Posts tagged sappho
Posts tagged sappho
“Dead you will lie and never memory of you
will there be nor desire into the aftertime - for you do not share in the roses
of Pieria, but invisible too in Hades’ house
you will go your way among dim shapes. Having breathed out.”
Sappho, Fragment 55, as translated by Anne Carson, in If Not, Winter
But there is still memory. The beloved is now nameless, but this poem, Sappho’s words, survived fragmentation and time, and are still read. There is still memory.
“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?”
Or, there is this version:
“they say Leda once found a hyacinth-colored
egg hidden”
The first excerpt is the opening two stanzas of “Leda and the Swan,” by W. B. Yeats. The second, Anne Carson’s translation of Fragment 166 from Sappho.
I know which story I prefer.
