Written by: Surabhi Ghimire - 26012, Grade VIII
Posted on: 03 December, 2021
It's not necessary that everyone has the same sexuallity, that is probably what Sappho thought. Sappho, the first lesbian was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on an island of lesbos. She was known for her lyrical poetry, for writing about romance. In 650-500BC, she was known as the “Tenth Muse”. Lyric poetry is a bit of a stand out compared to other classics of back then. It doesn’t have the name recognition of the others but it’s a style we can easily get a gist of. The formal definition is poetry performed with musical accompaniment from the lyre. Sappho wrote about her experiences, about love. The earliest Sappho’s survival comes from a Byzantine encyclopedia written in the 10th century. She was born around 630 BC and died in about 570 BC. Her poems had been burnt because of the people in her town being homophobic but we do have one of Sapphos complete poem, ‘Ode to aphrodite’ which was until archaeologists discovered the two new poems in the past two decades, ‘The brothers room’ and ‘The Kyprio’ . Her lines have so many feelings in them, her poem ‘Fragment 31’ is my personal favourite. Sappho was a lesbian but the world “Lesbian” wasn’t even use to describe relationships between women until the 19th and the early 20th centuries.
Fragment 31 :
‘He seems like gods equal, that man,
Whoever he is, who takes his seat so close across from you,
And listens to your litting voice.
And lovely laughter, which, as it wafts by,
Sets the heart in my rib cage fluttering.
As soon as I glance at you a moment,
I can't say a thing.’
Here she's talking about a man who she thought was godlike because the man’s seat was so close to Aphrodite's, whereas Sappho’s heart would flutter from far away just listening to her lovely laughter. Personally hearing these or reading these poems makes me really happy, the phrases she uses like “Sets the heart in my rib cage fluttering” are really interesting. I read somewhere that the girl she was in love with aka Aphrodite along with most of the poems were burnt when the people in their town found out about their homosexuality. We don’t know anything for sure because we only have bits and pieces of information but I say we are still lucky to have some of Sappho’s poems, she was a great poet.
