Some things seem relatively certain, then. What did Sappho look like? A dialogue by Plato, written in the fourth century B.
But some of these seemingly precious facts merely show that the encyclopedia—which, as old as it is, was compiled fifteen centuries after Sappho lived—could be prone to comic misunderstandings. Was Sappho really a mother? Who were the members of her circle? The compilers of the Suda, like scholars today, may have been making educated guesses. However exalted her reputation among the ancient literati, in Greek popular culture of the Classical period and afterward Sappho was known primarily as an oversexed predator—of men.
Comic playwrights and authors of light verse portrayed Sappho as just another daughter of Lesbos, only too happy to fall into bed with her younger male rivals. For centuries, the most popular story about her love life was one about a hopeless passion for a handsome young boatman called Phaon, which allegedly led her to jump off a cliff.
Midway through the first century A. Some ancient writers assumed that there had to have been two Sapphos: one the great poet, the other the notorious slut. There is an entry for each in the Suda. The page is blank. One scholar claimed to have found evidence that classes were taught on how to apply makeup. Classicists today have no problem with the idea of a gay Sappho. But some have been challenging the interpretation of her work that seems most natural to twenty-first century readers: that the poems are deeply personal expressions of private homoerotic passion.
To answer that question, classicists lately have been imagining the purposes to which public performance of erotic poems might have been put. The late Harvard classicist Charles Segal made even larger claims. Between the paucity of actual poems and the woeful unreliability of the biographical tradition, these debates are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. Indeed, the study of Sappho is beset by a curious circularity. For the better part of a millennium—between the compilation of the Suda and the late nineteenth century—the same bits of poetry and the same biographical gossip were endlessly recycled, the poetic fragments providing the sources for biographies that were then used as the basis for new interpretations of those same fragments.
Until the late nineteenth century, when the papyri started turning up, there were only the ancient quotations. Since then, the amount of Sappho that we have has more than doubled. However lowly its original purpose, the dump soon yielded treasures. Papyrus manuscripts dating to the first few centuries A. Some were fragments of works long known, such as the Iliad, but even these were of great value, since the Oxyrhynchus papyri were often far older than what had been, until that point, the oldest surviving copies.
Others revealed works previously unknown. Among the latter were several exciting new fragments of Sappho, some substantial. From the tattered papyri, the voice came through as distinctive as ever:. Over the decades that followed, more of the papyri were deciphered and published. Sappho was born into an aristocratic family, which is reflected in the sophistication of her language and the sometimes rarified environments which her verses record.
References to dances, festivals, religious rites, military fleets, parading armies, generals, and ladies of the ancient courts abound in her writings. She speaks of time spent in Lydia, one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries of that time. More specifically, Sappho speaks of her friends and happy times among the ladies of Sardis, capital of Lydia, once the home of Croesus and near the gold-rich lands of King Midas. A violent coup on Lesbos, following a rebellion led by Pittacus, toppled the ruling families from power.
For many years, Sappho and other members of the aristocracy, including fellow poet Alcaeus, were exiled. The frisson between land and water foments creativity and possibility. At age thirty-two, Claudia Scott had just begun her life and just begun to find an audience for her voice when she ended her life. At forty-one, Terri Jewell already had made many contributions to lesbian literature.
Lonidier committed suicide at fifty-six. The diversity of ages and experiences among these women suggests that there is not one simple narrative of lesbian poet suicide, as the ur-narrative of Sappho suggests.
Lonidier had a full and active creative life. She was an accomplished musician, performing the cello and always relating her creative work to music. In addition to her creative work, Lonidier had meaningful, remunerative work as a teacher to young children. Similar stories of success and meaning and satisfaction can be drawn from the lives of Jewell and Scott. In spite of these stories, all three are dead. Three dead lesbian poets. I want to tell their stories.
Claudia Scott. Terri Jewell. Lynn Lonidier. More than three dead lesbian poets, we risk forgetting them, rendering them three forgotten lesbian poets. What links them together here is their suicides. A problematic legacy. I do not want to romanticize suicide; I do not want to suggest it offers anything other than a cruel end to life, a truncation of work and an end to possibilities. Imagine what Claudia Scott might have written. When I read her work, I wonder what possibilities she might have created for herself in the s, the s.
I wonder what might have come to pass if she had time to develop her craft, hone her vision. What might she have thought seeing two lesbians on the cover of Newsweek? What would she have made of Ellen? Of The L Word? What conversations might she be engaged in today?
When I read Terri Jewell, I wonder what else she might have done. Might she have written obituaries for her lover Stephania Byrd and essays about Toni Morrison after her passing? And Lynn Lonidier? What would she have thought about Fun Home , the musical? Each of these women missed so much in the changing, evolving world of lesbians.
I miss these elders. Perhaps selfishly, I wanted more from them: more life, more work, more art. Beyond the tragedy of suicide, I recognize the incredible anger and power that these women summoned to take their own lives. Especially these three suicides, each woman chose to die, angry, defiant, decisive.
It must be said: lesbianism does not prompt suicide, depression does. What prompts depression and what nurtures it is difficult to pinpoint.
Certainly, the conditions of virulent homophobia and heterosexism under which all three of these lesbians lived and under which lesbians still live today contribute to depression. Many people live under the conditions of virulent homophobia and heterosexism and racism and classism and colonialism and other forms of oppression and are not gripped by depression, and many people live with depression and do not commit suicide.
There are many vexing, contradictory truths. Ultimately, the deaths of Claudia Scott, Terri Jewell, and Lynn Lonidier are contemporary tragedies to observe, map, remember. Each woman died as a result of pain—deep, profound, life-ending pain. Traces of pain are in their creative work, but understanding the magnitude of their pain requires not reading, not thinking, but being. One human to another, imagining suffering.
The death of Sappho is a mythic tragedy—a myth lesbian poets engage and occasionally recreate. Sapphic Dialogics offers an alternate option for engaging the legacy of Sappho. Rather than engaging the legacy of Sappho through suicide, Sapphic Dialogics invite lesbian poets to engage in dialogue with themselves, with one another, with lesbians of the past.
I want to shout from the rooftops: have conversations, lesbians! Be in dialogue! Do not linger on the legacy of suicide! Ultimately, there are no easy answers for lesbian poets other than LIVE. Like the frisson between land and water, where the swirling of air suggests blending, the frisson between the possibilities of Sapphic Dialogics and the definitiveness of Sapphic suicide can create new possibilities for lesbian communities and lesbian creative work.
Embrace the complex, messy legacy of Sappho standing on cliffs alive, writing words in dialogue, in conversation with one another. Remembering Lonidier riffing on Sappho: Her dusty heart is ours. About: Julie R. Julie R. Enszer, PhD, is a scholar and a poet. Her book manuscript, A Fine Bind , is a history of lesbian-feminist presses from until She is the editor of Sinister Wisdom , a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal, and a regular book reviewer for the Lambda Book Report and Calyx.
You can read more of her work at www. Do you believe in the power of queer books?
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