Course code: ENG 119

Introduction to European literature in translation

Lecturer: Dr Kayode Afolayan

Name: Komolafe Praise Oluwaseun

Matric No: 21/40IA061

Question: Analyse the universal idea in the Sappho’s poem we have studied in this course

Sappho was born around 615 BCE in Lesbos, a Greek island. She came from a wealthy family, she had
several brothers, and her daughter was named Cleis. She was considered a great lyric poet—the
philosopher Plato called her the “Tenth Muse.” Her themes are invariably personal—primarily
concerned with her thiasos(a group of worshippers of a god), the usual term (not found in Sappho’s
extant writings) for the female community, with a religious and educational background, that met under
her leadership. Sappho herself attacks in her poems other thiasoi directed by other women.

Aphrodite is the group’s tutelary divinity and inspiration. Sappho is the intimate and servant of the
goddess and her intermediary with the girls. In the ode to Aphrodite, the poet invokes the goddess to
appear, as she has in the past, and to be her ally in persuading a girl she desires to love her. Frequent
images in Sappho’s poetry include flowers, bright garlands, naturalistic outdoor scenes, altars smoking
with incense, perfumed unguents to sprinkle on the body and bathe the hair—that is, all the elements of
Aphrodite’s rituals.

In Sappho’s poetry love is passion, an inescapable power that moves at the will of the goddess; it is
desire and sensual emotion; it is nostalgia and memory of affections that are now distant, but shared by
the community of the thiasos. There is a personal poetic dimension, which is also collective because all
the girls of the group recognize themselves in it. An important part of Sappho’s poetic oeuvre is
occupied by epithalamia, or nuptial songs. In antiquity, Sappho was regularly counted among the
greatest of poets and was often referred to as “the Poetess,” just as Homer was called “the Poet” and
she was honoured on coins and with civic statuary. Her poems are, for all their dazzling craft, repeatedly
praised as spontaneous, simple, direct, and honest. The same emphasis on the overwhelming power of
love appears in many of Sappho’s songs. Her attitudes toward love attracted a great deal of attention,
both positive and negative. It is perhaps as an icon of the erotic that Sappho has been best known. Much
of the fascination about Sappho over the centuries has been fueled by the fact that she is a woman
addressing many of her love poems to other women. Several of Sappho’s extant poems (notably
fragments 94, 96, and 16) emphasize the pathos and longing in the departure of a young woman from
Sappho and from a circle of women to which they all appear to be affiliated.

Hymn to Venus; Some scholars regard these depictions of separations as alluding to the transition from
girlhood to womanhood and possibly from homoerotic relationships to conventional marriages. Claude
Calame takes this idea further by positing that the activities of Sappho’s “circle” might have included
rites of initiation for young girls on the brink of womanhood and marriage. The poem was about Sappho
herself calling out to Venus the goddess. Greek mythology has a lot of gods and goddesses. It seems that
in everything they have a supreme being.
 The poem is full of things about love and how you badly want it and then it turned out to be
desperately praying for results of your “happy ever after”.

Ode to Aphrodite; With universal themes such as love, religion, rejection, and mercy, Sappho’s ‘Hymn
to Aphrodite’ is one of the most famous and best-loved poems from ancient Greece. Accordingly, it is a
significant poem for the study of the Ancient greek language, early poetry, and gender. After the
invocation and argument, the Greeks believed that the god would have heard their call and come to
their aid.

Following this prayer formula, the person praying would ask the god for a favour. In Sappho’s case, the
poet asks Aphrodite for help in convincing another unnamed person to love her. Sappho promises that,
in return, she will be Aphrodite’s ally, too. Despite gender dynamics in this poem, Aphrodite explains
that love changes quickly. She explains that one day, the object of your affection may be running away
from you, and the next, that same lover might be trying to win your heart, even if you push them away.
Love is polarizing, but it finds a way. Love, then, is fleeting and ever-changing. The moral of the hymn to
Aphrodite is that love is ever-changing, fickle, and chaotic. In Sappho’s poem, the speaker uses the
heartache of love to describe the array of emotions that the lover’s abandonment has created. Sappho
uses the language of poetry to express the emotions of rejected love, and in her descriptions of grief and
heartache the reader is also able to acknowledge the universality of abandonment and love lost. The
hopeful ending also suggests to the reader the possibility of resolution and a happy ending for all love
affairs.

“Ode to a Loved One”, also called “Fragment 31”, is a poem written by Sappho. This poem is about
feeling nervous or simply dumbfounded when near someone you love. She talks about her experience
where her husband love sat beside her and she couldn’t breath or talk. She blushed and couldn’t seem
to hear anything (but perhaps wedding bells). Her lips then started to shake and her heart stopped.

Overall, “Ode to Anactoria” is a passionate and emotional poem that explores the intensity of desire
and power of beauty. The poem overtly denounces the military value. It deploys the very pattern of
“ring composition”. It contrasts love and glory of war. It outline the power of love—Menelaus in the
second stanza is abandoned by a love-struck Helen in much the same way Sappho in the fourth stanza
longs for the absent Anactoria—and finally the central stanza (3)focuses on the love distracting lovers.

Like the very gods; The word “lesbian” comes from the name of Sappho’s home island, Lesbos. This is
important in interpreting the poem “Like the Very Gods.” Most translators and literary scholars see the
poem as an ode to the anxiety of attraction and a confession of love from a woman to another woman.
Others suggested that men’s and women’s relationship is like a sibling relationship between a brother
and a sister. From the observation, the two characters have a similar social status.

In conclusion, the exploration of love, desire, and the pursuit of beauty remain the most prominent
themes in Sappho’s poetry and those for which she is most remembered. Apart from her fascination
with the theme of love, Sappho contributed in other ways to the conventions of the lyric genre. Her
emphasis on emotion, on subjective experience, and on the individual distinguish her work from the
epic, liturgical, or dramatic poetry of the period. To Sappho, love is not a science, a weakness nor a
triviality – love is the force that drives the human spirit; the sole emotion upon which all of life’s
meaning is based upon.