Da’l plettro d’oro.
Saffo da’l candido petto anelante
A l’aura ambrosia che da’l dio vola,
Da’l riso morbido, da l’ondeggiante
Crin di viola,
In mezzo assidesi.
The influence of Sappho on Italian literature is also seen in the many Italian translations of some or all of the fragments; Cappone (1670), Rogati (1783), Pilenejo (1793), Broglio d’Ajano (1804), Leopardi (1816), Benedetti da Cortona (1819), Foscolo (1822), Milani (1824), Zanotto (1844), Jacopo d’Oria (1845), Nievo (1858), Viani (1858), Bustelli (1863), Canini (1885), and others have translated the famous folk-song ([see p. 78]). Giovambattista Possevini (1565), Francesco Anguilla (1572), Pinelli (1639), Cappone (1670), Corsini (1700), Conti (1739), Verre (1780), Pindemonte (1781), Rogati (1783), Vincenzo Imperiale (1784), Pilenejo (1793), Tommaseo (1827), Comparetti (1876), Ardizzone (1876), Fraccaroli (1878), Ambrosoli (1878), Gemma (1879), Cavallotti (1883), De Gubernatis (1883), Canini (1885) have translated the Hymn to Aphrodite. Rogati (1783), Gori (1801), Montalti (1804), Broglio d’Ajano (1804), Sabbione (1817), Venini (1818), Caselli (1819), Foscolo (1823), Milani (1824), Costa (1825), Accio (1830), Monti (1832), Leone (1843), Nievo (1858), Canna (1871), Fraccaroli (1878), Canini (1885) have translated or adapted the second ode. D’Ajano (1804) gave the first complete version of all the old fragments, and in 1863 Bustelli did likewise,—neither of a high order of merit. In 1890 Cipollini published his verse translation of the first two odes and of the fragment about the Pleiades, which his brother set to music. The latest translation I have seen is by Latini (1914) and it is an excellent piece of work. Italy has had for the last hundred or more years a high regard for Sappho. Cipolla, thinking perhaps of Meleager’s comparison of Sappho’s poems to roses, says:
Ma i fior più belli
Eran, Saffo, i tuoi canti, e ben sapevi
Destinato a durar presso i futuri,