Sappho and Catullus: Sexual Politics

How can contemporary translations of ancient texts bridge the gap between the classical and the modern world?

Despite the freshness of Sappho's poem, for the modern reader there is always the danger of staleness. When Sappho first described the physical symptoms of love, lyric verse - that is, short, intense, personal poems of the kind we would recognise as poetry today - was in its infancy and her verse was seen as revolutionary by ancient commentators; for the modern audience, beating hearts, lost voices and trembling limbs might seem more the language of popular song than high art.

It is the translator's task to transpose the energy, intensity and freshness of Sappho's poetry from classical Greek to modern English. Yet there is a further complication: in this poem, Sappho was effecting some translations of her own. Before Sappho, the most usual subject of poetry had been the deeds of warriors in battle, as celebrated in the long, epic poems of Homer such as the Iliad. But Sappho transposes the old world of tribal conflict to a more personal battleground - the battleground of love, not war - in many cases, as here, echoing the same epic language and imagery. So for example, the rather puzzling expression ' greener than grass' has nothing to do with envy but instead echoes the expression 'green fear' used by Homer to describe the warrior's terror in battle. How, then, can a translator convey the strangeness of this innovation, both for Sappho's contemporary readers and for us? Mary Barnard chooses to domesticate the image, having Sappho became 'paler than/dry grass'. Greek colour terms are far vaguer than those in English with chloros covering a range from deep green to pale yellow but after much deliberation, I chose to stick to 'greener than grass' to keep the startling vividness of the image, explaining the reference by use of a footnote.

Post your own comments and solution to 'greener than grass' on the Discussion Boards. 

Sappho's poem quickly became a classic of its kind, and her description of the physical sensations of desire a constant in later poetry. The Roman poet Catullus was so moved by the poem that he produced his own version, while others borrowed her imagery as a matter of course (Ovid's Dido in the Heroides, for example, complains of her unrequited love for Aeneas):-

While the woman poet Sulpicia, issues the following challenge to her lover:

         And I burn more than most. But I'll take my pleasure on those coals
         Cerinthus, if my fierce fires can somehow fire you too.

It even influenced ancient medical belief with physician in the third century BC diagnosing a case of (male) sexual obsession by reference to her poem, see: Plutarch's "Life of Demetrius", 38:

And Sappho's influence continues today: a recent letter to the health pages of a national newspaper detailing the symptoms of an allergic reaction to wasp stings bears a remarkable, if unintentional, similarity to her poem:

          my body swells, my eyes can't open, I break out into a rash and my asthma

          becomes so uncontrollable, I cannot breathe...

Why not post your own new version of Sappho's symptoms on the Discussion Boards?

Read more ...Catullus 51

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