Sappho, Drexel University, Philadelphia
“THOU liest dead, and there will be no memory left behind
Of thee or thine in all the earth, for never didst thou bind
The roses of Pierian streams upon thy brow; thy doom
Is now to flit with unknown ghosts in cold and nameless gloom.”
— to one who loved not poetry, Sappho, translated by Edwin Arnold
****************
“I think that in some later Spring,
Echo will bear to men these songs we sing.”
— Sappho, fragment
Posted on October 5, 2011, in Art and Theater, History, Poetry, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
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Sorry for your loss. They leave such a huge hole when they pass...
Thank you for this beautiful thought! I lost my Diamond Girl, black collie shepherd Lab, and feel he
Next week.
when are you performing at the Castle?
No, it was sold some years ago.
Reblogged this on Pop's Soapbox.
Happy Birthday Neil - We are planning on coming back April 17 to celebrate our Anniversary. My wife
Nancy Magill
Pop Haydn
Pop's Soapbox 
Well, those are translations, and it is hard to tell much about the poetics of Sappho from that. What rhymes or rythmns are there in the Ancient Greek I wouldn’t know.
The sentiment is clear, and the faith in the power of words and their meaning to last through the ages shines triumphantly. As long as her poems are still heard, they will continue to build new statues to her.
As a matter of fact, I think that the survival of her poetry through the ages is an argument against your point. After translation into an entirely different tongue, all of the structure and nuances of language are lost, and only the thoughts themselves have truly survived–reworded and resung to a new tune–so that what we have left is not the craft so much as the mind and soul itself; the things that mattered to her and how she felt about them.
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There’s a reason today that many do not like poetry – it doesn’t have the characteristics or quality of Sappho’s lines that you posted. I wrote a poem about that –
http://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/the-emperor-poem-by-dennis-lange/
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