Eros in Sappho Fr.31 and Theognis Lines 1353-56

Sappho(Fr.31)He seems to me to be equal to  the gods,
that man who sits across from you
and listens close at hand
to your sweet voice

and lovely laughter. Truly it sets
my hear to pounding in my breast,
for the moment I glance at you, I can
no longer speak;

my tongue grows numb;  at once a subtle
fire runs stealthily beneath my skin;
my eyes see nothing, my ears
ring and buzz,

the swat pours down, a trembling
seizes the whole of me, I turn paler
than grass, and I seem to myself not far from dying.

But everything can be endured, because...

It is a vivid fragment where Saphho's depicts a dynamic chain of scenes when she finds a man charming the woman that she likes. She leads us first into what she sees--a man sitting across Sappho's female crush who was handsome that seems like god to her, and she hears--the woman's pretty voice which the man listens close to as well, and then what she feels--heart pounding, numb tongue, sweat and buzz. Need not to "tell" her thoughts, she "shows" us in a compelling way of her anxiety and bitterness towards the couple, which was both a result and a cause of her affection towards the woman.


Carson argues in the "Ruse" chapter of her paper that jealousy was not what the poem is about, but rather, it is about Eros, or the bittersweet that is at the core of real love. Carson thinks that Sappho's has no intention of replacing the man, who seems an obstacle between her and the one she desires. It is the man who stands in between them, that allowed the desire of Sappho to be invoked and intensified. His role is actually important in the relationship, for it both exerts a resistance force which hinders Sappho's pursuing of the lady, and meanwhile makes her desire her more, a positive force that is necessary to counter the negative force of the man. Without the man, Sappho might not have loved the woman as much, since her perception of the her beauty could be lost once she could easily have her. As Carson put it perfectly, "But the ruse of the triangle is not a trivial mental maneuver. We see in it the radical constitution of desire".

Eros could be seen in Theognis' fragment(Lines 1353-56) as well:

Bitter and sweet, alluring and tormenting:
such, till it be fulfilled, Kyrnos, is love to the young;
for if one find fulfillment, it proves sweet; but if,
pursuing,
one failes of fulfillment, then of all things it is most
painful.

In this fragment Theognis describes the bittersweet towards his younger student/lover. Unlike Sappho who implicitly paints the picture of the love intensified by obstacle, Theognis explicitly states that despite that "fulfillment" is "sweet", one cannot "pursue", as it leads to failure of fulfillment. The reason that pursuing could fail might relates to the pederasty social norms in ancient Greece, where the intimate relationship between male mentor and student will not last once the student grows mature. Carson's theory of Eros also applies to this fragment, as he is saying that the bitterness from not being able to "own" the lover makes the love stronger and sweeter.