Sappho Fragment 94
… honestly I whish I were dead.
She wept as she was leaving me,
Shedding many tears, and said to me:
“Oh what terrible unhappiness is ours!
Sappho, I swear I’m leaving you against my will.”
And to her I made this answer: Go and fare well, and
remember me, for you know how we cared for you.
If not, why then I want to remind you…
… and the happiness we had.
Many the wreaths of violets, of roses and crocuses together…
… you put on beside me ,
many woven garlands fashioned from flowers, you put around
your tender neck;
with much costly perfume fit for a queen
you anointed yourself,
and on soft beds…
… tender…
…you assuaged your longing…
There was neither…
…nor shrine…
from which we were absent,
no grove… or dance…”
This passage is very relatable to Carson’s “Bittersweet”.
Sappho is reminiscing about all of the good times in her relationship and it is
“sweet” to think about. However, it is
also bitter because the relationship is over and it pains Sappho to think about
it. It makes
Sappho feel good to go through her memories but as soon as she thinks about
them she is reminded that she is no longer in a relationship with this person and
all she has left are the memories. That
is what love is. Love creates all of
this passion and feeling and the sweeter it is while it is happening, the more
bitter is becomes when it is over. This
is similar to the difference between love and hate. Sappho hates that her lover is leaving her,
but the reason that she is so upset is because she loves this person so
much.
Anacreon Fragment 358
Once more tossing a purple ball at me, Love with the golden
hair points to a girl in embroidered sandals and challenges me to play.
But she (she comes from illustrious Lesbos) laughs at my
hair in scorn (its turning white) and goes off gaping after another-girl
This excerpt is relatable to what Carson says about Eros and
that people want what they do not have.
In the first stanza, (“Once…play”), it seems as if Love, also known as
Anacreon’s lover, is falling for another woman and Anacreon has to compete with
her. However, Love is sick of being with
Anacreon because he is too old so she leaves him for someone else; Presumably
this other woman. Although it is not
stated, in the beginning of Anacreon’s and Love’s relationship, Love was likely
very passionate about Anacreon because she had never been with him before. Once they got together however, it seems like
Love is ready to move on to a woman because it is different than her current
situation. Carson talks about how people
covet what they cannot have and once they get it, it is not as attractive
anymore. This will likely happen after
Loves gets together with this other woman, she will continue a cycle that seems
to start in the second stanza (“But she… Another girl”) of trading up every
time she thinks there is somebody better.
The analysis of Sappho is mostly strong, though I'd consider (as Carson does) how the impending distance is playing a role in both the creation of longing and also as a literary conceit. This is the key move that Carson makes, which will be worth returning to in her writing. You came to some problems in the Anacreon, however. First, the formatting was wrong - you have to account for line divisions when citing poems, however short. Consult MLA citation guidelines. Further, take a look at the poem and see that Love is not the same as the girl from Lesbos. Love is here is personified (also see selection 12) as a woman doing two things: 1) tossing a purple ball as a conventionalized invitation of love (see Carson) and 2) pointing to Anacreon's object of desire, the girl. These things can easily trip up an otherwise solid interpretation. Look to these details, because they'll give you more to work with than the more speculative account - "Love was likely very passionate about Anacreon because..." If this is unclear we can definitely go over it - the poem is short but pretty subtle.
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