Sappho
Brenan Winters
Dr. Cala A Zubair
ENG 209
2, May, 2013
Fragments of Sappho
While many translations of Sappho’s work have been elaborated upon, Anne Carson aims to put less of herself into her work so we get more Sappho! Anne Carson’s ‘If Not Winter’ depicts Sappho in her truest form. There is no flourishing to her texts, only careful incomplete translations that force the reader to imagine what the complete versions of the texts might have looked like. The empty space creates, although assumingly unintended by Sappho, a poetic emphasis on word choice and a feeling of emptiness created by the awareness of the size of lost work, while the brackets create a sense of drama, that the reader might feel uncovering these works from broken papyrus.
So who was Sappho, exactly? Sappho was a Greek lyric poet who was born on the island of Lesbos. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BCE and her death was around 570 BCE. Her only surviving work has been found in fragments. Some of her poetry was discovered in Egyptian papyri fragments in ancient rubbish heaps and even a few preserved on a potsherd. The rest of what we know about Sappho is through citations in other ancient writers. We have an estimated three percent of her total work. There have been over 450 translations of her work in English since the early eighteenth century.
Anne Carson has preserved Sappho’s work the way it was found on the fragmented pieces of papyrus. In her introduction of ‘If Not Winter’,” I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you allow it. Brackets are exciting. 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 or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp—brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.” But just how does she accomplish this and why?
First you must prepare yourself to become a literary
Dr. Cala A Zubair
ENG 209
2, May, 2013
Fragments of Sappho
While many translations of Sappho’s work have been elaborated upon, Anne Carson aims to put less of herself into her work so we get more Sappho! Anne Carson’s ‘If Not Winter’ depicts Sappho in her truest form. There is no flourishing to her texts, only careful incomplete translations that force the reader to imagine what the complete versions of the texts might have looked like. The empty space creates, although assumingly unintended by Sappho, a poetic emphasis on word choice and a feeling of emptiness created by the awareness of the size of lost work, while the brackets create a sense of drama, that the reader might feel uncovering these works from broken papyrus.
So who was Sappho, exactly? Sappho was a Greek lyric poet who was born on the island of Lesbos. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BCE and her death was around 570 BCE. Her only surviving work has been found in fragments. Some of her poetry was discovered in Egyptian papyri fragments in ancient rubbish heaps and even a few preserved on a potsherd. The rest of what we know about Sappho is through citations in other ancient writers. We have an estimated three percent of her total work. There have been over 450 translations of her work in English since the early eighteenth century.
Anne Carson has preserved Sappho’s work the way it was found on the fragmented pieces of papyrus. In her introduction of ‘If Not Winter’,” I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you allow it. Brackets are exciting. 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 or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp—brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.” But just how does she accomplish this and why?
First you must prepare yourself to become a literary