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Introduction

Poetry of Sappho¹ comes to us in all but smithers. Remarkably, this does not make her poetry impossible for a modern reader to appreciate, but it is important to understand just how tattered the remains are of the papyri on which her songs were recorded. Additionally, the way people wrote in that era was intended to maximize use of the available space on the sheets; papyri was a valuable resource. They did not write with word breaks or lineation. As Anne Carson puts it, reading such a text “is hard even when it comes to us in its entirety and most papyri don’t,” (p. ix). Carson’s translations attempt to preserve these gaps, stylistically indicating their presence with the use of square brackets in her typesetting. As she points out, this changes ones’ reading experience and permits the layperson to engage with these works and imagine what might fill the blanks.² I will be talking mostly about the fragment of Sappho’s kletic³ hymn translated by Anne Carson which begins with “here to me from Krete” and ends with “nectar mingled with festivities: pour,” (p. 7). 

Discussion

The purpose of this hymn is plain: it is an invocation to Kypris⁴. 

]

here to me from Krete to this holy temple

[…]

In this place you Kypris taking up

in gold cups delicately

nectar mingled with festivities:

pour.

Here I have elided the majority of the fragment to show the structure: “come to me (…) and fill this space, Kypris, and fill our cups with nectar.”⁵ Ritual invocation, then, is the framework in which Sappho presents her subject: the feeling of suspense, of anticipation before release. Most of this fragment is spent simply describing the place in which Kypris is to be summoned: a holy temple, ostensibly somewhere in Lesvos. There is a sense of ritual in this; Sappho describes the temple with idyllic sensory imagery, as though there is some need to convince Kypris to come and fill the space. But another purpose this may serve is to string along the listener. We are missing the opening of this hymn, but from what we have it begins with an adverb of place (Carson rendered this as “here to me”) which is not paired with its verb until the very last word, “pour”⁶ (p. 358). The entire body of the hymn, then, is sort of like a long cliffhanger: a moment of suspense drawn out to that edge between the pleasure and pain that are both caused by anticipation. That feeling is the subject, and what better a figure to evoke it with than the goddess of desire? 

I believe that Sappho’s ‘commentary’ on this subject is encapsulated there, too. The figure she is calling upon is one which represents eros, lust, desire, and even in the modern age it’s easy for us to connect these concepts and passions with the idea of suspense and the release of building up and of delayed gratification – we are still the same kind of hominids, after all. What I think may be lost in our modern cultural context, however, is that this was sacred to Sappho and her contemporaries. Whatever our modern connotations may be, Kypris was a goddess. Carson makes a rather concise observation here: “Arrival is the issue, for it sanctifies waiting: attente de Dieu,”⁷ (p. 358). If Sappho is attempting to say something here, it may be that it’s that ephemeral suspense which is sacred; made sacred by the eventual arrival, but the arrival in and of itself may be meaningless without the wait. Then again, perhaps that was just understood, and the true meaning lie in entirely other aspects of the hymn. We lack the cultural context to grasp the nuances. For all we know, this whole work was satirical. Going from what we have, however, I would argue that this might be one of the most beautiful and intimate ways that somebody has ever glorified suspense.

Closing

My thoughts on this are rather banal. I am personally less interested in what she is saying (in this poem) than how she is going about saying it. And, vexingly, that’s a question we will likely never be able to fully answer. All of Sappho’s music is lost; we have no idea how this was sung, and I feel that would have been dreadfully important for truly understanding any of her work. Modern music often makes use of a contrast between the level of joy or anger or sorrow expressed in the lyrics against a sometimes very different emotion expressed in the underlying harmony and rhythm. Sappho is credited with the invention of the Mixolydian mode, one of the musical scales used in Western music which starts on the 5th note relative to the Ionian (major) scale, and has a lowered 7th. In the modern era this sound is heavily associated with funk, blues, jazz. She lived roughly 2,600 years ago, and yet we should likely be picturing her poems as being sung in and accompanied by a lyre in a blues-y or jazzy scale (and as a saxophonist I really am partial to that image). Despite my attempt here, I don’t think we actually can ascertain the subjects of Sappho’s poems with any degree of certainty. In the same vain, however, it’s worth appreciating how beautiful the fragments are by themselves.

Footnotes

¹ Originally «Ψάπφω» “Psáppʰo” and etymologically distinct from «σάπφειρος» “sáppʰeiros” which gives us sapphire (Harper, n.d.b). Perhaps we should render her name as “Psappho.”

² “Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half…” (p. xi).

³ “The poem is a hymn of the type called ‘kletic,’ that is, a calling hymn, an invocation to god to come from where she is to where we are,” (p. 358).

⁴ In the original text, «Κύπρι» “kúpri” – one of the common literary epithets of Aphrodite indicating the goddess’s close association with the island Cyprus (Cyrino p. 27). Sappho sometimes uses this name, but at other times simply uses «Αφρόδιτα» “Apʰródita” (Carson p. 1). I am not qualified to determine if there is some deeper meaning behind when which name is used or why Kypris is the name used here. That said, she tends to prefer the name Kypris: see pp. 12, 24 etc.

⁵ Referring to her rendering of “gold cups” Carson writes, “not mortal tableware, nor is nectar normally a beverage enjoyed by any but gods…” (p. 359).

⁶ Carson renders this from the word «οἰνοχόειϛα» “oinokʰóeioa” in the original text (p. 6). This verb appears to be a compound of «χένω» “kʰéno” meaning to pour out and «οινος» “oinos” meaning wine (Harper, n.d.a).

⁷ French, “waiting for god.” Also the name of a letter by Simone Weil, whom Carson quotes later on the same page: “God can only be present in creation under the form of absence.”

References

Carson, Anne. (2002). If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. New York: Vintage Books. 

Cyrino, Monica (2010). Aphrodite. New York and London: Routledge.

Harper, D. (n.d.a). Etymology of oeno-. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved February 26, 2025, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/oeno-

Harper, D. (n.d.b). Etymology of sapphire. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved February 26, 2025, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/sapphire.