Analyzing Sappho and Ibycus

"Immortal Aphrodite on your richly crafted throne,

daughter of Zeus, weaver of snares, I beg you,

do not with sorrows and with pains subdue

            my heart, O Lady,

but come to me, if ever at another time as well,

hearing my voice from far away,

you heeded it, and leaving your father’s house

            of gold, you came,

yoking your chariot. Graceful sparrows

brought you swiftly over the black earth,

with a thick whirring of wings, from heaven down

            through the middle air.

Suddenly they were here, and you, O Blessed,

with a smile on your immortal face

asked me what was wrong this time, and why

            I called you this time,

and what in my maddened heart I wanted most

to happen. “Whom shall I persuade this time

to welcome you in friendship? Who is it,

            Sappho, that wrongs you?

For if she flees now, soon she shall pursue;

if she refuses presents, she shall give them;

if she does not love, soon she shall love

            even against her will.”

Come to me now as well; release me from

this agony; all that my heart yearns

to be achieved, achieve, and be yourself

            my ally in arms."

At the beginning of her poem, Sappho begs Aphrodite to save her from the misfortune of love, as Carson would encourage from her description of love as a thing of both pleasure and pain. Here, echoing Carson's sentiment of "sweet and bitter," Sappho asks "do not with sorrows and with pains subdue my heart" with love. Love in and of itself is immutably connected to agony and suffering in this poet's mind; loving another is not something Sappho wants. She wants to be relieved from that desire.

Then Sappho entreats Aphrodite in the opposite way. She seems to switch almost instantly from her strong sentiments that Aphrodite can keep her from love's heartache to the acceptance that she will, once again, fall in love of her own accord. Sappho's inexorable draw towards romance after romance is shown by Aphrodite's somewhat exasperated repetition of "this," such as "what was wrong this time, and why I called you this time." Clearly this has happened many times before, and Aphrodite is not surprised. Despite the pain of love, it's simultaneous sweetness is too great a temptation for Sappho to ignore. Much like Carson points to the emotions of hate and love as easily interchangeable in a relationship, Sappho seems to hate and love her own romantic desires. She begs Aphrodite to once again end the pain of her "eros" and cause the object of her desire to return her affection. However, despite Aphrodite's seeming agreement to this wish, it is never actually fulfilled in the poem. Nor is it clear whether Aphrodite is truly speaking (in the poem) or whether it is all supposed to be representative of Sappho's wish. This draws on Carson's paradox that one can only desire what one does not have. The longing is what makes desire painful, but it is also what creates the desire in the first place. Sappho's lover can never return her desire, even in the poem, or else the tension would be released and Sappho would no longer love her. At least, it works this way in their "eros."

"In Spring the Kydonian

apple trees, watered by flowing 

streams there where the Maidens

have their unravished garden, and vine buds,

growing under the shadowy branches

of the vines, bloom and flourish. For me, however, love

is at rest in no season,

but like the Thracian north wind

ablaze with lightening,

rushing from Aphrodite with scorching

fits of madness, dark and unrestrained,

it forcibly convulses, from their very roots,

my mind and heart.

The first half of this poem addresses the typical description of love, that of a happy, sunny, pleasant emotion full of new beginnings and warm feelings. The second half rejects that. By saying the "love is at rest in no season," he points to Carson's "sweet and bitter," that love is just at much at home in the pain and awfulness of winter as it is in the warm kindness of spring. Just as Carson paints "eros" as an attacker who inflames its victims with its passion, Ibycus describes the feeling of being struck by love as most similar to being struck by lightning, "scorching," "dark and unrestrained." The last two lines go along with this theme of the attacker, saying that love "forcibly convulses" his body, "mind and heart." The force described and the aggressive nature of the words chosen in this second half of them poem conveys perfectly Carson's association of love with deep pain.