“Mysterious, mellifluous Sappho shines anew in this glorious translation, and Barnstone’s masterful introduction locates her historically, unveils her impassioned life, and reflects on the sensuous grace of her poverty, revealing the woman as she’s never been seen before.”
—Diane Ackerman, author of A Natural History of the Senses
“I have Sappho with me all the time now, as this collection is absolutely stunning in every respect, and I'm filled with gratitude to you for having borne it into the world. May your Sappho be blessed. It is a tremendous gift to all of us.”
—Carolyn Forché, author of The Country Between Us and The Blue Hour
“A feast for those who, like me, are hungry to know more about the great poet Sappho. The translations of the poems and fragments read elegantly and the introduction and supporting material are lavishly informative and interesting.”
—David Ferry, translator of Gilgamesh and The Georgics of Virgil
“This is not only a vivid, sensuously elegant translation of every scrap of Sappho we have; the wonderful introduction is designed to increase our ardor as well as our knowledge, and the appendix containing everything the ancients said of her as well as poetic tributes up through Baudelaire’s is itself a treasure.”
—Alicia Ostriker, author of No Heaven and Stealing the Language
“As a student I treasured the original Barnstone Sappho, and it is a joy to have this new version made current with the latest scholarship and enriched by four decades of further reflection. Sappho’s famous voice is clear and powerful, even in the shards that remain to us, and Barnstone embraces and captures this phenomenon like no one else. This is a Sappho rendered with wisdom and heart for newcomers and connoisseurs alike.”
—Jeffrey Henderson, Editor, Loeb Classical Library
“What amazes me is how Sappho’s lyrics, composed in the seventh century B.C.E., transcend their time and place to enchant us now. In lines that are at once passionate and precise, seemingly artless and yet magical, she writes of the cycles of life and death, and of erotic desire as a sacred calling. She looks into the burning center of things, and expresses pure wonder in the evening star, the moon, birdsong. Willis Barnstone’s masterful translations capture her excited praise for the things of this world, making one of her prophetic observations shine with lasting truth: ‘Someone, I tell you, in another time, / will remember us.’”
—Grace Schulman, author of Days of Wonder and The Paintings of Our Lives
“If there is any final justice, which there probably isn't, the world of letters would erect a monument of Willis Barnstone and strew it with fresh wildflowers every day. I think of this Sappho collection as the finest among Barnstone’s prodigious achievements.”
—Jim Harrison, author of True North and Legends of the Fall
“Sappho knew that we never tire of learning: passion makes the moment eternal. Willis Barnstone has plumbed profound layers of the ancient Greek to bring us Sappho. On his way to her, he renewed the Gnostic Gospels and the Gospels proper. Now he has sounded the deepest lyric rock of our founding and given us new sound.”
—Andrei Codrescu, NPR commentator and author of It Was Today: New Poems
“Willis Barnstone has brought a life dedicated to translation and a lifetime of immersion in the Greek language to give us these new and inspired translations of Sappho. With its brilliant introduction and dazzling notes, this is the book of Sappho you will want on your bedside table.”
—David St. John, author of The Red Leaves of Night
“Eros has been riding Barnstone’s back for years, whipping him across Spanish, French, Greek, Chinese poetry, across the poetry and prose of the biblical lands to translate from those literatures poetry, to make them new and his. Now he has embraced Sappho, with whom he has been in love for years. What he has made ‘his’ is a gift to us. Barnstone—lover, poet, and scholar—cannot make Sappho’s fragments whole, but he makes us more aware of our loss than any other translation. He gives us the abyss, and fragments of Sappho in startling English—a few words that in ancient Greek changed its music and made the walls of the city tremble.”
—Stanley Moss, author of Asleep in the Garden
“Although she lived on the Greek island of Lesbos in the seventh century B.C.E., the universal feelings that Sappho expressed still connect us, human to human, across the ages. It seems improbable that a new version of ancient writings could shed new light, but Barnstone’s translation of Sappho does just that.”
—Booklist
“In the last few decades, there have been many translations of Sappho’s work by gifted and well-meaning writers. None quite fills out these solitary, orphaned lines with the same rhythm and feeling. Barnstone is one of the greatest translators of literary expression from a foreign language into English. We are lucky to have him.”
—New Letters
“Four of the best things in America are Walt Whitman’s Leaves, Herman Melville’s Whales, the Sonnets of Barnstone’s Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets, and my daily Corn Flakes—that rough poetry of morning.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
“Willis Barnstone has been appointed a special angel to bring ‘the other’ to our attention, to show how it is done. He illuminates the spirit for us, and he clarifies the unclarifiable. . . . I think he does it by beating his wings.”
—Gerald Stern
“Who isn’t pleased to be given a bonus? There are bonuses in the work of certain poets. One of them is Willis Barnstone. His thought is of course the core, but with it come tones and overtones, undertones even, from the poets whom he has so brilliantly, so sensitively translated from many languages. Their voices are there with his, with the poet who has such an ear for language that no subtlety escapes it.”
—James Laughlin
“Willis Barnstone has a problem: he’s too good. Everything he writes, from his invaluable The Other Bible, a compendium of holy texts no writer should be without, through his brilliant translations and beautiful poems, is a breathtaking achievement.”
—Carolyn Kizer
ABOUT THE BOOK
Sappho’s thrilling lyric verse has been unremittingly popular for more than 2,600 years—certainly a record for poetry of any kind—and love for her art only increases as time goes on. Though her extant work consists only of a collection of fragments and a handful of complete poems, her mystique endures to be discovered anew by each generation, and to inspire new efforts at bringing the spirit of her Greek words faithfully into English.
In the past, translators have taken two basic approaches to Sappho: either very literally translating only the words in the fragments, or taking the liberty of reconstructing the missing parts. Willis Barnstone has taken a middle course, in which he remains faithful to the words of the fragments, only very judiciously filling in a word or phrase in cases where the meaning is obvious. This edition includes extensive notes and a special section of “Testimonia”: appreciations of Sappho in the words of ancient writers from Plato to Plutarch. Also included are a glossary of all the figures mentioned in the poems, and suggestions for further reading.
Born in Lewiston, Maine, WILLIS BARNSTONE was educated at Bowdoin, Columbia, the Sorbonne, and Yale. He taught in Greece at the end of the civil war (1949–51), and in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War. During the Cultural Revolution he went to China where he was later a Fulbright Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University (1984–85). Former O'Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, he is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish at Indiana University.
His publications include Modern European Poetry (Bantam, 1967), The Other Bible (HarperCollins, 1984), Poetics of Translation: His
tory, Theory, Practice (Yale, 1993), Funny Ways of Staying Alive (University Press of New England, 1993), The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets (University Press of New England, 1996), the memoir With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires (University of Illinois, 1993), Algebra of Night: Selected Poems—1949–1998 (Sheep Meadow, 1999), The Apocalypse (New Directions, 2000), Life Watch (BOA Editions, 2003), Border of a Dream: Poems of Antonio Machado (Copper Canyon, 2003), and The Gnostic Bible (Shambhala Publications, 2003).
A Guggenheim Fellow, his awards include a National Endowment for the Arts award, a National Endowments for the Humanities award, an Emily Dickinson Award of the Poetry Society of America, a W. H. Auden Award of the New York State Council on the Arts, the Midland Authors Award, three Book of the Month Selections and four Pulitzer Prize nominations for poetry. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Doubletake, Harper’s, New York Review of Books, Poetry, Paris Review Poetry, Partisan Review, the New Yorker, and the Times Literary Supplement.
Sign up to learn more about our books and receive special offers from Shambhala Publications.
Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eshambhala.
SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.
Horticultural Hall
300 Massachusetts Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
www.shambhala.com
© 2006, 2009 by Willis Barnstone
The Complete Poems of Sappho is an abridged edition of the hardcover book Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Sappho.
[Works. English. 2009]
The Complete poems of Sappho / translated by Willis Barnstone.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN 978-0-8348-2200-9
ISBN 978-1-59030-613-0
1. Sappho—Translations into English. 2. Love poetry, Greek—Translations into English. I. Barnstone, Willis, 1927– II. Title.
PA4408.E5B345 2009
884′.01—dc22
2008036389
for Sarah
her eyes
looking
O coronata di viole, divina
dolce ridente Saffo.
ALCEO (N. 620 B.C.E.)
SALVADORE QUASIMODO, LIRICI GRECI
O violet-haired, holy,
honeysmiling Psapfo
ALKAIOS (B. 620 B.C.E.)
CONTENTS
Introduction
Afroditi of the Flowers at Knossos
Prayer to Afroditi
Afroditi of the Flowers at Knossos
Moon and Women
Dancers at a Kritan Altar
In Time of Storm
To Lady Hera
Invitation
Sacrifice
Death of Adonis
Adonis Gone
To Afroditi
Afroditi
Afroditi to Psapfo
Days of Harshness
Artemis on Solitary Mountains
Artemis
Nightingale
Evening Star
Hesperos
Moon
Earth
Nightingale
Cicada
Doves Playing Dead
Of Gello Who Died Young, Whose Ghost Haunts Little Children
World
Eos
Dawn
Walking to a Wedding
Hair Yellower Than Torch Flame
Time of Youth
Of a Young Lover
My Daughter
Wildflowers
The Virgin
Girl
Remorse
Words with Virginity
The Lyre Speaks
Wedding of Andromache and Hektor
Walking to a Wedding
Song to the Groom
Song for the Bride
Lesbian Bride
Guarding the Bride
Chamber
Hermis at a Wedding
Fragments
To Hymen, Wedding God
Song to Groom and Bride
Night Song
A Guard outside the Bridal Chamber, Who Keeps the Bride’s Friends from Rescuing Her
End of a Party
You Burn Us
Seizure
Alone
Emptiness
Eros
Love
Supreme Sight on the Black Earth
To Eros
Absence
Goatherd
Shall I?
Pleasure
Encounter
Homecoming
Desire
A God
Absent
Of Those Unwilling to Take the Bitter with the Sweet
Endure
I Shall
Return, Gongyla
To a Friend Gone, Remember
Beauty in a Man
Atthis
Her Friends
Sweetbitter
Return, Gongyla
You Can Free Me
Kydro
You in Sardis
Afroditi and Desire
A Handsome Man
Myths
Paralysis
Behind a Laurel Tree
Companions
Lito and Niobi
As Long As There Is Breath
Return
Weathercocks and Exile
Fury
Abuse
Gorgo
Andromeda
Atthis Disappearing
Where Am I?
A Ring
Madden
Delicate Girl
Andromeda, What Now?
Hello and Goodbye
Mika
Alkaios Speaks and Psapfo Responds
In My Pain
From Her Exile
Protect My Brother Haraxos
To My Brother Haraxos
To Afroditi About Her Brother’s Lover
Doriha
Secret of My Craft
Holy Tortoise Shell
Some Honored Me
Graces
Singer
Graces and Muses
The Muses
Happiness
Light
Sandal
A Swan’s Egg Containing Kastor and Polydeukis
Comparisons
A Swallow
Jason’s Cloak
Robe
Chickpeas
Purple Handcloth
Beauty of Her Friends
On Going Bareheaded
Sandal
Garment
Dream and Sleep
Dawn with Gold Arms
Sleep
Black Sleep
In a Dream
Dream
Innocence
Clear Voiced
Dew
Face
Age and Light
Old Man
Gods
Angry with Her Daughter When She Psapfo Was Dying
Old Age
No Oblivion
To Hermis Who Guides the Dead
To a Woman of No Education
Menelaos
Wish
Age and the Bed
Afroditi to Psapfo
Growing Old
Desire and Sun
Indirect Poems
Death Is Evil
Gold
Elegiac Poems from the Greek Anthology Wrongly Attributed to Sappho
On Pelagon
On Timas
Testimonia and Encomia
Sources, Notes, and Commentary
Glossary
Bibliography
Index of Poems by Number
E-mail Sign-Up
INTRODUCTION
IN Sappho we hear f
or the first time in the Western world the direct words of an individual woman. It cannot be said that her song has ever been surpassed. In a Greek dialect of the eastern Mediterranean, she became our first Tang dynasty poet, akin to one of those Chinese of the eighth century C.E. whose songs were overheard thought and conversation, in strict form, and who were said to “dance in chains.” In her seventh-century B.C.E. Lesbos, Sappho danced in chains, singing of Kritan altars at night and fruit dreaming in a coma, and always in metrical patterns unseen but musically overheard, like her thoughts, passions, and internal dialogues.
Time with its strange appetite has modernized these ancient voices, making the Tang writer Wang Wei and the Aiolic Sappho fashionable and intimate. The East has preserved a ton of the Tang poets, or, as the Chinese would say, “ten thousand” of those golden birds in the Middle Kingdom. Despite early losses due to the fires of the book-burning emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (ruled 221–210 B.C.E.), China thereafter zealously preserved the work of its poets. But Sappho suffered from book-burning religious authorities who left us largely scraps of torn papyrus found in waterless wastes of North Africa. Such maltreatment has especially modernized her into a minimalist poet of a few but important words, connected often more by elliptic conjecture than clear syntax. But what a full living voice comes through those ruins! Every phrase seems to be an autonomous poem, including a fragment of two words describing Eros: optais amme: “you burn us.”
One day, when the sorrows of war and hatred weary and fade, many diggers will return to the sands of infinite Egypt, to those rich ancient garbage heaps in the Fayum and to the outskirts of Alexandria, where hellenistic grammarians arranged her strophes in the grouped lines still used today. There we will discover many books of Sappho’s, as we have found the books of the gnostic Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt and the scriptures of the Dead Sea Scrolls in nearby Syria. And if we do not find more Sappho, what we have left will still be an intelligible constellation of sparkling fragments filling the heavens from the Great Bear down to the Southern Cross.
Europe’s first woman poet combined amazing metaphor with candid passion. But being a woman, she wrote from her dubiously privileged position as a minor outsider in a busy male society. Outside the main business of the world—war, politics, remunerative work—Sappho could speak with feeling of her own world: her apprehension of stars and orchards, the troubles and summits of love, the cycles of life and death, and she chatted with Afroditi. She wrote, giving the impression of complete involvement, though even in her most intensely self-revealing poems her words have the jarring strength of detachment and accuracy. She wrote as one might speak, if one could speak in ordinary but perfectly cadenced speech. And suddenly we hear her, half-destroyed, revealing:
The Complete Poems of Sappho Page 1