Sappho and her influence

by David M. Robinson

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.