As we read these lyrics for their splendid music we gradually perceive the motives of the symphony. There is more here than beauty. There is a secret story intricately involved, as in Shakespeare’s sonnets or Elizabeth Browning’s. The first poems confess the end of a passion, still deep, and quick, but full of quarrels and combats; we feel the inevitable rupture close at hand, and the disenchantment which notes the death of a sentiment that our muse had believed immortal:—
‘Te souviens-tu du temps où, les regards tendus
Vers l’espace, ma main entre tes mains gisante,
J’exigeai de régner sur la mer de Lépante,
Dans quelque baie heureuse, aux parfums suspendus,
Où l’orgueil et l’amour halcettent confundus?
‘À présent, épuisée, immobile ou errante,
J’abdique sans effort le destin qui m’est dû.
Quel faste comblerait une âme indifferente?
‘Je n’ai besoin de rien puisque je t’ai perdu.’
The lovers separate. The meeting had seemed a prodigy. But the Muse, in a cloud of poetry, has declared to her votaress her jealousy of a mortal lover:—
‘On n’est pas à la fois enivrée et heureuse,
L’univers dans vos bras n’aura pas de rival.’
and the great poet (who has also the misfortune to be a young and beautiful woman) bids her lover farewell, much as the immortal Diana may have dismissed Endymion:—
‘Allez vers votre simple et calme destinée;
Et, comme la lueur d’un phare diligent
Suit longtemps sur la mer les barques étonnées.
Je verserai sur vous ma lumière d’argent.’
In vain he protests and begs her to consider how void and out of shape her days will hang, bereft of the substance of so rare an affection. A dreary isolation, a self-centred ambition, are surely less propitious to poetry than a sympathy communicated, not only between two hearts, but between two minds? (The man’s part of the dialogue we must more or less supply.) The fact is, she is tired of him, or rather of the storm and stress of passion, and she replies with an absent look:—
‘Je n’avais plus besoin de vous pour vous aimer....’
‘Mon amour, je ne puis t’aimer! Le jour éclate
Comme un blanc incendie, au mont des aromates!
Le gazon, telle une eau, fraîchit au fond des bois;
Un délire sacré m’entraîne loin de toi.’
She is relentless, and all the more relentless that she forgets nothing of their old delights. Since Sappho has any woman uttered such a burst of passion as she pours out in shameless reminiscence in the marvellous lyric entitled ‘T’aimer. Et quand le jour timide ...?’ (the day may enjoy as much timidity as it pleases; the poetess leaves all her share untouched). Here are the accents of desire, the voice of nature naked and unashamed; but it is the evocation of a love consumed and finished. The remembered flame is now a handful of ashes:—