“Taking Back Sappho: Poetic Adaptors, Translators, and Her Legacy of Control”
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“Taking Back Sappho: Poetic Adaptors, Translators, and her Legacy of Control” Siobhan Claire Hodge 20146976 B.A. (Hons), The University of Western Australia, 2010 This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities Discipline of English 2014 1 Thesis Abstract Title: “Taking Back Sappho”: Poetic Adaptors, Translators, and her Legacy of Control The fragmentary worKs of the ancient GreeK poet Sappho of Lesbos have occupied a privileged place in the English-language literary canon since the recovery and translation of some of her worK in the sixteenth century. However, she has been subjected to a range of appropriations and constructions, including clumsy English translations, heterosexualised pronouns and myths, and “socially acceptable” reinventions as a schoolteacher and supportive maternal figure. Despite this, Sappho’s poetry can be seen as retaining its persistent, subtle focus on self-control and how to exercise control over others. Contrary to visions of Sappho as a gentle poetic speaker, a consistent portrayal of a much more cunning and manipulative figure in her poetry can be identified. Subtle hierarchies of voice and space have not gone unnoticed. Some women poets, writing across a range of centuries and contexts, have recognised and adapted Sapphic themes and techniques to articulate similar needs and desires. In this dissertation, I closely examine the worKs of some of these poets in order to illustrate not only the scope of Sappho’s influence on later writers, but also the diverse ways in which Sappho’s own poetry presented these influences. Presented in six chapters, the investigation begins with examinations of three of Sappho’s most well Known texts: Fragment 31, Fragment 1, and Ovid’s Epistula Sapphus. These are related to smaller, less frequently studied fragments of Sappho’s poetry, and also aligned with later women poets not typically associated with Sappho. Poetry by Lady Mary Wroth, Louise Labé, Grace Schulman, Judith Wright, Carolyn Kizer and M.T.C. Cronin will feature in later chapters, and their connections with Sappho’s body of work discussed in detail. In all chapters, a consistent focus on subtle plays for control and influence will be demonstrated, across Sappho’s poetic oeuvre and beyond, into the worKs of her literary successors and even some of her most restrictive translations, supporting the theory that Sappho’s poetic legacy has not been wholly preoccupied with sentimentality and beauty, but also strongly hostile and possessive emotions. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank several people for their invaluable assistance, patience, and support in my writing of this thesis. Many thanks to my supervisors John Kinsella, Robert White and Shalmalee Palekar for their constant dedication, enthusiasm, and support throughout the entire project. Thanks to Van Ikin for helping with the considerable amount of accompanying paperworK, and thanks as well to Michael Champion his assistance with the Greek translations. Finally, thanks and love to my family, partner, and friends for their continued support and impromptu proof-readings over this time. 3 Contents Introduction 5 Chapter One 20 Control and Equivalence in Sappho’s Fragment 31 Chapter Two 78 Love, Subversion, and Fragment 1 Chapter Three 104 Controlling Bodies: Ovidian Sappho and Lady Mary Wroth Chapter Four 126 “I used to wear crowns”: Identity and Hierarchy in Sappho and Louise Labé Chapter Five 186 Subversive Spaces: Lacunae, Nature and Setting in Sapphic Poetics Chapter Six 237 Taking Back Sappho: Cronin, Kizer, and Wright Conclusion 258 Bibliography 270 Appendix 288 Picking up the Pieces 4 Introduction Summary The worKs of ancient GreeK Lesbian poet Sappho have occupied a privileged place in English-language literary canon since the recovery and translation of some of her worK in the sixteenth century. Despite her controversial sexual preferences and unrepentant self-assertion, which in both her own lifetime and in those of many of her early translators would have been deemed socially unacceptable for women, she has not been lost. However, she has been subjected to a range of censorship attempts, including clumsy English translations, heterosexualised pronouns and myths, and “socially acceptable” reinventions as a schoolteacher and supportive maternal figure. Interestingly, despite censorship efforts in translation, popular mythology and pseudo- biographical details, Sappho’s worK has largely retained its subtle focus on self-control and how to exercise control over others. Contrary to visions of Sappho as a strictly emotional, loving and gentle poetic speaKer, there is a consistent portrayal of a much more calculating and manipulative figure in her poetry. This is apparent upon close analysis of the original GreeK and translated English versions of Sappho’s poetry, as well as the most prevalent of her myths. Contrary to the views of some scholars, Sappho’s poetry consistently and subtly articulates an obsessive, emotionally engaged view of the speaker’s and poet’s own abilities, insisting on control over her settings and poetic figures. Even in some of her most “loving” poems, Sappho’s speaker articulates strong self-interest and elevates herself to a high social position, without necessarily extending the same courtesy to beloved personae. These subtle hierarchies of voice and space have not gone unnoticed, at least on creative levels. Women poets, writing across a range of centuries, contexts and individual beliefs, have recognised and adapted these Sapphic themes and techniques to articulate similar needs and desires, unified by some unconventionally feminine foci and articulations of authority. In this investigation, I will closely examine the worKs of some of these poets in order to illustrate not only the scope of Sappho’s influence on later writers, but also the diverse ways in which Sappho presented these influences. Introduction The ancient Greek poet Sappho, born between 630 and 612 BCE, has had a long and sometimes turbulent relationship with translators, scholars, and poets in 5 English over the centuries. In part this can be attributed to the fragmentary state of her work, largely lost, partially degraded, or recovered “second-hand” via questionably direct quotations in others’ works. Her poetry has been preserved in two main states: quoted in certain ancient texts; and on papyri dug up from an Egyptian archaeological site in Oxyrhynchus, now called Behnasa. The physical deterioration of these excavated pieces, and the questionable authority of versions recorded by Longinus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, make reading Sappho’s poetry a suspicious process. Legends and scant biographical details, proliferating in light of bawdy Attic comedies, Ovid’s fiction of Sappho, and literary fictions produced by Italian, French and English- speaking authors, have also complicated this matter. Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos, off the coast of Turkey, to a distinguished family. The Byzantine encyclopaedia, the Suda, describes her as Lyric poetess, active in the 42nd Olympiad [612-608 BCE], when Alcaeus, Stesichorus and Pittacus also lived. She had three brothers, Larichus, Charaxus and Eurygius. She was married to a very wealthy man called Cercylas, who traded from Andros, and had a daughter by him who was called Cleis. She had three companions and friends, Atthis, Telesippa and Megara, and acquired a bad reputation for her shameful friendship with them. Her pupils were Anagora from Miletus, Gongyla from Colophon, Euneica from Salamis. She wrote nine books of lyric poetry. She invented the plectrum. She also wrote epigrams, elegiacs, iambics and solo songs.1 However, Margaret Williamson notes that all this information is all disputable.2 Sappho appears on ancient artwork and is consistently portrayed in poetic settings, holding a lyre and plectrum, and labelled with her name.3 Despite this, Sappho later became a caricatured figure in bawdy comedies in Athens, and much of her poetry was also physically lost when copies housed in the libraries 1 Quoted by Margaret Williamson, Sappho’s Immortal Daughters, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, p 1-2. 2 Williamson notes that the Suda’s list of possible names for Sappho’s father is just one ‘open admission of ignorance’. The proposed name for Sappho’s husband is also an obscene pun, translating to ‘PricK from the Isle of Man’: Williamson, Sappho’s Immortal Daughters, p 2. 3 Williamson, Sappho’s Immortal Daughters, p 6. 6 of Constantinople, which succeeded Alexandria, were subjected to sackings and burnings, including that by the Crusaders in 1204.4 This project examines some of the complexities of reading Sappho in light of such uneven transmission. The investigation does not intend to promote a definitive edition of Sappho’s poetry, nor to compare the merits of one translator over another, but to examine those translations that best present a controlling, manipulative vision of Sappho. More general translations available to early women poets, whose works will be compared to Sappho’s and their similar foci analysed, will also be examined in detail. For clarity of analysis, this thesis will commence with an assessment of Sappho’s poetic structures and imagery, demonstrated in three of the most prominent texts associated with the poet: poems Fragment 1 and Fragment 31; and Ovid’s version of the Phaon legend. Later chapters will then closely examine later poets’ engagements with these, with close reference to Sappho’s poetry. Central to the exploration are ideas of “subversion” and “control”, both of which have not historically received much attention in Sappho scholarship. Traditionally Sappho’s poetry and legends have been aligned with expressions of love and celebrations of beauty, rather than any manipulative traits. More recently, Anne Carson has acknowledged that Sappho was the first to call eros “bittersweet”: Eros seemed to Sappho at once an experience of pleasure and pain. Here is contradiction and perhaps paradox. To perceive this eros can split the mind in two…We taKe for granted, as did Sappho, the sweetness of erotic desire; its pleasurability smiles out at us.