from “far away” to help her, with “swift, beautiful sparrows, their close-packed wings whirling across the dark earth” bringing her down from the “heavens"
• Loeb 2 - Come to me, leave Crete behind 


  Attracts Aph with a peaceful catalogue. Natural imagery of Lesbos + multi sensory language - “charming grove of apple trees”.
• Loeb 2 - Come to me, leave Crete behind 


  Charming bucolic setting - cold water "sings", "whole place covered with the shadows of roses"

  Koma - "sleep flows down the trembling leaves"
• Loeb 31 - he is as blessed as a god 


  “And I am greener than grass” - homoerotic, as “greener” is gendered to be female in the Greek
• Loeb 30 - May the maidens sing


  “And of your bride, adorned with violets” - violets will be taken off, bride deflowered literally and metaphorically

  “So we can stay awake with the clear-voiced nightingale” - nightingale known to sing through the night, the beauty of nature as a metaphor
• Loeb 34 - around the beautiful moon


  Likens her lover to the "beautiful moon", and when she comes out, “the stars hide away their gleaming brilliance”

  Lunar imagery - reminds of Selene, moon physically bigger
• Loeb 47 - Love shook my soul


  Love’s effect on the speaker compared to wind “buffeting oak trees”
• Loeb 52 - I do not think I can touch the sky with my hands 


  Unattainable lover compared to the sky - sky is immeasurable like feelings of love
• Loeb 57 - What farm girl

  Negative depiction of nature - deprecating “farm girl, in her far”ming clothes”
• Loeb 55 - When you die 


  “You have no share of the roses from the Pierian muses” - nature as metaphor for the fame poets receive
• Loeb 81 - Put garlands around your lovely hair, O Dika!


  Tells Dika to "put garlands around your lovely hair"

  “Bind stems of anise”

  "The blessed Graces favour the beautifully floral over the ungarlanded"
• Loeb 94 - Honestly, I want to die 


  Wealth of natural imagery, Sappho asks the woman to recall a sexual memory.

  • “Remember all the wreaths you placed around your head, violets, roses, crocuses” - yonic imagery esp. roses

  “Intricate garlands made from flowers”
• Loeb 95 - Gongyla

  Banks of the river Acheron (underworld) “dewy and covered with lotus” - regeneration, lotus a funerary flower, death paradoxically seems plentiful

  In the lotus you can see the seed pods, open flower, and bud at the same time, representing past, represent and future
• Loeb 96 - Often she turned her thoughts here


  Describes a very fleeting moment when the sun is almost set “the light spreads over the salty sea and the flowery fields!” - fleeting nature of beauty, she will only stand out for a moment
• Loebb 96 - Often she turned her thoughts here 


  References the OOHA as the “rosy-fingered women”

  Other Lydian women are the “stars after sunset”

  Yonic imagery describing a sexual encounter

  Describes how “the beautiful dew falls” and the blooming of the “roses”, “chervil” and “melliot”.
• Loeb 98a - My mother said 


  Old beauty standards - girls should wear “garland of flowers in bloom” ONLY if a girl’s hair is “more yellow than a flaming torch”
• Loeb 102 - Sweet mother!


  Reference to a “web”, reminds of Arachne and the power love has to neutralise women
• Loeb 104a - Hesperus!


  Calls on “Hesperus” - the evening star which guides one’s way home. Some think it is the planet Venus as it is red

  “Bring back everything which the shining Dawn has scattered” - night equals desire
• Loeb 105c - Just like the hyacinth


  Girl compared to a “hyacinth on a mountain trodden by the feet of the shepherds” turned into a “purple flower”.

  Violence of men intruding on nature = violence to women, aftermath of virginity taken.

  However, beauty remains, still a flower but not a hyacinth.
• Loeb 146 - Neither the honey


  “Neither the honey nor the bee is for me” - bee one of Aphrodite’s animals, sweetness/sting of love
• Loeb 168b - Gone are the moono and the Pleiades 


  “Gone are the moon and the Pleiades” - moon and stars have been described as Sappho’s romantic prospects before. Moon is linked to female sexuality.

  Pleiades are a star cluster named after the seven nymphs who have a lot of sex