Construction of Desire in Sapphic Poetry Essay -- Sappho Poem Poet Ess

Construction of Desire in Sapphic Poetry Many scholars in the past, looking at Sappho through the eyes of male experience, have heaped lukewarm praise on Sappho’s "chaste" poems, have translated them with an unyielding heterosexual bent. However, when read through a woman's experience, when read through people who do not wish to hide Sappho's desire for other women or hetero-sexualize it, Sappho's writing takes on a new light, and we can begin to piece together her desire and its contexts. In the work of Sappho, the goddess Aphrodite is frequently given homage, making her a kind of patron (a matron perhaps?) of lesbian desire. Sappho constructs her desire with three distinct components: a visual component, a physical component, and a repetition and renewal component. She also modified traditional mythological viewpoints to enhance the image of her view of desire. Through this woman-centered interpretation of Sappho, I want to place emphasis on Sappho's lesbian identity and reconstruct the desire that she felt towards other women. Sappho frequently gives poetical space to Aphrodite, the goddess of Love and Desire. In fragment 2, Sappho creates this space by inviting Aphrodite in. "... to this sacred/temple, where you have a pretty grove/of apple trees, and alters smoking with incense/here icy water echoes through the apple/boughs, shadows of roses cover/the ground, from shimmering leaves/a heavy sleep descends." Author Jane Snyder, in her own translation of Sappho's works, remarks that "lesbian desire, as Sappho envisions it, blossoms in a nurturing space under the benevolent patronage of the Cyprian goddess [Aphrodite] herself." Snyder also states that "Sappho fragment 2 creates a private 'female' space in the descripti... ...helming force that resembles a wind with the force of a tornado, which completely overpowers the body. Sappho's view of lesbian is very unique and unmatched, for indeed we have very little else that gives us the language of desire between two women in the ancient world. Under Aphrodite's homage, with components of visual, physical, and repetitious components, and with her unique view on traditional narratives, Sappho gives us her view of desire between two women. I hope that my woman-centered reading of Sappho helped reconstruct her lesbian identity and conceptualize her desire and passion for other women. Works Cited Bing, Peter and Rip Cohen. Games of Venus: An Anthology of Greek and Roman Erotic Verse from Sappho to Ovid. London: Routledge, 1991. Snyder, Jane McIntosh. Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.