sappho - love and desire

Created by

Anne-Laure Mukosa

Cards (33)

Loeb 1 - Aphrodite, goddess of the embroidered throne  
Love as desperation!
Sappho appeals to Aph to bring her luck with love
“Do not overpower my heart, with anguish, with affliction”
Aph eases Sappho’s worry by saying “if she does not love you now, she will love you soon, even if she does not want to”
Only love can “release” Sappho “from this great distress”
Loeb 2 - Come to me, leave Crete behind  
Wishes to attract Aph to Lesbos with images charged with love and desire.
Valley “flourishes with the flowers of Spring” -> rebirth of desire
Loeb 15 - Cyrpis  
Wishing against others love - “Cypris, may she find you to be the most bitter” - LIMITING love
Loeb 16 - the most beautiful sight in the world 
Love as transformative - The object of your affection becomes “the most beautiful sight in the whole world” - hyperbolic!
Loeb 16 - the most beautiful sight in the world 
Love makes one irrational - Talks of Helen who “abandoned her husband, the most excellent of all men” to sail to Troy for love. “Without a thought for her daughter or her dear parents”
Loeb 16 - the most beautiful sight in the world  
Love’s memory - Sappho remembers Anactoria “who is not here with me”
Says she would rather see her “lovely walk”/”gleaming face” than see the “chariots”
Mourning her own lover likened to Helen “the most beautiful woman on earth” in leaving Sappho
Loeb 22 - I call upon you, Abanthis  
Promoting desire - Sappho telling Abanthis to sing of her love for another girl - “take up your lyre..while desire again circles you”
“For her dress aroused you” - concerned with appearance
Lucky in love - Sappho “thankful” Abanthis found love as Aph “once found fault with the way I prayed”
Loeb 30 - May the maidens sing 
Singing about a wedding night, where the “maidens”, the brides’ friends sing to celebrate her wedding and also are looking for potential husbands - “go and wake up your bachelor friends”
Loeb 31 - He is as blessed as a god 
“He seems to me equal to a god” only because he is “close” to her “sweet voice” and “charming laughter” -> Priamel at the beginning exemplifies how Sappho only focuses on the husband for one line.
Loeb 31 - He is as blessed as a god 
Overwhelming desire
Everyday things eliciting a strong reaction, “strikes terror into the heart in my breast”
“On the point of death” just because of the sight of her lover"
Loeb 31 - He is as blessed as a god  
Sensory overload of desire
When Sappho sees the OOHA
“I can no longer speak” - mute but then writes and sings eloquently
“My tongue breaks”
“A delicate fire runs beneath my skin”
“I see nothing”
“A buzzing in my ears”
“Sweat pours over me”
“A tremor seizes me all over” - sweat is hot and a tremor cold, contrast of the senses
Loeb 34 - Around the beautiful moon 
Speaker’s lover is seen to outshine all other women, simply “stars” whose “gleaming brilliance” is hidden away when the “beautiful moon…shines over the land”
Links to Selene and thus homoeroticism as she is associated with women
Loeb 47 - Love shook my soul 
Love as destructive
“Love shook my soul, like a wind buffeting oak trees”
Shaking to her very core, unrelenting.
Two verbs -> love taking an active role
Loeb 48 - You came, just what I was looking for 
Love heals
“You soothed my soul, which was burning with desire” - strong enough to quell
Love harms
Speaker’s soul was “burning with desire”
Love takes on the dual image of fire as cleansing and destroying (Promethean view)
Speaker reliant on love
"You came, just what I was looking for” - love completing the speaker
Loeb 49 - I used to love you, Atthis  
Reminisces on a past love - speaker “used to love” Atthis but “that was a long time ago”
Liked her when she was innocent (eros/philia) - “I thought you were a clumsy little girl”
Loeb 50 - A handsome man is only good to look at  
Reversal from Sappho’s concentration on physicality, instead suggesting exterior beauty does not equate with goodness, against physiognomy
Loeb 51 - I do not know what I am going to do  
Sappho in “two minds”, could be her conflicting thoughts, “I do not know what I am going to do” OR her being in the minds of two people she loves
“Two” also connotes a pair/couple
Generally talks about love so it could be about relationships
Loeb 52 - I d not think I can touch the sky with my hands  
The sky that she cannot touch is a metaphor for an unattainable lover - “I do not think I can touch the sky with my hands”
Sappho still musing on its possibility with “think”
Loeb 57 - What farm girl 
Object of her affection prefers this “farm girl” - reproachful and bitter
An external force compelling her lover’s attraction - “charms your mind”, perhaps Aphrodite
Loeb 94 - Honestly I want to die  
"Honestly I want to die / Weeping, she was leaving me”
Memory of an ending relationship, memory in song as a powerful force for subsiding desire - joy of memory
Direct speech from the woman leaving her - “I mean this I do not want to leave you”
Sappho’s response - “Go, farewell and remember me / For you know that we both looked after you”
We could be -> her husband + Sappho, Aph + Sappho
Loeb 94 - Honestly I want to die  
Overwhelming desire
“No…/Or sacred space…/From which we stayed away.” - all consuming relationships, used every opportunity to see each other. Surpassing any religious concern.
Loeb 95 - Gongyla  
Associating a loss of love with a loss of life - “I take no pleasure of living”
Very fragmented, unable to tell who is talking but “Gongyla” is the first line, appeared in another poem where she told Abanthis to sing of Gongyla
Loeb 96 - Often she turned her thoughts here  
Multiple female relationships/desire expressed.
“She honoured you as if you were a goddess”
OOHA “stands out amongst Lydian women” a “rosy-fingered moon” among “stars after sunset”
Loeb 102 - Sweet mother! 
Love harms
The girl cannot “weave my web” because she is “smitten by a boy” - abandoning domestic duties for this fleeting juvenile love
The girl cannot “weave my web” because she is “smitten by a boy” - abandoning domestic duties for this fleeting juvenile love
Blames “slender Aphrodite” - focuses on physicality rather than her divine powers, concerned with looks
Loeb 104a - Hesperus! 
Hesperus - evening star which some say is the planet Venus, so Sappho pleasing to desire
“You bring back the child to its mother” - maternal/domestic desire
Loeb 112 - Lucky bridegroom 
Sappho/speaker desires what the groom has. Comment in “” that may have been Sappho or the groom - “You look beautiful, your eyes…”
“Aphrodite has honoured you above all others”
Loeb 121 - If you care about me  
"If you care about me, find the bed of a younger woman, for I never want to be the older one in a relationship” - anxiety over beauty and the fading of looks
Loeb 130 - love which loosens the limbs  
Love hurts/weakens
Love “once again shakes me!” - relentless
“Bitter-sweet invincible creature” - love a primordial force before the gods
Love heals
“Love which loosens the limbs” - sexual connotation, freedom which comes with love. Homeric allusion!
Love and desire centralised
Homeric allusion -> love not sleep
Loeb 131 - Atthis, the thought of me  
Abandonment - love hurts
“Atthis, the thought of me now repulses you”
“You run off to Andromeda”
Loeb 132 - I have a beautiful daughter  
Loves her daughter “more than all of Lydia” - more than material things of wealth
Loeb 146 - Neitehr the honey 
Post-break up lament - “neither the honey nor the bee is for me”
Bee one of Aphrodite’s animals
Sweetness/sting of love
Loeb 148 - Wealth without virtue  
"Wealth without virtue can be a harmful neighbour” - wealth can corrupt and does not guarantee love
Loeb 168b - Gone are the moon and the Pleiades 
Sappho distressed at not making the most of her life and not having any romantic prospects -> “gone are the moon and the Pleiades” who are symbols of women + sex