Petrarch’s friend, Domenico di Bandino of Arezzo (1340-c. 1415), professor at Bologna, gave her a brief article in his encyclopaedic Fons Memorabilium Universi. The other commentators on Petrarch ignore her. Giorgio Merula (1424-1494), Poliziano’s adversary, accepts the whole Ovidian legend as historical fact and even adds a new item to Sappho’s life by giving her a son Didas by her wealthy Andrian husband, Cercylas.
The Renaissance. There was now a second “floruit” of Sappho’s fame, but like her previous popularity among the Romans the second renaissance was not favorable to Sappho, and there was no true understanding of the historical Sappho. It was in the fifteenth century that Ovid’s perverse epistle was discovered and from that time on it biased all Sapphic literature. The great humanist Poliziano knew her slightly and has left a Latin version of the epigram on Timas. Domizio Calderini (1447-1477), the learned though not overcritical humanist, based his little knowledge of Sappho on an uncritical use of Suidas. He even falsified Horace’s querentem by forging in its place gaudentem, and transformed Sappho from the leader of a sacred sorority into a tribade[163] or lover of her pupils, even of the famous poetess Erinna. The result was that the great injustice done Sappho by Horace and especially by Ovid was much aggravated. Thanks to Tatian and Calderini, working at different times and in different fields, Sappho was even more misjudged in the seventeenth century. It would be idle to cite the many authors who mention or malign her but who give us little material of literary importance: Giraldi (1489-1552), Ludovico di Castelvetro (1505-1571), Giorgio Carraria (1514 A.D.), Iacopo Filippo Pellenagra (1517 A.D.), Francesco Anguillac (1572), who well renders the second ode, “Parmi quell’uomo equale essere à i Dei,” Lorenzo Crasso (1625?), Ugo Foscolo (1776-1827), and many another.[164] One needs only to read the long account with many references in the famous Dictionnaire historique et critique (1696) by that learned compiler, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who because of his scepticism lost his professorship of philosophy three years before (1693). In his ignorance he assumed that Sappho must have been bad and repeated the usual errors about her. I quote what he says ironically with regard to the charity of Madame Dacier: “charité de Mlle Le Fèvre qui a tâché pour l’honneur de Sappho de rendre le fait incertain; mais je la crois trop raisonnable pour se fâcher que nous en croyons nos propres yeux.” Anne Le Fèvre[165] in 1681 had made the first real defense of Sappho’s character, long before Wilhelm Heinse’s Ardinghello, and one hundred and thirty-five years before Johannes Friedrich Welcker,[166] who so influenced Goethe and Comparetti and Wilamowitz.
VIII. SAPPHO IN ITALY IN THE 18th AND 19th CENTURIES
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Sappho was rehabilitated and countless works of literature and art show her influence. Though the old perverse idea pervades all forms of literature and art in many insidious ways and Sappho loses her real personality and becomes a heroine of Romance, and although the legends connected with her are given a prominent place in the sunlight, yet even this proves her great potentiality in modern times.
The romantic Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who translated passages from the Odyssey and wrote an interesting essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients, composed also a Last Song of Sappho. In this poem, drawn from Ovid, he has given the modern reader a strong impression for better or worse of the stormy and passionate soul of the great poetess. As in his Brutus, Leopardi is giving his own views of life, which are biased by his physical affliction; but he blends his sorrow with that of nature and rises, especially in the third stanza, almost to the heights attained by Aeschylus in his Prometheus. He ends his song with beautiful mysterious pathos:
Placida notte, e verecondo raggio
Della cadente luna ...
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