{"id":7171,"date":"2015-05-07T11:33:12","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T17:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7171"},"modified":"2015-05-07T11:33:12","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T17:33:12","slug":"the-slut-the-priestess-andor-the-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7171","title":{"rendered":"The Slut, the Priestess, and\/or the Poet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"sappho

Sappho holding a lyre, by Charles-August Mengin, 1877.<\/p><\/div>\n

A recent article in The New Yorker, <\/em>“How Gay was Sappho?<\/a>” re-examines two questions about the famous poet of antiquity:<\/p>\n

1. Was her poetry really “personal,” as opposed to something like the Iliad<\/em>, which clearly was created for public performance?<\/p>\n

2. Although she lived on the island of Lesbos<\/a>, was she really a small-l lesbian? In ancient times, apparently, Lesbos was allegedly famed for a different sexual practice.<\/p>\n

But then Sappho is no ordinary poet. For the better part of three millennia, she has been the subject of furious controversies\u2014about her work, her family life, and, above all, her sexuality. In antiquity, literary critics praised her \u201csublime\u201d style, even as comic playwrights ridiculed her allegedly loose morals. Legend has it that the early Church burned her works. (\u201cA sex-crazed whore who sings of her own wantonness,\u201d one theologian wrote, just as a scribe was meticulously copying out the lines that Obbink deciphered.) A millennium passed, and Byzantine grammarians were regretting that so little of her poetry had survived. Seven centuries later, Victorian scholars were doing their best to explain away her erotic predilections, while their literary contemporaries, the Decadents and the Aesthetes, seized on her verses for inspiration. Even today, experts can\u2019t agree on whether the poems were performed in private or in public, by soloists or by choruses, or, indeed, whether they were meant to celebrate or to subvert the conventions of love and marriage. The last is a particularly loaded issue, given that, for many readers and scholars, Sappho has been a feminist heroine or a gay role model, or both. \u201cAs far as I knew, there was only me and a woman called Sappho,\u201d the critic Judith Butler once remarked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every so often a new scrap of her poetry turns up \u2014 a recent such discovery sparked this article. Isn’t there a complete scroll of her poems buried somewhere in a jar or a collapsed villa, waiting to be found?<\/p>\n

Twenty-seven hundred years later, we still collect her fragments and yearn for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent article in The New Yorker, “How Gay was Sappho?” re-examines two questions about the famous poet of antiquity: 1. Was her poetry really “personal,” as opposed to something like the Iliad, which clearly was created for public performance? 2. Although she lived on the island of Lesbos, was she really a small-l lesbian? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,232],"class_list":["post-7171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-greece","tag-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1RF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6248,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6248","url_meta":{"origin":7171,"position":0},"title":"New Poems by Sappho Discovered","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"One of my fondest fantasies is that some archaeologist working in Greece or Italy will find a jar of scrolls that when read turn out to be the complete works of the poet Sappho \u2014 and just to continue the fantasy, packed in with them are the commentaries of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=100","url_meta":{"origin":7171,"position":1},"title":"Haifa Wehbe Watch","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Ever since my original post about Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe (or Wahbi), this blog has been receiving sporadic hits from the Middle East: Israel, Syria, Egypt, Dubai . . . Apparently she and some of her peers have really undermined traditional Arab ideas of beauty. But I say this to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7009,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7009","url_meta":{"origin":7171,"position":2},"title":"New Poems by Sappho","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The possibility of deciphering the carbonized papyrus scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri is exciting. One friend hopes that some day an Etruscan\/Greek or Etruscan\/Latin dictionary will be discovered. (The Etruscan language used Greek letters, but we cannot completely read it, beyond some kings' names, etc.) Me, I hope\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Classics\"","block_context":{"text":"Classics","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=classics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.history.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/herculaneum-scrolls.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":462,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=462","url_meta":{"origin":7171,"position":3},"title":"The fragrant-blossomed Muses' lovely giftA\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The fragrant-blossomed Muses' lovely giftA previously unknown poem by Sappho has been pieced together. (Via Cronaca.)","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=712","url_meta":{"origin":7171,"position":4},"title":"‘The Goddess comes through’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Dancers who embody \"the Goddess\" at this page of QuickTime clips. (Work-safe, so far as I can tell. Downloads 10-15 MB)When we say the Goddess is dancing, we are not simply talking about archetypical feminine qualities appearing in the human dancers. Nor are we referring to the women themselves as\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3300,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3300","url_meta":{"origin":7171,"position":5},"title":"A Reason to ‘Love’ Boston","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Because the Museum of Fine Arts will have an exhibit opening later this month devoted to \"Aphrodite and the Gods of Love.\" And fine birds brought you quick sparrows over the black earth whipping their wings down the sky through midair\u2014 they arrived. But you, O blessed one, smiled in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7171"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7175,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7171\/revisions\/7175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}