Sappho's Journal
Page 14
“Good.”
“I know your lot is worse than mine... I must find courage.”
Beauty, I thought, beauty, what can I say to help this man?
“Yes, tomorrow; then I’ll tell you, Sappho... I’ll tell you what I’velearned, living in my black sea. How my ship drags anchor. What I’veheard. I’ve heard some strange things. I can sense someone moving,almost before he moves, a shift of air, let’s say.
“Watch me play jacks with Libus, old soldiers at their fun. I couldcheat you...if you gave me half a chance.”
Again that chuckle.
The book lay open and his great arms lay across his lap, fingers up.My father had owned that book. With age it had come unsewed and hung intatters: the smell of age was there: I rubbed my fingers over pages...
Quickly, he said:
“I like to feel those pages... I wanted to write a book as full oflife...give back the thunder of the storm...look how the bugs haveeaten the book...see that ripped page...well, where will you keep yourHomer?”
And he smiled.
“Shall I read something?”
“Yes...now!”
Turning the pages so he could hear them I searched for a favoritepassage.
I read as slowly and as distinctly as possible, allowing each wordtime.
?
Cercolas, mother, Aesop, Phaon...gone. When shall I go?
?
I have been unable to write for days. I have nothing to say...thereis only emptiness.
?
Yesterday a nightingale sang, a song of tattered leaves, scraps ofNile, bits of Euphrates, papyrus against night, against impending doom,against depression. Tender notes whispered insanity. Other notes urgedself-pity. Others shattered—with sheerest delicacy—any hope ofcontrition.
A feather drops...a pause. One could die during such a pause.
All of us wait—life waits!
A bubbling deceives the spirit, a trill alienates the heart.Something summons the past, other songs on other nights, other songs ofother people, the bone flute, of course.
This was not a bird, not a beak, not a feather but sail and spar,rigged to go at dawn, course along many shores.
“Beauty, you’re frail. Your bones are able to carry next to nothingand yet your song travels, spreading as if a pebble had dropped onwater...”
?
I walked under olive trees along the coast, following grassy paths,the breeze with me until I met Gogu, carrying a piece of kelp and ashell. At first, he did not seem to recognize me. How thin, how sick heis! Shadows of the olives shadowed him. When he spoke, I hardlylistened. Each of us is going the same way, I thought, and so we partedand stillness put its loneliness about me. The words he had said mixedme because I had not listened, mixed with my love-memories, addingincoherence.
Why was Gogu carrying kelp and a shell? Why was I walking where I hadoften walked?
In a hundred years, this path has changed little: the trees havebecome more gnarled, the shadows darker, the air quieter.
The marble shrine at the end of the path crumbles year by year andyet remains about the same: I can remember it when another brought me:Phaon remembered it: and now, memories are re-dedicated and burned,their ashes under my sandals, under my fingers and heart.
?
The best of life is illusion, I do not doubt. The best of Phaon mayhave been illusion.
Ah, the nettles of desire, the sleeplessness, the gnawing of regretsin my skull. These are emotions we can not share but must suffer alonetill dawn, the dipper proving we are children.
I believe that we, as human beings, prove nothing: there is reallynothing to prove except kindness and decency: all else is moreillusion.
I take my harp but there are no words to accompany the notes. I urgeAtthis to sing: play, darling, help me forget...let me see your face asI love to see it. Move your head with that fragile alacrity. Stretchyour bare legs under your dress.
As I open the shutters in the morning, I miss him...the ocean hasgrown much, much wider.
My favorite olive tree says nothing to me.
?
Alcaeus wrote me:
“I know I can help you. Come over for the day. Courage, friend.”
The note repulsed me. What could he know of Phaon, of man’scleanliness and beauty!
I did not answer. Instead, I climbed the hills with Atthis andAnaktoria, to lay a wreath at an altar that has been our shrine for awhile.
The sea was rough and the wind was rough.
Tears overcame me at the altar and I made them leave me: I hoped todie there: I wanted my bitterness to kill me: Why couldn’t it happen?Why couldn’t there be this finality?
I pulled flowers from the wreath and wrote his name on the ground. Athrush hopped close by. The wind, gusting from the bay, scatteredblossoms and I found Atthis beside me, kneeling to comfort me. We hadshared so much, the three of us, days and weeks, grief and joy. She andAnaktoria got me to eat, under pines sheltered from the wind; she andAnaktoria fixed my hair.
Their sad faces made me long for happiness for their sake, and Itried to see beyond myself. There must be a trick that I can use todeceive others.
The placid sea carries a few boats,
small clouds on the horizon,
a series of silver cat’s-paws;
and as though through a sheet
of green glass the faces of
Sappho, Atthis and Anaktoria:
a laurel wreath whirls above the Aegean:
herons fly, dolphins leap.
K
leis left her shepherd’s hut and came here and we have talked far intothe night:
“He liked a gold cup...he liked the mountains...he liked thecove...yes, he went farther out to sea than anyone...his sailors likedhim...he...”
Kleis stayed several days and each day was a mirror of hispersonality. Her beauty brought out his quality, imaging it in variousways, her nature shaken from its customary silence to talk of him. Irecognized the effort and appreciated the communication. I wanted towrite her notes but she could not read. I wanted to thank her in somespecial way but it was she who thanked me, before slipping away.
Afterward I counted other friends: Alcaeus, Libus, Helen, Exekias,Atthis, Anaktoria, Gyrinno, Heptha, Gogu... I also counted those whohave died. Dreaming, I counted our island, our town, our trees,mountains and sea. I added my home. However childish to enumerate likethis, I went to sleep easily.
?
Perhaps, as I grow older, I may find an idea, a seed. Perhaps it cangrow in someone’s mind: compassion, courage, grace, love—it couldbecome one of these.
I shall continue to put down my thoughts, the handprint of my days.
Could it be that the greatest thing in life is perseverance?
?
Somebody, I tell you,
Someone in future time
Will remember us.
We are oppressed by
oblivion, by the idea
Of nothing at all,
Yet are saved by the
Judgment of good men.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P
aul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was a writer and artist, born inMoberly, Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the University ofArizona, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Instituto deBellas Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided into threecategories: He is the author of many novels, short stories, and poems;second, as a fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, and paintingshave been exhibited in more than forty one-man shows in leadinggalleries, including the Los Angeles County Museum, the Atlanta ArtMuseum, the Bancroft Library, the Richmond Art Institute, the BrooksMuseum, the Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in Mexico City, and manyother galleries; and, third, he devoted much of his life to the mostcomprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico that has been undertaken.More than
350 of his pen-and-ink illustrations of the haciendas and morethan one thousand hacienda photographs make up the Paul AlexanderBartlett Collection held by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin AmericanCollection of the University of Texas, and form part of a seconddiversified collection held by the American Heritage Center of theUniversity of Wyoming, which also includes an archive of Bartlett’sliterary work, fine art, and letters.
Paul Alexander Bartlett’s fiction has been commended by many authors,among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, James Michener,Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was the recipient ofmany grants, awards, and fellowships, from such organizations as theLeopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Association, the NewSchool for Social Research, the Huntington Hartford Foundation, theMontalvo Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation.
His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published poet, is the authorof seventeen published books of poetry, numerous poems, short stories,and essays published in leading literary quarterlies and anthologies,and, as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., is the editor of aseries of multi-language volumes of international poetry that honor thework of outstanding contemporary poets.
Paul and Elizabeth’s son, Steven, edited and designed this volume.
Sappho’s Journal
was set in Garamond type by Autograph Editions. The typeface is namedafter Claude Garamond (c. 1480-1561), a French type designer andpublisher and the world’s first commercial typefounder. Garamond’scontribution to the history of typesetting was substantial. Heperfected the design of Roman type: The fonts that he cut beginning in1531 were recognized as possessing a superior grace and clarity, somuch so that Garamond’s fonts influenced European printing for the nextcentury and a half.
It is interesting to note that Garamond type is the evolutionaryancestor of the type used to print the first official copies of theDeclaration of Independence. In the 1730s, Englishman William Caslonrefined Garamond’s version of Aldine roman, the well-balanced typefacebecame popular, and was introduced to the American colonies by BenjaminFranklin.
Despite his considerable contribution to the evolution of typography,Garamond was not a successful businessman and he died in poverty.
During the past five centuries, so many variations of Garamond’s typedesigns have been created that the phrase ‘Garamond type’ has come tobe used loosely, with little memory remaining of its history.
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