If Sappho did not exist, we would have to invent her. In fact, we have. This explains why there are a thousand Sapphos, each less likely (and more necessary) than the next. There is the strenuously heterosexual performer of Greek comedy and of John Donne; the equally hard-working homosexual of Martial and Swinburne; and, dancing back and forth over the dividing line, Ovid’s ambidextrous heroine. Then there is the Girl Scout of chivalrous German scholars like Welcker, Wilamowitz and Schadewalt, men who try to make her a Beatrice and succeed only in making her their Dulcinea. She is a litmus paper of the mind, an instrument of men’s self-revelation; as such, reduced to a curious neutrality the more she is used to test different eras and mores. The more said about her, the more we know about the speaker, and the less we know about her. Her “historians” have almost entirely erased her history. →
Sappho, Poems and Fragments by Guy Davenport. University of Michigan, $3.95
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