Et passe, sans haleine, interdite, perdue;
Un frisson me saisit—je tremble, je me meurs.”
These lines give us little idea of that furious passion of which Longinus says the Greek ode expresses all the symptoms. Racine has been much more happy than Boileau in his imitation of Sappho. Phædra, in the celebrated French tragedy which bears the name of that victim of love, thus paints the effects of the passion with which she was struck at her first view of Hippolytus:—
“Athènes me montra mon superbe ennemi:
Je le vis, je rougis, je palis à sa vue—
Un trouble s’eleva dans mon ame éperdue,
Mes yeux ne voyoient plus, je ne pouvois parler;
Je sentis tout mon cœur et transir et brûler[493].”
On this passage Voltaire remarks, “Peut on mieux imiter Sappho? Ces vers, quoique imites, coulent de source; chaque [pg 295]mot trouble les ames sensibles, et les penetre; ce n’est point une amplification: c’est le chef d’œuvre de la nature et de l’art[494].” A translation by De Lille, which has a very close resemblance to that of Boileau, is inserted in the delightful chapter of the Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, which treats of Lesbos and Sappho. Philips, it is well known, attempted a version of the lyric stanzas of Sappho, which was first printed with vast commendation in the 229th Number of the Spectator, where Addison has also remarked, “that several of our countrymen, and Dryden in particular, seem very often to have copied after this ode of Sappho, in their dramatic writings, and in their poems upon love.”
58. Ad Cœlium de Lesbia. In this ode, addressed to one of her former admirers, Catullus gives an account, both tender and pathetic, of the debaucheries and degraded condition of Lesbia, to his passion for whom, he had attributed such powerful effects in the above imitation of Sappho.