IX. SAPPHO IN LATIN TRANSLATIONS, IN SPANISH, AND IN GERMAN
We have spoken of Sappho’s influence on the ancient Latin authors and especially of Catullus’ translation and elaboration of the second ode. Horace also may have translated whole odes, but we have only Catullus’ preserved. In later days many of the editions of Athenaeus, Dionysius, Pseudo-Longinus, Hephaestion, and of the Anthology included Latin versions, and many other writers have Latinized the fragments of Sappho, especially Ausonius, Stephanus, Thomas Venatorius, Lubinus, Poliziano, and Thomas Moore. One of Moore’s two versions of Plato’s epigram is quoted here:
Musas esse novem referunt, sed prorsus aberrant.
Lesbia jam Sappho Pieriis est decima.
Among the Latin translators of the odes have been Elias Andreas, Simone Bircovio, Professor Le Fèvre (Tanaquillus Faber), Zacharias Pearce, Valentini, Barbagallo and Allucci, Ambrocio, Emilio Porto and Birkow, etc. Gorsse, A. Stace, Vossius, and Henri Etienne and others have rendered the second ode into Latin.
Spanish. In Spain in 1794 there was a translation of Sappho and many other Greek lyric poets into Castilian verse by D. Jos. y D. Bernabé Canga Arguelles; and in 1832 appeared a prose and verse translation of Anacreon, Sappho, and Tyrtaeus by D. Jose del Castilla y Ayensa. Recently in Paris (1913) has been printed a modern Spanish version by T. Meabe. But in general Sappho has had but little influence on Spanish and German literatures, as compared with her great effect on Italian, French, and English. Mention, however, must not be omitted of the account of Sappho by A. Fernandez Merino. It is written in Spanish and discusses many of the Sapphic problems, giving full references.
German. In 1710 Philander von der Linde translated the second ode, and in 1732 Hudemann translated a few of the fragments, and there were good German editions of all Sappho’s fragments as early as the careful one by Christian Wolf (1734). In 1744 appeared Neukirch’s translation of the first two odes, and in 1746 Götz published his translation in rhymeless verse. In the same year appeared Stählin’s translations. In 1764 “the German Sappho,” Die Karshin, mentions Sappho five or six times and Phaon, but has no direct echoes. In 1776 Meinecke put Sappho into verse; in 1782 Ramler; in 1783 Günther Wahl. In 1787 verse translations were published at Berlin and Liebau, and in 1793 Conz published his translation of the fragment, To an Ignorant Girl. In 1809 Friedrich Gottlieb Born edited an edition for schools; in the same year C. Braun translated the fragments; in 1810 Volger published his very important and rare edition with commentary and musical schemes. He was soon followed by Welcker’s defense (1816), which Goethe mentions four times. But Sappho’s poetry remained a closed book to Goethe.[166] There were many succeeding editions or translations: Degen (1821), Neue (1827), Brockhausen’s verse imitations (1827), Richter (1833), Jäger (1836), Gerhard’s free rendering for German student songs (1847), Köchly (1851), Hartung (1857), Weise (1878), Theodor Bergk’s great edition of 1882 reprinted in 1914; Schultz-Geffcken’s Altgriechische Lyrik im deutschen Reim (1895), Stowasser, Griechenlyrik in deutsche Verse übertragen (1910); and Wilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides (1913). There is a good German account of Sappho by Paul Brandt in his Sappho, ein Lebensbild aus den Frühlingstagen altgriechischer Dichtung (1905). In Griechische Lyrik (1920) Erich Bethe in a good chapter on Sappho translates into rhymed verse the first two odes and several of the fragments (E. 99, 119, 135, 114, 54, 71, as well as the new papyrus fragments E. 83, 149, 150, 148, 154).
I can quote here only the new fragment 83:
...
Weinend hat sie Abschied genommen,
Immer wieder sprach sie so:
‘Hartes, Sappho, muss ich leiden,
Muss dich lassen, muss nun scheiden.’
Und ich hab zu ihr gesprochen:
‘Lebe wohl und denke mein!
Wisse, dass dich treu geleite
Meine Liebe in die Weite!’
Denn stets werde ich gedenken,
Auch wenn du es einst vergisst,
Wieviel Schönes wir genossen,
Wie du oft um schlanke Sprossen
Veilchen wandest, Rosen bandest
Und du mich damit bekränzt,
Und die duft’gen Purpurblüten
Deinen zarten Hals umglühten ...
There are only a few distinct cases of Sappho’s influence on the great German poets, and so I limit myself to comparing Grillparzer’s melodramatic adaptation of the Aphrodite ode with the beautiful rendering by the German lyric poet of modern times, Geibel, who as a tutor in Athens learned to love Lesbian lyrics and Greek literature, though he could not reproduce the wonderful soft sound of the Aeolic Greek:
Golden-thronende Aphrodite,
Listenersinnende Tochter des Zeus,
Nicht mit Angst und Sorgen belaste,
Hocherhabne! dies pochende Herz!
Sondern komm, wenn jemals dir lieblich
Meiner Leier Saiten getönt,
Deren Klängen du öfters lauschtest,
Verlassend des Vaters goldenes Haus.
Du bespanntest den schimmernden Wagen,
Und deiner Sperlinge fröhliches Paar,
Munter schwingend die schwärzlichen Flügel,
Trug dich vom Himmel zur Erde herab.
Und du kamst; mit lieblichem Lächeln,
Göttliche! auf der unsterblichen Stirn,
Fragtest du, was die Klagende quäle,
Warum erschalle der Flehenden Ruf?
Was das schwärmende Herz begehre,
Wen sich sehne die klopfende Brust
Sanft zu bestricken im Netz der Liebe;
‘Wer ist’s, Sappho, der dich verletzt?
Flieht er dich jetzt, bald wird er dir folgen;
Verschmäht er Geschenke, er gibt sie noch selbst,
Liebt er dich nicht, gar bald wird er lieben,
Folgsam gehorchend jeglichem Wink!’
Komm auch jetzt und löse den Kummer,
Der mir lastend den Busen beengt,
Hilf mir erringen, nach was ich ringe,
Sei mir Gefährtin im lieblichen Streit!
(Grillparzer)
Die du thronst auf Blumen, o schaumgeborne
Tochter Zeus’, listsinnende, hör’ mich rufen,
Nicht in Schmach und bitterer Qual, o Göttin,
Lass mich erliegen.
Sondern huldvoll neige dich mir, wenn jemals
Du mein Flehn willfährigen Ohrs vernommen,
Wenn du je, zur Hilfe bereit, des Vaters
Halle verlassen.
Raschen Flugs auf goldenem Wagen zog dich
Durch die Luft dein Taubengespann, und abwärts
Floss von ihm der Fittiche Schatten dunkelnd
Über den Erdgrund.
So dem Blitz gleich, stiegst du herab und fragtest,
Sel’ge, mit unsterblichem Antlitz lächelnd:
‘Welch ein Gram verzehrt dir das Herz, warum doch
Riefst du mich, Sappho?
Was beklemmt mit sehnlicher Pein so stürmisch
Dir die Brust? Wen soll ich ins Netz dir schmeicheln?
Welchem Liebling schmelzen den Sinn? Wer wagt es,
Deiner zu spotten?
Flieht er: wohl, so soll er dich bald verfolgen;
Wehrt er stolz der Gabe, so soll er geben;
Liebt er nicht, bald soll er für dich entbrennen,
Selbst ein Verschmähter.’
Komm denn, komm auch heute, den Gram zu lösen!
Was so heiss mein Busen ersehnt, o lass es
Mich empfahn, Holdselige, sei du selbst mir
Bundesgenossin!
(Geibel)
In 1793, Franz von Kleist at the age of twenty-four had written a tragedy Sappho, a typical eighteenth century play of intrigue, an immature performance, however, lacking in clear portrayals of character and in dramatic development. In 1816 F. W. Gubitz had published an unimportant monodrama Sappho, which was almost a caricature of what a dramatic work of art should be. In these dramas there was little of the real Sappho, but the case is different with Grillparzer’s Sappho, which was given April 21, 1818, in Vienna with great success. Some of the motives of von Kleist reappear in Grillparzer, and there are resemblances in language and thought. He may have used Amalie vom Imhoff’s Die Schwestern von Lesbos (1801), where there is a reference to the Leucadian Leap. But he rises to higher heights, and if he did use the above authors, their “crude ore,” as one critic has expressed it, “yields pure gold.” Grillparzer tells us himself in his autobiography[167] how he conceived the idea of the drama. On June 29, 1817, he was strolling along the banks of the Danube when at the entrance to the Prater, the great park of Vienna, he met Dr. Joël, who remarked that Weigel, the orchestra-leader, wanted a libretto. Dr. Joël stated that Sappho would be a good subject, and Grillparzer immediately replied that it certainly would make a good tragedy. They parted company, and Grillparzer walked deep into the Prater, and when he returned home late in the evening the plan of Sappho was complete. The next day he went to the Imperial Library and secured a copy of the extant fragments of Sappho, in which he found one of the two complete poems, which is addressed to the goddess of love, entirely suited to his purpose. He translated it at once, and the very next morning began work on the drama. The spirit of the play is German, not Greek, and takes some motives from Goethe’s Tasso. But Sappho is depicted as a woman rather than a poetess, and the story of the tragedy is really that of an unhappy woman disappointed in love. While it is a genuine love-tragedy, it also portrays the hard lot of the poet and the struggle between art and life even more vigorously than Goethe’s Tasso did. At the very beginning of the play Sappho has been crowned with the wreath of victory at the Olympic games and meets Phaon, who is represented as only slightly younger. Carried away by her triumph, he throws himself into her arms, only to spurn her later. To Phaon she sings (Act I, vi) Sappho’s hymn to Aphrodite, which we have just quoted, with a few changes to adapt it to the situation. Of course there were no such contests at Olympia in Sappho’s day, and Sappho’s victory is a pure invention. Neither was the original hymn addressed to Phaon, nor did the usual legend say that Sappho cast herself from a Lesbian cliff; but Grillparzer must preserve the three unities, and such dramatic licenses and many anachronisms, such as the mention of Croesus who lived after Sappho’s time, are permissible to a master of dramatic technique. What interests us is that Grillparzer actually studied Sappho’s fragments and was much assisted by them. In Act I, lines 173 ff., he seems to be referring to the Adonis fragments, including the one on the loneliness of midnight, and to the verses which name Andromeda and Atthis:
vom schönen Jüngling,
Der Liebesgöttin liebeglüh’nden Sang,
Die Klage einsam hingewachter Nacht,
Von Andromedens und von Atthis’ Spielen.
The fragment (E. 74) is echoed in lines 671-2:
Denn, wenn auch heftig manchmal, rasch und bitter,
Doch gut ist Sappho, wahrlich lieb und gut.
While Grillparzer is one of the few German poets who has imitated the content of Sappho’s songs, many have tried the Sapphic strophe with success, especially Wilbrandt in the Adonis song, in Der Meister von Palmyra:
Also will’s der ewige Zeus; du musst nun
Niedersteigen unter die blüh’nde Erde,
Musst die dunkle Persephoneia küssen,
Schöner Adonis.
Many a German novel refers to Sappho, but without any special knowledge of her fragments. One of the most interesting, which adapts with many changes the Rhodopis story, has been translated into English, An Egyptian Princess, by George Ebers (A. L. Burt Co., New York, second German edition 1868). Here Charaxus actually marries Rhodopis and names their child Cleïs, who in turn has a child Sappho whose love-scenes with Bartja make up most of the novel.
“Alcaeus, the greatest poet of his day, and Charaxus, the brother of that Sappho whose odes it was our Solon’s last wish to learn by heart, came here to Naukratis, which had already long been the flourishing center of commercial communication between Egypt and the rest of the world. Charaxus saw Rhodopis, and soon loved her so passionately that he gave an immense sum to secure her from the mercenary Xanthus, who was on the point of returning with her to his own country; Sappho wrote some biting verses, derisive of her brother and his purchase, but Alcaeus on the other hand, approved, and gave expression to this feeling in glowing songs on the charms of Rhodopis. And now Sappho’s brother, who had till then remained undistinguished among the many strangers at Naukratis, became a noted man through Rhodopis. His house was soon the center of attraction to all foreigners, by whom she was overwhelmed with gifts. The king Hophra, hearing of her beauty and talent, sent for her to Memphis, and offered to buy her of Charaxus, but the latter had already long, though secretly, given Rhodopis her freedom, and loved her far too well to allow of a separation. She, too, loved the handsome Lesbian and refused to leave him despite the brilliant offers made to her on all sides. At length Charaxus made this wonderful woman his lawful wife, and continued to live with her and her little daughter Kleïs in Naukratis, until the Lesbian exiles were recalled to their native land by Pittakus. He then started homeward with his wife, but fell ill on the journey, and died soon after his arrival at Mitylene. Sappho, who had derided her brother for marrying one beneath him, soon became an enthusiastic admirer of the beautiful widow and rivaled Alcaeus in passionate songs to her praise.”
We may mention also in closing this chapter the lyrics, published in a small volume, called Stürme, by Carmen Sylva, the nom de plume of Rumania’s late queen, because in these lyrics the tragedy of Sapphic love has a German political rather than a Lesbian setting.
X. SAPPHO IN FRENCH LITERATURE[168]
The poetess of passion, perfect in expression, is more akin to French literature than to German, and so it is not surprising to discover Sapphic echoes in every period of the former from that of the erudite and artistic poetry of the Pléiade in the sixteenth century to the present day of Maurice Donnay. In the sixteenth century Louise Labé was composing sonnets which burned like an ode of Sappho, and in 1556 Remy Belleau in his Anacréon published the first French translation of Sappho. Only three years later (1559), another of the Pléiade, Pierre de Ronsard, who turned from his admiration of Homer and Pindar to Horace, Anacreon, and Sappho, gave in the second book of his Amours, a translation of the second ode of Sappho:
Je suis un demy-dieu quand, assis vis-à-vis
De toy, mon cher souci, j’escoute des devis,
Devis entre-rompus d’un gracieux sourire,
Souris qui me retient le coeur emprisonné:
Car, en voyant tes yeux, je me pasme étonné
Et de mes pauvres flancs un seul vent je ne tire.
Ma langue s’engourdit, un petit feu me court
Fretillant sous la peau; je suis muet et sourd
Et une obscure nuit dessus mes yeux demeure;
Mon sang devient glacé, l’esprit fuit de mon corps,
Je tremble tout de crainte, et peu s’en faut alors
Qu’à tes pieds estendu sans âme je ne meure.
Ronsard also translated the famous folk-song, which has been so much imitated in all literatures, wrongly calling it an epigram:[169]
Desia la Lune est couchée,
La poussiniere est cachée,
Et ia la my-nuit brunette
Vers l’Aurore s’est panchée,
Et ie dors au lict seulette.
In the second book of his Poèmes a Christophile de Choiseul (Edition Laumonier V, 186), Ronsard (1556) said:
Le doux Anacreon me plaist et ie voudrois que la douce Saphon
Qui si bien resueilloit la lyre Lesbienne,
En France accompaignast la Muse Teïenne!
Early in the seventeenth century Malherbe wrote the following stanzas for le Duc de Bellegarde “to a lady who imagined that he was in love with her,” in which he copied from the Lesbian poetess certain symptoms of love:
Philis, qui me voit le teint blême,
Les sens ravis hors de moi-même,
Et les yeux trempés tout le jour,
Cherchant la cause de ma peine,
Se figure, tant elle est vaine,
Qu’elle m’a donné de l’amour ...
En quelle école nonpareille
Auroit-elle appris la merveille
De si bien charmer ses appas,
Que je pusse la trouver belle,
Pâlir, transir, languir pour elle
Et ne m’en apercevoir pas?
In 1620 Colletet published a prose imitation of Ovid, entitled Lettre de Saphon à Phaon (Les Epistres d’Ovide. Traduites en prose françoise. Par les sieurs Du Perron, Des Portes, de la Brosse, de Lingendes, Hedelin et Colletet. Paris, 1620). In 1660 Le Sieur Du Four translated the two odes, the first in prose, the second in verse. In 1674 that great classicist, Nicholas Boileau, who ranked the ancient writers above the modern because they had been tested through hundreds of years and because they agreed with nature and reason, included a beautiful and truly classical rendering of the second ode, in his translation of the Treatise on the Sublime:
Je sens de veine en veine une subtile flamme
Courir par tout mon corps sitôt que je te vois;
Et dans les doux transports où s’égare mon âme
Je ne saurais trouver de langue ni de voix.
Un nuage confus se répand sur ma vue;
Je n’entends plus, je tombe en de douces langueurs;
Et pâle, sans haleine, interdite, éperdue,
Un frisson me saisit, je tremble, je me meurs.
In 1677 Boileau’s intimate friend, Jean Racine, produced his great tragedy in five acts, Phèdre, based mainly on Euripides and Seneca, but including a translation of Sappho’s second ode, in Act I, scene 3, where Phaedra says about Hippolytus:
Je le vis, je rougis, je pâlis à sa vue;
Un trouble s’éleva dans mon âme éperdue;
Mes yeux ne voyoient plus, je ne pouvois parler;
Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;
Je reconnus Vénus et ses feux redoutables,
D’un sang qu’elle poursuit tourments inévitables.
Racine’s comment was that he had “rien vu de plus vif ni de plus beau dans toute l’antiquité.” In 1649 Mlle de Scudéry in her Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus and also in her letters calls herself Sappho, perhaps thinking of Sappho as a great literary writer and with a reference to Platonic friendship but no conception of Sappho as a bad character. Bayle rather objects to giving the name Sappho to a “fille qui écrivoit parfaitement bien en vers et en prose, et dont la vertu étoit admirée.” Perhaps Anne Dacier was not then the first to defend Sappho. In any case, Mlle de Scudéry gives the wrong idea of the historical Sappho, for in the tenth volume of le Grand Cyrus she gives a tedious recital of the loves of Sappho and Phaon. What could be farther from the real burning Sappho than desiring “un amant sans vouloir un mari, mais un amant qui, se contentant de la possession de son coeur, l’aime avec respect jusqu’à la mort.” The later French romance, entitled Les Amours de Sapho et de Phaon, also has nothing to do with the real Sappho. In 1680 Hilaire-Bernard de Requeleyne (cf. Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, IV. 392-393) gave with the Greek a poetical version, and in the next year Professor Le Fèvre of the University of Saumur, the Greek scholar and translator of Virgil, made another French translation, which was disloyal to the Greek and did not deserve the praise which has been bestowed upon it. On December 1, 1681,[170] his daughter, Anne (Madame Dacier) published Les Poësies d’Anacreon et de Sapho with notes and a life of Sappho. She believed in the Phaon story and that Sappho followed Phaon to Sicily and there composed the “plus beaux vers du monde,” including the hymn to Venus; “Tout le monde sçait qu’elle aima Phaon et qu’elle l’aima d’une manière fort violente.”
“Ce qui me fait croire qu’il ne faut pas ajoûter foy à tout ce que l’on trouve écrit contre elle. Si elle avoit esté de l’humeur dont on l’a dépeinte, il n’y a point d’apparence qu’elle eût eu tant de chagrin de l’amour de Caraxus, ni qu’elle eût osé l’en reprendre avec tant d’éclat. II ne faut pas douter que son merite ne luy eût fait bien des ennemis; car elle surpassoit en sçavoir, non seulement toutes les femmes, quoi que de son temps il y en eût en Grèce d’extrémement sçavantes; mais elle estoit même fort au dessus des plus excellens Poëtes. Je crois donc que ceux dont les vers auroient esté trouvez incomparables, si Sapho n’en eût jamais fait, ne furent pas de ses amis, et que l’envie a fait écrire les calomnies dont on a tâché de la noircir. Je ne puis même m’imaginer que les Mityleniens eussent eu tant de veneration pour une personne si décriée, et qu’aprés sa mort, ils eussent fait graver son image sur leur monoye.”
Sappho’s name was in vogue at this time wherever love was the subject of conversation or of writing. In 1683 Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle in his Dialogues des morts,[171] a title taken from Lucian, has Sapho and Laure discuss which sex should be the aggressor in love-making. Fontenelle displays no knowledge of Sappho herself, but has chosen her name, like so many writers even down to the time of Alphonse Daudet, to lend importance to a story which has already been conceived and for which an attractive title must be found. We can only quote the latter part of the dialogue:
Laure. Quoi! auriez-vous voulu qu’on eût établi que les femmes attaqueraient les hommes?
Sapho. Eh! quel besoin y a-t-il que les uns attaquent, et que les autres se défendent? Qu’on s’aime de part et d’autre autant que le coeur en dira.
Laure. Oh! les choses iraient trop vite, et l’amour est un commerce si agréable, qu’on a bien fait de lui donner le plus de durée que l’on a pu. Que serait-ce, si l’on était reçu des que l’on s’offrirait? Que deviendraient tous ces soins qu’on prend pour plaire, toutes ces inquiétudes que l’on sent, quand on se reproche de n’avoir pas assez plu, tous ces empressemens avec lesquels on cherche un moment heureux, enfin tout cet agréable mélange de plaisirs et de peine qu’on appelle amour? Rien ne serait plus insipide, si l’on ne faisait que s’entr’aimer.
Sapho. Hé bien, s’il faut que l’amour soit une espèce de combat, j’aimerais mieux qu’on eût obligé les hommes à se tenir sur la défensive. Aussi-bien, ne m’avez-vous pas dit que les femmes avaient plus de penchant qu’eux à la tendresse? A ce compte, elles attaqueraient mieux.
Laure. Oui, mais ils se défendraient trop bien. Quand on veut qu’un sexe résiste, on veut qu’il résiste autant qu’il faut pour faire mieux goûter la victoire à celui qui attaque, mais non pas assez pour la remporter. Il doit n’être ni si faible, qu’il se rende d’abord, ni si fort, qu’il ne se rende jamais. C’est là notre caractère, et ce ne serait peut-être pas celui des hommes. Croyez-moi, après qu’on a bien raisonné ou sur l’amour, ou sur telle autre matière qu’on voudra, on trouve au bout du compte que les choses sont bien comme elles sont, et que la réforme qu’on prétendrait y apporter gâterait tout.
In 1684 une Demoiselle de qualité de la Province de Guienne, only eighteen years of age, published a French prose translation of the two odes in the Mercure for July. In the same year appeared a metrical translation with Greek text, philological notes, and a life of Sappho in which are repeated the stories of disgraceful love, infatuation for Phaon, and the Leucadian Leap, Les Poésies d’Anacreon et de Sapho traduites de Grec en vers François. In 1692 we have another verse rendering by Baron de Longuepierre, who added a feeble poem in which Apollo vainly defends Sappho against the arrows of love. In 1694 Despréaux in his edition of the Treatise on the Sublime gave a poetical version of the second ode which was so artistic that French critics in their enthusiasm pronounced it superior to the original, but its rhetorical phrases are far from the simplicity of Sappho’s Greek. Toward the end of the grand siècle La Fare, the Epicurean and inseparable friend of the Abbé de Chaulieu, translated the famous second ode. In 1704 appeared a verse translation by De la Fosse; in 1712 Gacon’s verse translation of Sappho’s two odes and Father Bougeant’s Anacréon à Sapho, Dialogue en Vers Grecs; and in 1713 appeared in French verse an imaginary epistle of Sappho to Phaon (Mercure for April). In 1716 La Fosse published his verses based on those of the Le Fèvres. In 1758 Poinsinet de Sivry produced his good verse translations. Voltaire (1694-1778) made an elegant adaptation of the second ode, with his eye also on Theocritus’ second idyl:
Reine des nuits, dis quel fut mon amour,
Comme en mon sein les frissons et la flamme
Se succédaient, me perdaient tour à tour;
Quels doux transports égarèrent mon âme;
Comment mes yeux cherchaient en vain le jour.
Comme j’aimais et sans songer à plaire,
Je ne pouvais ni parler ni me taire.
In 1766 appeared Blin de Sainmore’s Lettres de Sapho a Phaon with an account of Sappho’s life and verse translations of her poems. In 1773 appeared a new version of Sappho in prose by Moutonnet de Clairfons which proved so popular that it went through at least seven editions. In 1798 Mérard de Saint-Just published his verse translations of Sappho and Anacreon. Toward the end of the eighteenth century,[172] an imaginary Greek manuscript, said to have been found at Herculaneum, translated by de Lantier, was published under the title Voyages d’Antenor en Grèce et en Asie, a most interesting and learned story of an imaginary trip to Grecian lands. Antenor and Phanor in the first chapter of the second volume meet Sappho and two unfortunate Greeks. An account is given in chapter three of the love of Sappho and Phaon, and the hymn to Aphrodite, quoted in the notes in Boileau’s translation, is addressed to Phaon: “C’est pour cet ingrat qu’un jour dans l’enthousiasme de la poésie et de l’amour, je composai cette ode qui a circulé dans toute la Grèce, et que sans doute la postérité répétera encore.” In the fourth chapter Antenor and his friend attend the funeral of Sappho and see the ashes deposited in an urn. On the cippus is carved a lyre with this epitaph:
Ci-gît Sapho, la gloire de nos jours;
Muses, pleurez, pleurez, Amours.
In the seventh chapter an account is given of Sappho’s last days, and Theagenes is revealed as her rival, to whom Phaon has united himself by a solemn bond. To Sappho is attributed a long ode in which she invokes Venus and all the infernal deities against her lover. She ends, however, by returning to the sweetness and generosity which had originally characterized her. I quote only the last two stanzas:
Et toi, mes amours, ô ma lyre,
Douce compagne de mes jeux,
Repose toi, ma muse expire;
Reçois ici mes longs adieux.
Mourons; allons au noir rivage:
Heureuse, si, dans mon ennui,
De Phaon emportant l’image,
Je peux aux morts parler de lui.
The author evidently was fond of Sappho and would compare with her Louise Labbé, la belle Cordière (1526-1566), a woman of tender heart and with a taste for passion, who wrote verses on love in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. At this time Sappho was held in high esteem and it was a compliment to call a writer “a modern Sappho.” So for example in the preface to L’Abbé Le Roy, Le Paradis perdu, poëme traduit de l’Anglais de Milton en vers françois (Rouen, 1775) we read: “Aussi a-t-on fait le plus favorable et le plus juste accueil à la charmante esquisse du Paradis Terrestre, que daigna nous donner une femme célébre, dont le nom seul fait l’éloge, Mme du Boccage, cette Sappho moderne, qui fait d’honneur a la France.”
In 1777[173] Sauvigny published his Poésies de Sapho, composed of eighteen odes, four scolies morales, four epigrams, the epitaphs of Timas and Pelagon, some fragments, a letter of Sappho to Phaon, and a hymn to Venus. There are many pretty uses of Sappho, though in no sense can the poems be said to be those of Sappho. The third ode is an echo of the fragment on the Evening Star:
Belle étoile du soir, digne ornement des cieux,
...
Tu fais rentrer le paisible troupeau,
Qui du loup ravisseur craint la dent meurtrière;
La fille qui, joyeuse, a quitté le hameau,
Tu la ramènes à sa mère.
Ces timides amans que Vénus a touchés,
Qui brûlent d’être unis ensemble,
Et que l’éclat du jour avait tenus cachés,
C’est ton retour qui les rassemble.
The fifth ode renders the fragment on virginity:
La Jeune Épousée.
Rose de la pudeur que l’amour a cueillie,
Votre premier éclat me sera-t-il rendu?
La Virginité.
Ingrate, vous l’avez perdu;
Vous l’avez perdu pour la vie.
The sixth ode is simply Boileau’s translation of the Aphrodite hymn. The thirteenth, addressed to Atthis, combines two fragments:
La lune au front d’argent et sa cour lumineuse
Echappent à mes yeux;
D’un voile plus obscur la nuit silencieuse
Enveloppe les cieux.
Heure que j’attendais, qui dut m’être si chère,
Tu t’es évanouie, et je suis seule, ô dieux!
The fifteenth ode is a dialogue between Alcaeus and Sappho, and the note interprets as Sappho’s refusal of Alcaeus the famous fragment of which a Latin version is given:
Si nobis amicus es, torum accipe junior;
Non enim sustinebo consvescere cum seniore,
Dum junior sim.
Other writers of the end of the eighteenth century who paid tribute to Sappho were Bernis in his ode Harmonie, Lebrun in his epigrams, Parny in his Journée champêtre, La Harpe, who knew only ode II, and M. Legouvé who writes:
Vois Sapho; par Phaon trahie
Elle rendit son art confident de ses pleurs
Et merita la gloire en chantant ses malheurs.
Other French translators of about this time are Regnier Desmarais, Ricard, Langeac, Deguerle, Marchena, Blin de Sainmore, Abbé Batteux, and Gorsse in Journal des Muses III.
In the nineteenth century the echoes and translations of Sappho are even more numerous. The first of the neo-classicists, André Chénier, follower of Boileau, owed much of his enthusiasm for the Greeks to his Greek mother, and imitated Sappho in the ode which he wrote for his love, the ode so admired by Alfred de Musset, the charming poet who also knew the sufferings of love:
Fanny, l’heureux mortel qui près de toi respire
Sait, à te voir parler, et rougir, et sourire
De quels hôtes divins le ciel est habité ...
He also used the fragment about Virginity (Latouche edition I, p. 64). Jacques Delille, the famous translator of Virgil, and the great representative of didactic and descriptive poetry, in his Poésies fugitives (1802) made a good literal translation. In the same year Vanderbourg published some verses camouflaged as the Poésies de Madame Clotilde de Surville, who was supposed to have lived 1405-1495. He gives a translation of the famous second ode, of which I quote only the last stanza:
S’ennuagent mes yeux: n’oy plus qu’ennuy, rumeurs,
Je brûle, je languis; chauds frissons dans ma veine
Circulent: je pâlis, je palpite, l’haleine
Me manque, je me meurs.
The two great initiators of Romanticism also knew Sappho. Madame de Staël wrote (1811) a drama published 1821, Sapho, in which Phaon is divided between love for two different women. Chateaubriand in 1809 in Les Martyrs[174] makes Cymodocée, who was on the point of becoming a Christian and already betrothed to Eudore, a fervent disciple of Christ, say to her fiancé: “Dis-moi, puisqu’on peut aimer dans ton culte, il y a donc une Vénus chrétienne?... Le colère de cette déesse est-elle redoutable? Force-t-elle la jeune fille à chercher le jeune homme dans la palestre, à l’introduire furtivement sous le toit paternel? Ta Vénus rend-elle la langue embarrassée? Répand-elle un feu brûlant, un froid mortel dans les veines?” Chateaubriand adds here (and also in Revolutions Anciennes) Boileau’s translation and in the same place he cites the passage from Racine’s Phèdre which we have quoted, [p. 163]. In 1805 L. Gorsse published Sapho, poëme en dix chants.[175] He defends Sappho’s character (eleven years before the German Welcker) but believes that her love for Phaon was “un fait incontestable, dont tous les genres de littérature ont le droit, de s’emparer.” He speaks of the Abbé Barthélemy, who in Voyage d’Anacharsis paints “les transports et l’ardeur de Sapho;” also of Lantier, Voyages d’Anténor, who had placed Sappho in such a bright light that he has brought out new beauties in the subject, which had not been seen previously. Both quote Boileau’s translation. Gorsse also praises, as possessing a grace which men can never attain, the fragments of poetry which two ladies, Mesdames de Beaufort-d’Hautpoul and Caroline Wougne, published under the name of Sapho. On pages 181-187 (Vol. II) he quotes a romance by each, attributed to Sappho, which deals with her love for Phaon. In that of Caroline Wougne Sappho meets Phaon on his return from Sicily during a stormy night in a country house where he is asking for hospitality. Gorsse has also consulted Madame Pipelet de Salm, who presented Sappho on the lyric stage with grace and dignity. He himself unites the legends of her love with those of her writings, and drawing also on Tibullus, Propertius, Virgil, Lucretius, and especially Ovid, makes Sappho speak as poetess and lover fifty expanded elegies. There are five in each of the ten cantos besides a prologue and epilogue. In view of the fact that none of Sappho’s elegies are extant, the reconstruction, though fanciful, is extremely interesting. The first five songs picture Sappho’s desire, contentment, happiness, fear, and calmness. Phaon is jealous of Alcaeus and proposes to leave Lesbus to dwell in the Vale of Tempe, but Sappho asks Phaon to share in her poems, which will immortalize their love, and then reveals to him the origin of music. The second five represent her suspicion, grief, torment, and pursuit of Phaon to Sicily, her despair and the Leucadian Leap, after she sees Phaon making eyes at Telesilla. In the fifth elegy of the first canto is an adaptation of Sappho’s second ode, in which the first verse addressed to Phaon is taken without acknowledgment from André Chénier’s Fanny. Phaon seems to be the principal figure, and the legends about him are tremendously expanded with the help of many Greek myths. As in so many other writers he becomes a great athlete and must overcome his opponents in the stadium. The Italian author of Avventure di Saffo had done likewise and made Phaon win with the same throw which Ulysses used in Homer. The Voyages d’Anténor had made Phaon first appear to Sappho after winning in the gymnasium. Likewise Gorsse has Sappho see Phaon for the first time in the stadium at Mytilene. There she describes the impression Phaon made on her, when he won the athletic prize. All these writers forget, however, that women in Sappho’s day were not allowed to witness the nude athletic contests. Gorsse shows his wide acquaintance with the ancient accounts of Sappho when in the fourth elegy of the second canto he mentions: “un foible enfant, Cléis, qui t’est si chère!” With only a few errors he represents all the many friends and pupils of Sappho,—to whom he gives classical epithets,—as helping Sappho to preserve Phaon’s love. He is as keen as the modern critics when he says in a note that Erinna cannot be the famous poet, but he is wrong in picturing Brune Andromède and Blonde Gorgo as friends or pupils rather than rivals of Sappho.
O vous, pourtant, qui faites mes délices,
Du noeud sacré qui vous attache à moi,
J’attends encor les plus tendres offices,
Je les réclame au nom de votre foi.
Blanche Cydno, délicate Amynthone,
Douce Pyrine, intéressante Athis,
Brune Andromède, agréable Gellone,
Blonde Gorgo, séduisante Mnaïs!
Par vos attraits, par vos grâces naïves,
Auprès de moi captivez mon amant;
Pour qu’il y trouve un doux enchantement,
Soyez sans cesse à lui plaire attentives.
Vous dont Euterpe anime les accens,
Belle Mégare, adorable Gyrinne,
Docte Gougile, ingénieuse Erinne,
Pour le charmer adressez-lui vos chants.
Vous qui brillez dans l’art de Therpsycore,
Aimable Eunique, élégante Anagore,
Devant ses yeux, avec agilité,
Formez les pas qu’aime la volupté.
Toi, Damophile, ornement de la Grèce,
Dis à Phaon qu’au milieu des neuf Soeurs
J’ai quelquefois, sur les bords du Permesse,
Respiré l’air qu’y parfument les fleurs.
Et toi, surtout, sensible Télésile,
Accorde-moi ton bienfaisant secours,
Pour conserver Phaon à mes amours,
Que ton esprit en moyens soit fertile.
Dans ses regards interroge ses goûts,
De ses desirs occupe-toi sans cesse,
Pour que mon coeur par tes soins les connoisse,
Et qu’aisément il les prévienne tous.
Parmi les sons dont retentit ma lyre,
Répète-lui ceux que Vénus m’inspire;
Et, par l’objet dont il est adoré,
Qu’il ait l’orgueil de se voir honoré.
Toutes, enfin, ô mes tendres amies!
A mon amant composez une cour;
Le doux lien dont nous sommes unies
S’affermira par les noeuds de l’amour.
The second elegy in the fourth canto has a pretty imitation of the famous third fragment. Sappho dissuades Phaon from his jealousy of Alcaeus, which of course is not an ancient legend, in the following words:
Comme un léger brouillard fuit aux rayons du jour,
Que ton soupçon expire à la voix de l’amour!
Sois sans crainte, Phaon! Contre un sexagénaire
Est-ce à toi de lutter dans l’art heureux de plaire?
A toi dont la jeunesse et les riants attraits
Du chantre de Lesbos effacent les succès,
Autant qu’on voit Diane effacer la lumière
De ces astres dorés dont se pare la nuit,
Quand l’éclat argenté du char qu’elle conduit
Annonce que des cieux elle ouvre la barrière?
In the third elegy of the same canto is an elaboration of the fragment on the power of love, the bitter-sweet irresistible creature, and in the first elegy of the fifth canto there is an echo of the fragment about wealth without virtue. In long notes on the second elegy of the fifth book Gorsse cites de Sivry’s or Sauvigny’s verse translations or paraphrases in French, and Latin versions of a score of other fragments and of the Pelagon and Timas epitaphs. In the first elegy of the sixth canto the Sapphic symptoms of love are used:
Je sens mes cheveux se dresser,
Mon sang brûler d’une flamme rapide,
Ou dans mes veines se glacer.
The third elegy of the same canto is an adaptation of the hymn to Aphrodite and in the notes are given Latin versions by Gorsse himself, Elias Andreas, and Birkow.
Not many have written elegies on Sappho, but Gorsse was followed in 1812 by Touzet, who wrote Sapho, poëme élégiaque. It was in 1816 that Lamartine wrote his mediocre imitation of Sappho’s great hymn, calling it L’élégie antique. It is in the cold restored pseudo-classical style of Casimir Delavigne:
Dieux, quels transports nouveaux! ô dieux, comment décrire
Tons les feux dont mon sein se remplit à la fois?
Ma langue se glaça, je demeurai sans voix,
Et ma tremblante main laissa tomber ma lyre.
Here is Lamartine’s own comment: “Un soir, en rentrant d’une de ces excursions, pendant laquelle nous avions relu la strophe unique, mais brûlante, de Sapho, sorte de Vénus de Milo, pareille à ce débris découvert par M. de Marcellus, qui contient plus de beauté dans un fragment qu’il n’y en a dans tout un musée de statues intactes, je m’enfermai, et j’écrivis le commencement grec de cette élégie ou de cette héroïde....” In one of his Nouvelles Méditations poétiques (not printed till 1823) he describes the suffering of the abandoned Sappho and her last, farewell words to the world and to life, before her suicide; the last line is: “adieu chère Lesbos à Vénus consacrée.” Lamartine was followed in his idea of Sappho by Verlaine (1844-1896), the prince of the French poets after the death of Leconte de Lisle. Verlaine speaks of Sappho as “furieuse, les yeux caves et les seins roides.” In writing to his friend Virieu, April 8, 1819, Lamartine mentions the fact that he has planned an opera on Jephté and adds that he is thinking of writing one on Sappho, which, however, was never written: “J’en ai un qui me brûle, c’est une Sapho, superbe sujet d’un opéra pareil.”
In 1815 came Sapho, poème en trois chants par C. T. In 1820 Lazare Carnot published an excellent verse translation of the second ode, Les Symptomes d’Amour, and in 1827 E. Veïssier-Descombes, a translator also of Anacreon, published his classic rendering. In 1828 followed the poetical version of Cousin and Girodet; in 1835, Breghot du Lut., in prose and poetry; in 1836 Alexandre Hope’s Sapho, a poem of about ten pages; in 1843, prose renderings in Michaud’s Biographie Universelle; in 1847, Marullot et Grosset, in verse. In 1842, in the Cariatides, Théodore de Banville, one of the last of the Romantic poets, that Greek “clown” of France, wrote these verses on Sappho:
Et toi, grande Sappho, reine de Mitylène!
Lionne que l’Amour furieux enchaîna.
Près de la mer grondante, avec son Erinna,
Elle enseignait le rhythme et ses délicatesses
Au troupeau triomphal des jeunes poétesses,
Et glacée et brûlante, au bruit amer des flots
Elle mêlait ses cris de rage et ses sanglots.
O toi qui nous atteins avec des flèches sûres,
De quels feux tu brûlas et de quelles blessures
Son chaste sein meurtri par le baiser du vent!
Mais comme rien ne meurt de ce qui fut vivant,
Sa colère amoureuse et de souffrance avide,
Plus tard devait dicter sa plainte au fier Ovide,
Qui, choisissant l’amour, eût la meilleure part,
Et frémir dans les vers d’Horace et de Ronsard.
Baudelaire (1821-1867), the morbid realist, uses the story of the Leucadian Leap in his Lesbos:
—L’oeil d’azur est vaincu par l’oeil noir que tachète
Le cercle ténébreux tracé par les douleurs
De la mâle Sapho, l’amante et le poète!
Plus belle que Vénus se dressant sur le monde.
In a literary fragment (1845), entitled Sapho, he refers to a famous and remarkable tragedy on Sappho which was to be published soon afterwards by Arsène Houssaye. He quotes some verses which are reminiscent of Sappho’s second ode:
Oui, Phaon, je vous aime; et, lorsque je vous vois,
Je perds le sentiment et la force et la voix.
Je souffre tout le jour le mal de votre absence,
Mai qui n’égale pas l’heur de votre présence;
Si bien que vous trouvant, quand vous venez le soir,
La cause de ma joie et de mon désespoir,
Mon âme les compense, et sous les lauriers roses
Etouffe l’ellébore et les soucis moroses.
In 1873 we have a translation by Etienne Prosper Dubois-Gucham, La Grecque Pléiade; in 1878 that of P. L. Courier; in 1882, the verses of de la Roche. About this time J. Richepin published in his undated romance, Grandes Amoureuses, prose translations of several fragments, and in 1889 Paul Lenois made a prose version. In 1884, Alphonse Daudet, after writing a novel on French life and customs as a warning to young men, and picturing a courtesan carried upstairs in the arms of her lover, gave the courtesan and the novel the title of Sapho. Soon afterwards appeared anonymously Madame E. Caro’s Sapho. In 1895 were heard the songs of Pierre Louys, who in Les chansons de Bilitis traduites du Grec pour la première fois[176] transforms Mytilene into a modern Sodom and Sappho into the mistress of a band of hetaerae. He pretends that he is translating Greek poems that were found in excavating the poetess’ grave on Amathus. He even represents them as published by a Doctor Heim of Leipzig. Further to mystify the reader Louys tells of some of the poems that have not been translated and marks restorations in the text, as if these songs had actually been found marred and mutilated and as if the archaeologist had restored the missing words. He even uses, to give a Greek atmosphere, many Greek expressions such as Kypris Philommeïdès. Many of his Greek forms, such as Dzeus, are absurd. Charming as are these Bucoliques en Pamphylie, Élégies à Mitylène, Épigrammes dans l’île de Chypre, they belong rather to pornographic literature, as does his romance called Aphrodite, in which the pseudo-Lesbian idea of two girls marrying one another is to be found. Such bits of perverted Sapphism as appear in many other French writers have no place in the literature of the real Sappho, who can now, after the discovery of all the new papyri, easily be distinguished from the Sappho of romance and legend. Unfortunately the last French translation by Meunier (1911) does not include these recent relics.
One of the latest French imitations of Sappho is by that great reviver of Aristophanes, Maurice Donnay, whose comedies have attracted such large audiences in Europe. In his Lysistrata (Act I, scene II), Donnay makes the pretty Hirondelle as she walks along the shore of the violet sea recite to the accompaniment of the music of the waves the song which divine Sappho composed for the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis, although we have no evidence for such a song:
Rhodopis, ton amant est comme
Un dieu: son bonheur me courrouce.
Quand je pense que c’est un homme
Pour qui ta voix se fait si douce,
Et que c’est Charaxos, mon frère,
Qui possède ta chair superbe,
Et ta Beauté dont j’étais fière,
Je deviens plus verte que l’herbe.
Mes yeux se troublent, mes oreilles
S’emplissent de murmures vagues
Et de grandes rumeurs pareilles
Au bruit que fait le choc des vagues.
Et voilà qu’une sueur froide
Inonde tout mon corps qui tremble,
Puis, je reste sans souffle, et froide
Ainsi qu’un cadavre, il me semble
Que je meurs! que je meurs!
This, of course, is an echo of the famous second ode of Sappho which has influenced all ages and countries and continues so to do. Hardly a year passes without some translation or reminiscence of it in Greece or Italy, in France or Germany, in England or America.