Sappho and her influence

by David M. Robinson

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: