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'''Sapfo''', '''Safo''' pe '''Sappho''' ([[henc'hresianeg|henc'hresianeg attek]]: Σαπφώ [sapːʰɔː], [[henc'hresianeg|henc'hresianeg eoliek]]: Ψάπφω [psapːʰɔː]) a oa ur varzhez a veve e [[MitileneMitilíni|Mytilene]], kêrbennkêr-benn [[Lesbos]], er [[VIIvet kantved kent JK]]. Ganet e oa e [[Lesbos]], pe e Mitilene pe en [[Eresos]], etre 630 ha 612, ha marvet war-dro 570.
He barzhonegoù a veze meulet en Henamzer n'int ket deuet betek ennomp, nemet unan en he hed, ha tammouigoù eus re all. He brud avat zo brasoc'h evit biskoazh.
[[Skeudenn:Gustav Klimt 064.jpg|thumb|right|''Sappho'' gant [[Gustav Klimt]]]]
Krediñ a reer eoa merc'h da Skamander ha Kleis, hag he doa tri breur. Dimezet e oa.
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[[Image:Sappho-bust.png|right|thumb|Ancient [[Art in Ancient Greece|Greek]] [[Bust (sculpture)|bust]]. The inscription "'''ΣΑΠΦΩ ΕΡΕΣΙΑ'''" says "'''Sappho the [[Eresos|Eresian]]'''"]]
'''Sappho''' ([[Attic Greek]] '''{{lang|el|Σαπφώ}}''' {{IPA|[sapːʰɔː]}}, [[Aeolic Greek]] '''{{lang|el|Ψάπφω}}''' {{IPA|[psapːʰɔː]}}) was an [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greek]] [[nine lyric poets|lyric poet]], born on the [[island]] of [[Lesbos Island|Lesbos]].
==Life==
No contemporary historical sources exist for Sappho's life — only her poetry. Scholars have rejected a biographical reading of her poetry and have cast doubt on the reliability of the later biographical traditions from which all more detailed accounts derive.<ref>See, for example, J. Fairweather, "Fiction in the biographies of ancient writers," ''Ancient Society'' 5 (1974); Mary R. Lefkowitz, ''The lives of the Greek poets'', Johns Hopkins UP, 1981.</ref>
She was married ([[Attic comedy]] says to a wealthy [[merchant]], but that is [[apocryphal]]), the name of her husband being in dispute. Some translators have interpreted a poem about a girl named Cleïs as being evidence that she had a daughter by that name. It was a common practice of the time to name daughters after grandmothers, so there is some basis for this [[interpretation]]. But the actual [[Aeolic]] word ''pais'' was more often used to indicate a [[Slavery in antiquity|slave]] or any young girl, rather than a daughter. In order to avoid misrepresenting the unknowable status of young Cleïs, [[translator]] Diane Rayor and others, such as David Campbell, chose to use the more neutral word "child" in their versions of the poem.
Sappho was born into an [[aristocratic]] family, which is reflected in the sophistication of her language and the sometimes rarified environments which her verses record. References to dances, festivals, religious rites, military fleets, parading armies, generals, and ladies of the ancient courts abound in her writings. She speaks of time spent in [[Lydia]], one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries of that time. More specifically, Sappho speaks of her friends and happy times among the ladies of [[Sardis]], capital of Lydia, once the home of [[Croesus]] and near the gold-rich lands of [[King Midas]].
A violent [[coup]] on Lesbos, following a [[rebellion]] led by [[Pittacus]], toppled the ruling families from power. For many years, Sappho and other members of the [[aristocracy]], including fellow poet [[Alcaeus (poet)|Alcaeus]], were exiled. Her poetry speaks bitterly of the mistreatment she suffered during those years. Much of her exile was spent in [[Syracuse, Italy|Syracuse]] on the island of [[Sicily]]. Upon hearing that the famous Sappho would be coming to their city, the people of Syracuse built a statue of her as a form of welcome. Much later, in 581 BC, when [[Pittacus]] was no longer in power, she was able to return to her homeland. A tradition going back at least to [[Menander]] (fr. 258 K) suggested that Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian cliffs for love of Phaon, a ferryman. Some scholars have suggested that this legend of Sappho's leap from the cliff over the love for a man may have resulted in part from a desire to discount her [[homosexuality]].<ref>For example, in ''Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches'', ed. Ellen Greene, University of California Press, 1996: Mary Lefkowitz, "Critical Stereotypes and the Poetry of Sappho," pp. 28f. (the story of Sappho's death represents her as "deprived because of her hugliness of male attention...which she craves"); Judith Hallett, "Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality," pp. 126f., while sounding a note of caution about careless assumptions of Sappho's engagement in [[homosexuality]], discusses the story of Sappho's sexual conversion and death in the context of "disbelief and disapproval" regarding accounts of her homosexuality, which such legends may aim to disprove; Eva Stehle, "Sappho's Gaze: Fantasies of a Goddess and Young Man," p. 195 n. 10, considers that "The story probably developed in fourth-century comedy."</ref>
Because some of her love poems were addressed to women, she has long been considered to have had homosexual inclinations. The word "[[lesbian]]" itself is derived from the name of the island of Lesbos from which she came. Her name is also the origin of its less common synonym ''sapphic''. The narrators of many of her poems do in fact speak of infatuations and love (sometimes requited, sometimes not) for various women, but descriptions of physical acts between women are few and subject to debate. Whether these poems are meant to be autobiographical is not known, although elements of other parts of Sappho's life do make appearances in her work, and it would be compatible with her style to have these intimate encounters expressed poetically, as well. Her [[homoerotica]] should be placed in the seventh century (BC) context. The poems of [[Alcaeus (poet)|Alcaeus]] and later [[Pindar]] record similar romantic bonds between the members of a given circle.<ref>Anne Pippin Burnett, ''Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho'', Harvard UP, 1983.</ref>
The [[3rd Century]] philosopher [[Maximus of Tyre]] wrote that Sappho was "small and dark" and that her relationships to her female friends were similar to those of [[Socrates]]:
: ''What else was the love of the Lesbian woman except Socrates' art of love? For they seem to me to have practiced love each in their own way, she that of women, he that of men. For they say that both loved many and were captivated by all things beautiful. What [[Alcibiades]] and [[Charmides]] and [[Phaedrus]] were to him, [[Gyrinna]] and [[Atthis]] and [[Anactoria]] were to the Lesbian.''
During the [[Victorian era]], it became the fashion to describe Sappho as the headmistress of a girls' finishing school. As Page DuBois (among many other experts) points out, this attempt at making Sappho understandable and palatable to the genteel classes of [[Great Britain]] was based more on conservative sensibilities than evidence. In fact, many argue there are no references to teaching, students, academies, or tutors in any of Sappho's admittedly scant collection of surviving works. Burnett follows others, like C.M. Bowra, in suggesting that Sappho's circle was somewhat akin to the Spartan ''agelai'' or the religious sacred band, the ''thiasos'', but Burnett nuances her argument by noting that Sappho's circle was distinct from these contemporary examples because "membership in the circle seems to have been voluntary, irregular and to some degree international."<ref>Burnett, ''op. cit.'', p. 210</ref> The notion that Sappho was in charge of some sort of academy persists nonetheless.
== Works ==
{{wikisource author|Sappho}}
Ancient sources state that Sappho produced nine volumes of poetry, but only a small proportion of her work survives. [[Papyrus]] fragments, such as those found in the ancient rubbish heaps of [[Oxyrhynchus]], are an important source. One substantial fragment is preserved on a potsherd. The rest of what we know of Sappho comes through citations in other ancient writers, often made to illustrate [[grammar]], [[vocabulary]], or meter. There is a single complete poem, Fragment 1, ''Hymn to [[Aphrodite]]''.<ref name=stoavandiver>[http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/vandiver.shtml ''Hymn to Aphrodite'', translation, and notes]</ref> There is another modern translation of that ode, and translations of two more virtually complete poems (16 and 31 in the standard numeration) and three shorter fragments, including one whose authorship is uncertain (168b).<ref name=stoarayor>[http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/rayor.shtml Fragment 168b]</ref><ref name=middlebury>[http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Sappho.pdf Main fragments and translations]</ref>
The most recent addition to the corpus is a virtually complete poem on old age. The line-ends were first published in 1922 from an [[Oxyrhynchus]] papyrus, no. 1787 (fragment 1: see the third pair of images on [http://163.1.169.40/cgi-bin/library?e=d-000-00---0POxy--00-0-0--0prompt-10---4------0-1l--1-en-50---20-about---00031-001-1-0utfZz-8-00&a=d&c=POxy&cl=CL5.1.5&d=HASHaeefcbe08cb915ff564bba this page]), but little could be made of them, since the indications of poem-end (placed at the beginnings of the lines) were lost, and scholars could only guess where one poem ended and another began. Most of the rest of the poem has recently ([[2004]]) been published from a [[3rd century BC]] papyrus in the [[Cologne University]] collection (image available [http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/NRWakademie/papyrologie/Verstreutepub/21351+21376_ZPE154.html here]). The latest reconstruction, by [[M. L. West]], appeared in the ''Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik'' 151 (2005), 1-9, and in the [[Times Literary Supplement]] on [[21 June]] [[2005]] ([http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25345-1886660,00.html English translation] and [http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25337-1886659,00.html discussion]).
Another full literary translation is available.<ref>{{cite web | title=A New Poem by Sappho (from archive.org) | url=http://web.archive.org/web/20060422015644/http://aristasia.co.uk/Sappho1.html }}</ref> The Greek text has been reproduced with helpful notes for students of the language,<ref>{{cite web | title=AOIDOI.org: Epic, Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry | url=http://www.aoidoi.org/ | accessdate=October 30 | accessyear=2005 }}</ref> together with other examples of Greek lyric poetry.
A major new literary discovery, the [[Milan Papyrus]],<ref>Partial image: {{cite web | title=http://cds.colleges.org//lecture_files/posidippuscols3-562.jpg | url=http://cds.colleges.org//lecture_files/posidippuscols3-562.jpg | accessdate=October 30|accessyear=2005 }}</ref> recovered from a dismantled mummy casing and published in 2001, has revealed the high esteem in which the poet [[Posidippus]] of Pella, an important composer of [[epigrams]] (3rd century BC), held Sappho's 'divine songs'. An English translation of the new epigrams, with notes, is available,<ref>Translations and notes are available: {{cite web | title=Diotima | url=http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/epigrams.shtml | accessdate=October 30 | accessyear=2005 }}</ref> as is the original Greek text.<ref>The Greek text: {{cite web | title=Center for Hellenic Studies - Epigrams | url=http://www.chs.harvard.edu/publications.sec/classics.ssp/issue_i_posidippus.pg/epigrams.pg | accessdate=October 30 | accessyear=2005 }}</ref>
===Reputation in antiquity===
An [[epigram]] in the [[Greek Anthology|Anthologia Palatina]] (9.506) ascribed to [[Plato]] states:
: ''Some say the [[Muse]]s are nine: how careless!''
: ''Look, there's Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.''
[[Claudius Aelianus]] wrote in ''Miscellany (Ποικίλη ιστορία)'' that [[Plato]] called Sappho wise. [[Horace]] writes in his [[Odes of Horace|Odes]] that Sappho's lyrics are worthy of sacred admiration. One of Sappho's poems was famously translated by the [[1st century BC]] [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] poet [[Catullus]] in his "''Ille mi par esse deo videtur''" (Catullus 51).
=== Loss of Sappho's works ===
[[Image:1877 Charles Mengin - Sappho.jpg|thumb|200px|left|''Sappho'', by [[Charles Mengin]] ([[1877]]) [[Manchester Art Gallery]], UK]]
Although Sappho's work endured well into [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] times, with changing interests, styles, and aesthetics her work was copied less and less, especially after the academies stopped requiring her study. Part of the reason for her disappearance from the standard canon was the predominance of [[Attic Greek|Attic]] and [[Homeric]] Greek as the languages required to be studied. Sappho's Aeolic [[dialect]], a difficult one, and by Roman times, arcane and ancient as well, posed considerable obstacles to her continued popularity.
Once the major academies of the [[Byzantine Empire]] dropped her works from their standard curricula, very few copies of her works were made by scribes. Still, the greatest poets and thinkers of [[ancient Rome]] continued to emulate her or compare other writers to her, and it is through these comparisons and descriptions that we have received much of her extant poetry.
Modern legends, with origins that are difficult to trace, have made Sappho's literary legacy the victim of purposeful obliteration by scandalized church leaders, often by means of [[book-burning]]. There is no known historical evidence for these accounts. Indeed, [[Gregory of Nazianzus]], who along with [[Pope Gregory VII]] features as the villain in many of these stories, was a reader and admirer of Sappho's poetry. For example, modern scholars have noted the echoes of Sappho fr. 2 in his poem ''On Human Nature'', which copies from Sappho the quasi-sacred grove (''alsos''), the wind-shaken branches, and the striking word for "deep sleep" (''kōma'').<ref>Quintino Cataudella, "Saffo fr. 5 (5) – 6 (5) Diehl," ''Atene e Roma'' ser. 3 vol. 8 (1940), pp. 199-201. Cf. D.L. Page, ''Sappho and Alcaeus'', Oxford, 1955, p. 37.</ref>
It appears likely that Sappho's poetry was decimated by the same forces of cultural change that obliterated, without prejudice, the remains of all the [[nine lyric poets|canonical archaic Greek poets]]. Indeed, as one would expect from ancient critical estimations, which regard Sappho and [[Pindar]] as the greatest practitioners of monodic lyric and choral poetry (respectively), more of Sappho's work has survived through quotation than any of the others, with the exception of Pindar (whose works alone survive in a manuscript tradition).
Although the [[manuscript]] tradition broke off, some copies of her work have been discovered in Egyptian [[papyri]] from an earlier period. A major find at [[Oxyrhynchus]] brought many new but tattered verses to light.<ref>An example from book 2 of the collected edition: {{cite web | title=Virtual Exhibition | url=http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/VExhibition/finds/sappho.html | accessdate=October 30|accessyear=2005 }}</ref> From the time of the European [[Renaissance]], the interest in Sappho's writing has grown, seeing waves of fairly widespread popularity as new generations rediscover her work. Since few people are able to understand ancient languages, each age has translated Sappho in its own idiomatic way. Poetry, such as Sappho's, that relies on meter is difficult to reproduce in [[English language|English]], especially American English, which has a much more even pronunciation and emphasis than ancient Greek. As a result, many early translators used [[rhyme]] and worked Sappho's ideas into English poetic forms.
In the 1960s, [[Mary Barnard]] reintroduced Sappho to the reading public with a new approach to translation that eschewed the use of rhyming [[stanza]]s or forms of poetry, such as the [[sonnet]]. Subsequent translators have tended to work in a similar manner, seeking to allow the essence of Sappho's spirit to be visible through the translated verses.
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=== Menegoù anezhi el lennegezh ===
====E saozneg====
* [http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/3040.html Sappho] from Smith's ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' (1867)
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml Greek and Roman love poetry], [[BBC Radio 4]], ''In Our Time'', 26 April 2007
==Notennoù ha daveennoù==
<references/>
[[Rummad:Skrivagnerien Hellaz kozh]]
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