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Title: Sappho: A New Translation by Mary Barnard, Sappho, Dudley Fitts ISBN: 0520223128 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Rating: 4
Summary: "there's so much beauty..."
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Was Sappho a lesbian ?
Comment: 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. 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 A.C. to see that happen.
Rating: 5
Summary: A pure earthy pleasure
Comment: Bernard's translation of Sappho is a translation of a poet who is down-to-earth, who pays attention to the detail.
Some of the fragments are so brief that you are reminded of haiku: "The nightengale's / The soft-spoken / announcer of / Spring's presence"
Other poems speak specifically of feminine concerns - the lost of the maiden-head, the color of ribbon that fits best in her daughter's yellow hair.
I read a great deal of poetry in translation. In other translations I have not found Sappho to my liking. This translation appears to me to be truer to the author's earthliness and less concerned with making Sappho fit into preconceptions. In short, I highly recommend this translation.
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Title: The Love Songs of Sappho (Literary Classics) by Sappho, Paul Roche, Page DuBois ISBN: 157392251X Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Sappho Companion by Margaret Reynolds, Sappho Selections ISBN: 0312239246 Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Pub. Date: 2001 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho, Anne Carson ISBN: 0375410678 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Sappho's Leap: A Novel by Erica Jong ISBN: 0393057615 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 12 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Four Plays by Aristophanes: The Clouds, the Birds, Lysistrata, the Frogs by Aristophanes, William Arrowsmith ISBN: 0452007178 Publisher: New American Library Trade Pub. Date: 1984 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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