Book Description
Of the nine books of lyrics the ancient Greek poet Sappho is said to have composed, only one poem has survived complete. The rest are fragments. In this miraculous new translation, acclaimed poet and classicist Anne Carson presents all of Sappho’s fragments, in Greek and in English, as if on the ragged scraps of papyrus that preserve them, inviting a thrill of discovery and conjecture that can be described only as electric—or, to use Sappho’s words, as “thin fire . . . racing under skin.” By combining the ancient mysteries of Sappho with the contemporary wizardry of one of our most fearless and original poets, If Not, Winter provides a tantalizing window onto the genius of a woman whose lyric power spans millennia. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Decent
I thought that this book was a decent book, but I tended to gain very little from the brief fragments, which make up most of the book.

A very readable translation
Sappho, an ancient lyricist, is often looked over in her works because very little of them remain. I bought this on a whim when I saw it actually in a bookstore (unless special ordered her writings are very hard to simply come across), and it has proven to be very readable. I cannot translate myself, but the editor has put together a very comprehensive version with clear indications of where text is missing. Some lyrics are merely a single, provoking word, while only one is complete. This may seem to be a waste to some when they open the book and find pages and pages with only a word or a phrase, but for me the enjoyment is imagining what Sappho herself was thinking and feeling as she sang that single line.

From her one complete lyric it is obvious she was extremely competent in her field, and the fragments allow one a glimpse into the themes that played such a great role in her life. I have read and re-read this book over and over, often spending the majority of the time I have it open building the rest of what is missing.

It would be my sincerest hope that someday perhaps more of Sappho's beautiful lyrics are found, but until they are I satisfy my craving with her later admirer who took to writing in a similar fashion, Catullus. He is romantic, cynical, and even amusing in his works, providing even greater entertainment than some of Sappho's fragments.

But this review is for Sappho, not Catullus. The book itself is of good quality with a sturdy binding, especially for a softcover, which is necessary because this is a collection you will want to read over and over again. I have read somewhat more descriptive and dramatic translations, although I feel these are accurate in their representation and still very enjoyable. Overall, this book is excellent for really showing what little remains of Sappho and the dramatic presence her works still evoke, despite all attempts others have made to suppress her.

A Beautifully Constructed Book
Anne Carson approached the project of translating fragments of Sappho's work with as much care and respect as possible.The result is something truly intelligent & lovely.I recommend this book to anyone who has an appreciation for poetry, both modern and classic, and translation.

Haunting and beautiful
Sadly, much of Sappho's work is lost to the ages.Fortunately, Anne Carson has translated what survives in a wonderful, comprehensive collection.All of Sappho's extant works are here in a dual-language book - the original Greek on one page, Carson's translations on the other.Having read several translations (I do not read Greek), Carson's is my favorite - the images are immeadiate, the sense of urgency and romance clearly communicated in lyric prose.Some apparently are frustrated by the equal attention Carson gives to each fragment - remnants of poems (even a single word) are given their own page just as longer bits.I enjoyed this, wondering what has been lost, haunted by a voice over 2,000 years old, marveling at the beauty of what remains.If you, like me, are a lover of poetry, I highly recommend this collection above all other translations.

Buy this book
Some amount of criticism has been aimed at Carson for publishing such slight (in some cases, two words of a poem) examples of Sappho's poetry. I disagree.One is haunted by the fragments, which are almost painful to read because beautiful, compelling...and incomplete.To paraphrase Adrienne Rich, these are worth a look because even their alphabet is precious.If you want more, follow this with The Sappho Companion by Margaret Reynolds. ... Read more

Book Description
These hundred poems and fragments constitute virtually all of Sappho that survives and effectively bring to life the woman whom the Greeks consider to be their greatest lyric poet. Mary Barnard's translations are lean, incisive, direct--the best ever published. She has rendered the beloved poet's verses, long the bane of translators, more authentically than anyone else in English. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

lovely, yet far away
I hate to say it, but this book made me somewhat regret studying Ancient Greek. I was given a copy by a friend and utterly adored it. It lived in my purse. I found the poems graceful in their simplicity, the imagery beautiful. Then I was asked to translate some Sapphic poetry for class and attempted to use this book as a reference by which to check my work. I unfortunately found that many of the translations had words and lines missing and added (including the title-like fist lines of each translation) and some were so different from the original poems that I had a hard time even finding a correlation between the two.If you want a lovely book of poetry then I highly recommend this book, if you want a brilliant translation of the Greek then I would suggest you do it yourself, as I have, as of yet, been unable to find a competent translation.

Was Sappho a lesbian ?
Sappho takes a special place among the poets of Antiquity. Plato already said that she was the tenth Muse.It's really refreshing to read her poems. They are very vivid and she needs only a few words to describe essential human feelings.

I'm not qualified to judge the translation but it strikes me that the poem known as 'The wedding of Hektor and Andromache'is left out (4 stars instead of 5).This poem is one of the most vivid descriptions in the poetry of Antiquity. It gives an almost journalistic account of the homecoming of Hektor and Andromache.

By many persons Sappho is considered as a lesbian writer. I don't have the answers but we should consider a few things.
To answer the question we should know her better, because too litle is left of her work to say anything with certainty.

Poems, though they reveal a lot of the poet, are seldom strictly autobiographical. In Antiquity no writer reveals his most inner feelings. We have to wait untill 'The Confessions' by St. Augustin in the 4th century to see that happen.

the Lesbian lesbian
Because Sappho was a Lesbian who wrote about lesbian love, her poetry was banned at times throughout the ages, and therefore to this day there are only surviving fragments of her work and almost no complete poems. But of the fragments there is more than enough to ensure her place as one of the great female poets of all time. She wrote mainly love poems about things like passion, jealousy, and hostility towards her enemies. This book includes all of her surviving verse in a very readable and enjoyable translation.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

"there's so much beauty..."
Rich Mullins once wrote "there's so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see." And so it is with the poetry of this ancient Greek lady Sappho. Without her extra eyes, I would be robbed of some sights I could not have found without her. For instance, in one of her poems, she writes:

"Awed by her splendor

Stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces
when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver"

Not only is there beauty. There is a straightforwardness and frankness to the poems of Sappho. It is a clear distillation of the poet's vision confronts the readers of these pages.

There is also wisdom and humor. As when she writes:

"Experience shows us

Wealth unchaperoned
by Virtue is never
an innocuous neighbor"

Mary Barnard is to be praised for these clear, unvarnished translations. Likewise, the introduction is very useful in dispelling so much of the myth that has sprung up around the legacy of this great poet. I recommend this book highly.

A pure earthy pleasure
Bernard's translation of Sappho is a translation of a poet who isdown-to-earth, who pays attention to the detail.

Some of the fragmentsare so brief that you are reminded of haiku: "The nightengale's / Thesoft-spoken / announcer of / Spring's presence"

Other poems speakspecifically of feminine concerns - the lost of the maiden-head, the colorof ribbon that fits best in her daughter's yellow hair.

I read a greatdeal of poetry in translation.In other translations I have not foundSappho to my liking.This translation appears to me to be truer to theauthor's earthliness and less concerned with making Sappho fit intopreconceptions.In short, I highly recommend this translation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Whoo!
I love saPpho! Stuffin cake in my mouth..Feelin the sexual feelings..A LeSbo historical figure writin Lesbian poetry and we get to see the historicity..Well Blow me dOwn as Popeye says..

Beautiful and well-researched.
The fragments themselves are quite beautiful, but I found the commentary much more interesting. Since so little is known about the subject, the translator provides notes along with each fragment that lets the reader know from where the fragment came. The commentary also includes citations from many writers of Greek lyric poetry. The result is not a work that gives one man's perspective of Sappho but a work that says: "here -- this is what scholars today say about Sappho and her native Greece." The book also includes an interesting essay by the translator, cute sketches, and a glossary of people and places.

Greatest lyric poet of Greece
Sappho was the greatest lyric poet of Greece, and any modern reader of her poetry can easily see why.Although she admittedly suffers in translation, one must learn to ignore the frustration caused by the occasional awkwardtranslation.One must also try to ignore the fragmentary nature of herpoems.There was once a definitive edition which consisted of nine books,but it was burned in hte Middle Ages because of the lesbian love poems. The poems we have now are just papyrus fragments or quotations.However,even in English, even with only a few extant pieces, Sappho's poetry isvibrant and beautiful. ... Read more

Book Description
Little remains today of the writings of the archaic Greek poet Sappho (fl. late 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E.), whose work is said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry--among them, poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance--that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse.

Stanley Lombardo's translations give us a virtuoso embodiment of Sappho's voice, whose telltale charm, authority, immediacy, directness, intensity, and sudden changes of tone are among the hallmarks of his masterly translation.

Pamela Gordon introduces us to the world of Sappho, discusses questions surrounding the transmission of her manuscripts, offers advice on reading these texts, and concludes with an enlightening discussion of same-sex desire in Sappho. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Shimmering, iridiscent, deathless Aphrodite.
In Antiquity decent women were supposed to work in the kitchen and to raise their children, nothing more, but there were exceptions. More or less 150 years after Homer's Iliad, Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos, west off the coast of what is Turkey today.. (She went in exile for a short period due to political upheavel).
Sappho was already famous in Antiquity. Plato called her the tenth Muse and someone said her poetry was "as refreshing as a morning breeze".
Very small fragments - only three or four words - are not included.
Some of the best poems of Sappho are those that describe her loneliness.
(#62)
"But if you are my friend,
Go to a younger woman's bed,
For I will not endure an affair
In which I am older than the man."
(#73)
"The moon has set,
And the Pleiades
Midnight
The hour has gone by
I sleep alone."
... Read more

Book Description
Sappho sang her poetry to the accompaniment of the lyre on the Greek island of Lesbos over 2500 years ago. Throughout the Greek world, her contemporaries composed lyric poetry full of passion, and in the centuries that followed the golden age of archaic lyric, new forms of poetry emerged. In this unique anthology, today's reader can enjoy the works of seventeen poets, including a selection of archaic lyric and the complete surviving works of the ancient Greek women poets--the latter appearing together in one volume for the first time.
Sappho's Lyre is a combination of diligent research and poetic artistry. The translations are based on the most recent discoveries of papyri (including "new" Archilochos and Stesichoros) and the latest editions and scholarship. The introduction and notes provide historical and literary contexts that make this ancient poetry more accessible to modern readers.
Although this book is primarily aimed at the reader who does not know Greek, it would be a splendid supplement to a Greek language course. It will also have wide appeal for readers of' ancient literature, women's studies, mythology, and lovers of poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Summary of Sappho's Lyre
"Sappho's Lyre", written by Diane J. Rayor, is sensationally crafted in chronological order to afford today's modern audience the ability to understand and appreciate the lyrics of ancient Greek poetry.This volume is significant as it includes the works of all the ancient women poets together in one book for the first time ever.Along with the works of the seventeen poets who composed various genres of lyric poetry over 2500 years ago, "Sappho's Lyre" includes an introduction and notes section to explain the characters as well as the history of events taking place during the time each of the poets' lyrics are composed.These poets use their lyrics and musical instruments as a way of communicating the events and feelings of the individuals and their communities during the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods.Diane Rayor does an extraordinary job of explaining in modern day language the growth and development of ancient poetry. ... Read more

Book Description
"Sappho's Leap delights."—USA Today

Sappho's Leap is a journey back 2,600 years to inhabit the mind of the greatest love poet the world has ever known. At the age of fourteen, Sappho is seduced by the beautiful poet Alcaeus, plots with him to overthrow the dictator of their island, and is caught and married off to a repellent older man in hopes that matrimony will keep her out of trouble. Instead, it starts her off on a series of amorous adventures with both men and women, taking her from Delphi to Egypt, and even to the Land of the Amazons and the shadowy realm of Hades.

Erica Jong—always our keenest-eyed chronicler of the wonders and vagaries of sex and love—has found the perfect subject for a witty and sensuous tale of a passionate woman ahead of her time. A generation of readers who have been moved to laughter and recognition by Jong's heroines will be enchanted anew by her re-creation of the immortal poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Very disappointed
Sappho has been my favorite poet for more than a decade, so it was with much enthusiasm that I found "Sappho's Leap" here on Amazon. I had my misgivings after reading so many lukewarm reviews, but decided to try it anyway. Unfortunately, after finishing the book, I have to agree with most of the two- and three-star reviews.

The story starts out strong enough as Sappho recounts her childhood in Lesbos, her special bond with her father, life with her brothers, etc. But the plot quickly turns absurd once her seagoing adventures begin. Honestly, she makes so many stops at various locations (meeting all kinds of fantasty creatures, like centaurs--couldn't we have had some realistic historical fiction?) that after finishing the book I really couldn't possibly recount the plot points in any logical sequence. The narrative almost never does more than skim the surface of Sappho's emotions and most of her "adventures" have no useful ramifications in her life or growth as a person.

As others have mentioned, the repeated insertion of Zeus and Aphrodite's dialogue, watching Sappho from above, is tedious, needless and irritating, and it interrupts what little flow the story has. Their bickering is childish and unintelligent. I believe it was Zeus' disregard of Plato--"Plato, schmato!"--that really sent my eyes rolling. Call me crazy, but I'd really rather believe the king of the gods doesn't resort to "Plato, schmato" as a retort. Ugh.

There isn't much of a climax or turning point in the book, either. Sappho just sort of meanders along through the years of her life, bouncing from one locale to the next, until she is finally reunited with her homeland and awaiting family -- but the reunion isn't all happy and the story doesn't stop there; it continues to plod along. I suppose her moment on the cliff serves as the book's heightened, climactic point, but as its resolution occurs just a few pages from the close of the story, it hardly leaves any space for reflection or a satisfying end.

I was also troubled by some of the descriptions of Sappho seducing young girls and "teaching them pleasure"--not for the bisexual aspects of it but for the borderline pedophilia in the act that resonates for the modern reader. A woman in her thirties performing sex acts on a 15-year-old girl--repeatedly--is gratuitous and distateful, and, in my opinion, serves to scandalize any current view of the real Sappho and does dishonor to her poetry, her genius, and her historical integrity.

Myths, legend, romance - all in this beautiful story
I was scrambling to learn more about Sappho after I read this book.Jong does a superb job with the twists and turns in the storyline, adding the brilliance of mythology.Sappho comes alive on each page.

Sappho's Oddessey of religion and sexuality
This book reminded me of when I took a mythology clas back in high school. but in this book, all the gods and goddesses really came alive! Erica Jong's sense of religion is astoudning. I found myself wanting to worship Aphrodite! Also the sexuality in his book is sensual, dreamy and it removes all "sin" from bisexuality. I was not previously aware that Pagans were free to be bisexual. After reading Sappho's encounters with members of both sexes, I started to realize the bisexuality in myself, and can no longer deny it.
Read this book to have fun and open your mind!

Very nice Historical Fiction
Saffo. As you have never seen her before. As a woman, a wise and a passionate soul. We have so little on Saffo that the Historical parts are more on the backbround of the historic age where she lived than on herself. A true history about her with the little things we have would not be possible. But the fiction is really very nice and this is one of my favourite books. I do reccomend this book to who likes this genre. Buy it.

Not bad, but not wonderful
I enjoyed reading this book, but I've definitely read better ones. The books tells the story of Sappho, the Greek poet/songstress of Lesbos. Yep, the one that inspired the word 'lesbian.' It's a biography of her life, so this is historical fiction, and it's kind of like an epic poem turned into a novel. Sometimes it came off too...intellectual? and not enough heartfelt. Like, I'd begin feeling like I was reading nonfiction instead of fiction. Other than that, it's a simple story with love, adventure, and magic, and it kept me suitably entertained, but not enthralled by any means. Go read it if you like Greek history and myth, otherwise I wouldn't recommend it. ... Read more

Book Description
This edition reintroduces Sappho to the modern reader, providing a vivid, contemporary translation, which captures the spareness and the intensity of Sappho's line. The wondrous Mary Barnard translation was based, unfortunately, on the 1928 Loeb edition by J.M. Edmonds, who filled in many of Sappho's fragment with his own Greek lines. In Professor Barnstone's brilliant translation, Sappho's work is presented as we have inherited it, in its darkly antiromantic idiom that rejects sentimentality and "prettiness."

Willis Barnstone is one of the most noted translators of today. Barnstone has translated numerous texts, including The Cosmic Fragments of Heraclitus, Greek Lyric Poetry, and a literary translation of the New Testament. He is also the author of New and Selected Poems (1997), Moonbook & Sunbook (1998) and other books of poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

great little book
Although I am not an expert, I am a scholar, and I found this book of poems by Sappho who lived in 700 BC Greece a pleasure to read.I liked the design and layout, and the translation is geared to today's readers.

A translation.
More or less 150 years after Homer's Iliad, Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos west off the coast what is present Turkey. (Due to political upheavel she went two times in exile, the second time to Sicily for a short time ).

Sappho takes a special place among the poets of Antiquity. She was already famous in her own time. Plato said that she was the tenth Muse and someone called her poetry " as refreshing as a morning breeze ". Her poems are vivid and she needs only a few words to describe essential human feelings. She calls solitude for instance " this icy numbness of being alone ".
( Nice to know: from Sappho's poems remain about 500 lines. All Tragedies by Aeschylus have a total of 8144 lines. Conclusion: What's left of Sappho's poems is next to nothing. )

" Wedding of Andromache " is one of the most vivid descriptions in the poetry of Antiquity. It gives an almost journalistic account of the homecoming of Hector and Andromache. A fragment of Barnstone's translation:
" ...
and all set out for Troy
in a confusionof sweet-voiced flutes, citharas,
and small crashing cymbals
and young girls sang a loud heavenly song
..."

Sappho excels also in describing landscapes and nature ( something you don't find often in Ancient literature ). A fragment of " Aphrodite of the flowers ",
"...
Here ice water babbles through the apple branches
and roses leave shadow on the ground
..."

This translation was published in 1998 but as a work of art in itself, it's by no means outdated.

Elegant in its simplicity
This polished translation brilliantly reflects those spare but sparkling lines from the winsome poet of a lonely isle and heart.I find it still superb after many readings.Highly recommended.

Achingly Beautiful
"To Eros:You crush me." The tenderness and splendor of Sappho's poetry has never been so lusciously rendered as in this translation.Every little word sings with love and warmth.Thank you,Willis Barnstone, for omitting the cumbersone ellipses and brackets oftranslations past.Now we can enjoy Sappho's passion undisturbed. ... Read more

Book Description
Today, thousands of years after her birth, in lands remote from her native island of Lesbos and in languages that did not exist when she wrote her poetry in Aeolic Greek, Sappho remains an important name among lovers of poetry and poets alike,.Celebrated throughout antiquity as the supreme Greek poet of love and of the personal lyric, noted especially for her limpid fusion of formal poise, lucid insight, and incandescent passion,today her poetry is also prized for its uniquely vivid participation in a living paganism. Collected in an edition of nine scrolls by scholars in the second century BC, Sappho's poetry largely disappeared when the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204.All that remained was one poem and a handful of quoted passages .A century ago papyrus fragments recovered in Egypt added a half dozen important texts to Sappho's surviving works.In 2004 a new complete poem was deciphered and published.By far the most significant discovery in a hundred years, it offers a new and tellingly different example of Sappho's poetic art and reveals another side of the poet, thinking about aging and about the transmission of culture from one generation to the next. Jim Powell's translations represent a unique combination of poetic mastery in English verse and a deep schlolarly engagement with Sappho's ancient Greek.They are incomparably faithful to the literal sense of the Greek poems and, simultaneously, to their forms, preserving the original meters and stanzas while exactly replicating the dramatic action of their sequences of disclosure and the passionate momentum of their sentences.Powell's translations have often been anthologized and selected for use in textbooks, winning recognition among discerning readers as far the best versions in English. ... Read more

Book Description
Sappho is the greatest lyric poet of antiquity. Plato, a century after her death, referred to her as “the Tenth Muse,” and Longinos, in his first-century treatise “On the Sublime,” uses her verse to exemplify that transcendent quality in literature. In Sappho’s lyrics we hear for the first time in the West the words of an individual woman of her own world: her apprehension of sun and orchards; the troubles and summits of love, desire, and friendship. Her poems combine an impression of intimate self-involvement with an almost modern sense of detachment.

Though time has reduced the nine volumes of her work to a handful of complete poems and a collection of fragments, each word and phrase that survives is poignantly significant. The clarity of her voice, its absolute candor, its amazing fresh authority—whether in addressing a goddess, dancers before a night altar, the moon and stars, a sweet apple or mountain hyacinth, a lamb or cricket, a lover or companion—are qualities that compel us today as in antiquity.Willis Barnstone has given us a close and beautiful lyrical version. His translation, with the original Greek on facing pages, includes a dozen hitherto unintelligible fragments that have been brought vibrantly back to life by him, as well as Sappho’s newly discovered poem from the Cologne papyrus in its complete form. It also contains the translator’s essay placing the poet in her historic and artistic context; a glossary; extensive notes; an epilogue and metrical guide by William E. McCulloh, Professor Emeritus of Classics at Kenyon College; and a special section of testimonia: appreciations of Sappho in the words of her ancient admirers. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume combines the author's various scholarly writings on the Greek poet Sappho, including two major unpublished studies, "The Rosy-Fingered Moon: Imagination and Reality in the Poems of Sappho" and "The Garden of the Graces: The Survival of the Bronze-Age Religious Motifs into the Modern Lyric Poem," as well as a new complete translation of Sappho's poetry. ... Read more

Book Description

This volume contains the poetic fragments of the two illustrious singers of early sixth-century Lesbos: Sappho, the most famous woman poet of antiquity, whose main theme was love; and Alcaeus, poet of wine, war, and politics, and composer of short hymns to the gods. Also included are the principal testimonia, the ancients' reports on the lives and work of the two poets.

The five volumes in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Greek Lyric contain the surviving fragments of solo and choral song. This poetry was not preserved in medieval manuscripts, and few complete poems remain. Later writers quoted from the poets, but only so much as suited their needs; these quotations are supplemented by papyrus texts found in Egypt, most of them badly damaged. The high quality of what remains makes us realise the enormity of our loss.

Volume I presents Sappho and Alcaeus. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and other sixth-century poets are in Volume III. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). Volume V contains the new school of poets active from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century and also collects folk songs, drinking songs, hymns, and other anonymous pieces.

Amazon.com
The ways in which this sparkling, unexpected anthology will be classified in libraries and bookstores--lesbian studies; classical studies--will strike anyone who reads it as absurd. A sweeping look at the persistence of the Greek poet Sappho in the artistic and popular imagination, The Sappho Companion draws on everything from the Roman myths of Sappho to the eighteenth century rediscovery of Herculaneum, with its intriguing papyrus fragments, to Pat Califia's 1980 lesbian S/M book, Sapphistry: The Book of Lesbian Sexuality (out of print). The only book that compares to The Sappho Companion in its breadth and imaginative vigor is Charles Sprawson's lyrical book on swimming, Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero, in which the swan-diving Sappho makes an appearance. You don't need to know a thing about Sappho to relish this book, but for true enthusiasts, it makes a good companion volume for Yopie Prins's Victorian Sappho, Paige DuBois's Sappho is Burning, and Anne Carson's brilliant meditation, Eros: The Bittersweet. --Regina Marler Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

NOT yawn!
I don't know what the previous reviewer is talking about; I loved this book. Granted, I am no scholar of Sappho. Although I have read various translations of her poetry in the past, I do not read Greek and cannot comment upon whether Reynolds' research is accurate. However, given her amazing previous work (editing Aurora Leigh, the Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories, etc.) I am inclined to trust her (and I like her writing style anyway).

For me, this book was the perfect introduction to Sappho. It includes historical background followed by many of Sappho's fragments in a variety of translations. But that's just the beginning: Reynolds goes on to show how Sappho has been imagined/created by literature up to the present day. She anthologizes a variety of poems, plays, and fictions inspired by Sappho. It is amazing to see how, though so little of her writing survived, she has remained a titaness in our imaginations. Each literary generation has reinvented and recreated her. Reading Jeanette Winterson's amazing story "The Poetics of Sex" (narrated by a modern-day Sappho) fills me with hope and joy at the potential for lesbian creativity that is Sappho's legacy. I also appreciated the inclusion of works of art depicting Sappho through the ages. Although they are in black and white, they are an exquisite visual touch to this beautiful volume (the cover art is amazing as well).

I urge you not to judge this book by one bad review. It is a book to be perused at leisure, to leaf through in times of anxious sorrow and contemplative joy. Buy or borrow a copy and judge it for yourself.

Yawn
I don't know for whom this book may have been written.For the Sapphophile, there are certainly more exhaustive and interesting books, some are which are noted in the bibliography at the end. Furthermore, for all the treacly editorial reviews about Ms. Reynolds's scholarly resources (which are certainly evident), she abuses them time and time again in two ways, one merely bothersome, and the other approaching dishonesty. 1.)She frequently truncates the passages from other authors just when they begin to get interesting. 2) She frequently selects works of literature, particularly poems, that may or may not have anything to do with Sappho and offers no solid evidence that they do.They are, I guess, Sapphic by association.Reynolds's association.The two most obvious examples are Shelley's "To Constantia, Singing" and Emily Dicknson's ""Heaven"- Is What I Cannot Reach!"To take the latter as a case in point, the poem is supposed to be Sapphic because of a three line Sappho fragment (#105) about an apple on the topmost bough.Need I remind everyone that there was another apple on a bough in another book that has a far more rich cultural history.And given that Dickinson's poem concerns "Heaven" and "Paradise," it seems a stretch, so to speak, to see the poem as influenced by the Sapphic fragment.Truth be known, I spent many more hours meditating on Ms. Dickinson's exquisite 15 line poem than I did in reading the rest of the entire hodgepodge of this book, though I plodded through from srart to finish.
So, my advice is to buy a book of Ms. Dickinson's poems or a more intriguing and honest study of Sappho.This book is just a non-starter. ... Read more

Book Description
Reading Sappho considers Sappho's poetry as a powerful, influential voice in the Western cultural tradition. Essays are divided into four sections: "Language and Literary Context," "Homer and Oral Tradition", "Ritual and Social Context", and "Women's Erotics". Contributors focus on literary history, mythic traditions, cultural studies, performance studies, recent work in feminist theory, and more.
A legendary literary figure, Sappho has attracted readers, critics, and biographers ever since she composed poems on the island of Lesbos at the close of the seventh century B.C. Bringing together some of the best recent criticism on the subject, this volume, together with Re-Reading Sappho, represents the first anthology of Sappho scholarship, drawing attention to Sappho's importance as a poet and reflecting the diversity of critical approaches in classical and literary scholarship during the last several decades. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

About weddings, flowers, ribbons, regrets...
Sappho takes a special place among the poets of Antiquity.Plato already said that she was the tenth Muse.It's really refreshing to read her poems. They are vivid and she needs only a few words to describe human feelings. She calls solitude:'this icy numbness of being alone'.

One of my favorite poems is 'The wedding of Hektor and Andromache'.In this translation (the poems have no titles) it starts with 'A messenger came running... '. I find this poem one of the most vivid descriptions in ancient poetry. It gives an almost journalistic account of the homecoming of Hektor and Andromache:'At once, the young men of the town hitched the mules up to the big-wheeled carriages ... In the streets people offered bowls spiced with cinnamon and jars of myrrh and incense'. (It's a pitty there are only a few rather poor illustrations).
... Read more

Amazon.com
The debut volume from the new L.A. Weekly imprint at St. Martin's Press, Diana McLellan's witty and penetrating study of the golden age of Hollywood sapphism will delight the armchair detective as well as the lavender movie buff. Thanks to McLellan's obsessive sleuthing, The Girls offers not only the most detailed biography of Mercedes de Acosta, seducer of the stars, but provides tantalizing evidence of an early affair in Germany between Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, women who in later life claimed never to have met. Much of the book is devoted to Garbo--another sign of the author's good taste--and revelations abound. Sadly, the golden age gave way to McCarthyism. Even the "gayest" of Hollywood lesbians retreated into the closet, or, like de Acosta, left for Europe. McLellan tracks their disappearance in the 1950s and 1960s against the first stirrings of the gay rights movement, providing a satisfying conclusion to a fascinating but not always happy tale. --Regina Marler Book Description
THE GIRLS lifts the veil on the private lives of early Hollywood's most powerful and uninhibited goddesses...

The most unforgettable and immortal women of Hollywood's golden era thrilled to a hidden world of exciting secrets.In THE GIRLS, Diana McLellan reveals the complex and intimate connections that roiled behind the public personae of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and the women who loved them.Previously unseen FBI files, private correspondence and a trove of unpublished documents reveal a chain of lesbian affairs that moved from the theater world of New York through the heights of chic society to embed itself in the power structure of the movie business.

Why did Garbo and Dietrich deny knowing each other to the bitter end? THE GIRLS documents how they not only knew one another, but the swoon that started their ill-starred amour.How did Garbo-worshipper Tallulah Bankhead save Dietrich's career?FBI files make it clear how an intervention with J. Edgar Hoover helped.When was Marlene Dietrich first married? Not when her official biography claimed she was-an early marriage to a sexy, smoky communist was hushed up; THE GIRLS shows how and why.

From the uninhibited appeal of lover-to-the-stars Mercedes de Acosta to the role of Garbo's lover Salka Viertel in torpedoing her career, from the sapphic world of silent star Alla Nazimova'sGarden of Alla to Rudolph Valentino's lesbian brides, THE GIRLS explores a rich stew of film, politics, sexuality, psychology and stardom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

fantasy
Nearly all of Dianne McLellan's accounts of Greta Garbo's lesbian liaisons are unreliable,and therefore fail to titillate. Otherwise this book is well written, entertaining and informative.

McLellan's tone makes the book
Homosexual activity in Old Hollywood was wrapped in such a thick shroud of secrecy, it's doubtful there will ever be a "definitive" book on the subject. The reviewers who criticize this book as being too speculative miss the point that, with so little provable fact to work with, any book on the subject winds up being speculative. (Even interviewing surviving family and friends doesn't guarantee the researcher will avoid opinions, lies and personal agendas.)

Since there are so many holes chroniclers must fill in, the books end up being more of a Rorschach test of the authors than an objective presentation of the history. (And in reading the reviews here, I'd hazard the opinion that it becomes a Rorschach of the READERS, too!)

Here's my personal Rorschach:

I couldn't disagree more with the comment that McLellan's tone was off-putting. Her tone was precisely what I liked best about this---yes---speculative romp. (The term "my girls" is patronizing? Funny, I felt the author's distinctive *affection* for her subjects with that phrase.)

I have read far too many Old Hollywood biographies written by disapproving authors. In these books, lesbianism was presented as a seedy, shamefaced, sideline activity which resulted from either inebriation or narcissistic hedonism.

However, McLellan dares to create a tone of celebration when talking of her subjects and their attraction to each other. Yes, these women were catty and manipulative and their affairs were short-lived and often shallow. However, throughout the book, McLellan creates the feeling that these women were capable of genuinely loving life and each other between melodramas. Wow. Women-loving-women being portrayed as actually being FUN? How radical is that? (wink)

Take the book with a grain of salt, (like all other books on the subject, even William J. Mann,) but enjoy the fact that women-loving-women in Old Hollywood DID exist and that some of it was actually a celebration.

Herta von Walther was in Joyless Street, not Dietrich
`"I'm of course aware that some believe that Herta von Walther played the Dietrich role in the Garbo film Die freudlose Gasse, "The Joyless Street",' so writes Diana McLellan.

Despite the author's claim that Marlene was in Pabst 's "The Joyless Street," there is absolutely no evidence that any actress other than Herta von Walther played the part of the woman in the butcher line.

McLellan certainly has no proof that Marlene played the part. Therefore any thing she says about her in that role is opinionated speculations.

There is, however, much evidence that Herta von Walther was in that role.


Marlene and Herta did appear together in one film in 1923, Tragödie der Liebe.

There is no evidence that Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich ever appeared in any films together.

The fact is that Herta made four films with the director of The Joyless street between the years 1925 and 1928. The four are Joyless Street, Secrets of a Soul, Love of Jeanne Ney, Abwege.

There is no record of director Georg Wilhelm Pabst having ever made any films with Marlene Dietrich.

Too much conjecture
Interesting book, a quick read, and an interesting perspective about the evil influence of Salka Viertel on the career of Greta Garbo. Ironic that the only friend she ever trusted ruined her career (Salka Viertel). I did not like Greta Garbo's treatment of her loyal friend/lover Mercedes. Greta Garbo is depicted as a young woman who developed some strange coping mechanisms in order to survive in Hollywood. Some things that the author wrote about seem fictional or conjecture, for example, Greta stripped down to nothing in front of Georges Schlee for a fitting by his designer wife. How could the writer know such things unless she interviewed Mr or Mrs. Schlee themselves?

Fun, But Too Many Flaws
Sure, I had fun reading this book.But the Amazon reviewer who termed it "highly speculative" is understating the case.Opinion, conjecture, hearsay, and speculation too often take the place of thorough, solid documentation.And unlike many other Amazon reviewers, I found McLellan's tone off-putting.She alternates between patronizing her subjects (the very notion of calling them "my girls," for instance) and setting them up primarily as sources of voyeuristic thrills for the herself and the reader.Is the book dishy and intriguing and flamboyant?You bet.But is the topic of lesbianism in Hollywood well-served here?I don't think so. ... Read more

Amazon.com
A remarkable new addition to the fields of gender studies, classical studies, and modern poetics, Yopie Prins's Victorian Sappho sends off many casually brilliant sparks, with a broad appeal that easily transcends disciplines. "Invoked as a lyric muse in antiquity and mythologized for posterity by Ovid," Sappho has always been "a figment of the literary imagination." Prins traces the 19th-century recovery of new fragments of Sappho's poems and the allure they held for classical philologists, who attempted to piece together not only her lyrics but her absent, impossible self--the feminine voice and the female body. In scholarly writing, as well as the work of Swinburne and countless popular poets like Felicia Hemans, Sappho eventually came to embody the Victorian definition of the lyric. The era's fascination with the "incomplete" Sappho carried over to this century in the modernist idealization of the fragment. The book features engaging scholarship--the introduction alone establishes Prins as a strong and subtle thinker--and is gorgeously written. --Regina Marler Book Description

What is Sappho, except a name? Although the Greek archaic lyrics attributed to Sappho of Lesbos survive only in fragments, she has been invoked for many centuries as the original woman poet, singing at the origins of a Western lyric tradition. Victorian Sappho traces the emergence of this idealized feminine figure through reconstructions of the Sapphic fragments in late-nineteenth-century England. Yopie Prins argues that the Victorian period is a critical turning point in the history of Sappho's reception; what we now call "Sappho" is in many ways an artifact of Victorian poetics.

Prins reads the Sapphic fragments in Greek alongside various English translations and imitations, considering a wide range of Victorian poets--male and female, famous and forgotten--who signed their poetry in the name of Sappho. By "declining" the name in each chapter, the book presents a theoretical argument about the Sapphic signature, as well as a historical account of its implications in Victorian England. Prins explores the relations between classical philology and Victorian poetics, the tropes of lesbian writing, the aesthetics of meter, and nineteenth-century personifications of the "Poetess." as current scholarship on Sappho and her afterlife. Offering a history and theory of lyric as a gendered literary form, the book is an exciting and original contribution to Victorian studies, classical studies, comparative literature, and women's studies.

Customer Reviews (1)

Find out who the most Sapphic poet of the Victorian Period was!
Are you studying Sappho?How about Michael Field or Algernon Swinburne?This book covers in detail how Victorian poets were or were not like the Greek poet Sappho.During the Victorian time period, fragments were published of Sappho's work.This took the Victorians by storm.Dr. Henry T. Wharton published a book about Sappho entitled "Sappho:Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation."Many writers and artists of the time were mesmerized by his book.Prin tells us that his book had a "broad circulation" and was reprinted 4 times between 1887-1907.

Prins is a Victorian scholar with a great deal of knowledge to bestow.In this particular book, she talks about the connection between Sappho's writing and legend and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Christina Rossetti; Mary Robinson; John Addington Symonds; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning; and many others.Prins states in her book "Rather than organizing the chapters to imply a developing tradition or a linear progression, I emphasize the continual recirculation of Sappho within Victorian poetry" (p. 15).

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