Fragments Of Sappho Quotes

someone will remember us I say even in another time

their heart grew cold they let their wings down

you came and I was crazy for you and you cooled my mind that burned with longing

you burn me

I declare That later on, Even in an age unlike our own, Someone will remember who we are.

In fact she herself once blamed me Kyprogeneia because I prayed this word: I want.

I would not think to touch the sky with two arms

may you sleep on the breast of your delicate friend

yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say shame would not hold down your eyes but rather you would speak about what is just

]sing to us the one with violets in her lap ]mostly ]goes astray

stars around the beautiful moon hide back their luminous form whenever all full she shines on the earth silvery

] ]you will remember ]for we in our youth did these things yes many and beautiful things ] ] ]

and on a soft bed delicate you would let loose your longing

Evening you gather back all that dazzling dawn has put asunder: you gather a lamb, gather a kid, gather a child to its mother.

I don't know what to do two states of mind in me

I want to say something but shame prevents me yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say, shame would not hold down your eyes but rather you would speak about what is just

gathering flowers so very delicate a girl

[I was dreaming of you but] just then Dawn, in her golden sandals [woke me]

for when i look at you, even a moment, no speaking is left in me no: tongue breaks and thin fire is racing under skin

not one girl I think who looks on the light of the sun will ever have wisdom like this

of all stars the most beautiful

]Sardis often turning her thoughts here ] you like a goddess and in your song most of all she rejoiced. But now she is conspicuous among Lydian women as sometimes at sunset the rosyfingered moon surpasses all the stars. And her light stretches over salt sea equally and flowerdeep fields. And the beautiful dew is poured out and roses bloom and frail chervil and flowering sweetclover. But she goes back and forth remembering gentle Atthis and in longing she bites her tender mind

Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me - sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in

Someone will remember us I say Even in another time

Wealth without virtue is no harmless neighbor.

I simply want to be dead. Weeping she left me with many tears and said this: Oh how badly things have turned out for us. Sappho, I swear, against my will I leave you. And I answered her: Rejoice, go and remember me. For you know how we cherished you.

frequently for those I treat well are the ones who most of all harm me

I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.

I am weary of all your words and soft, strange ways.

Eros shook my mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees.

…You are, I think, an evening star, of all the stars, the fairest…

For the man who is beautiful is beautiful to see but the good man will at once also beautiful be

As sometimes at sunset the rosyfingered moon surpasses all the stars. And her light stretches over salt sea equally and flowerdeep fields.

neither for me honey nor the honey bee

Like a gale smiting an oak On mountainous terrain, Eros, with a stroke, Shattered my brain.

but me you have forgotten or you love some man more than me

but I am not someone who likes to wound rather I have a quiet mind

...but I say whatever / one loves, is

for you beautiful ones my thought is not changeable

but if you love us choose a younger bed for I cannot bear to live with you when I am the older one

I desire And I crave.

Dawn with arms of roses

In the end he became as fragmentary as the poems of Sappho he never succeeded in restoring, and finally one morning he looked up into the face of the woman who’d been the greatest love of his life and failed to recognize her. And then there was another kind of blow inside his head; blood pooled in his brain for the last time, washing even the last fragments of his self away.

And her light stretches over salt sea equally and flowerdeep fields.

I use to weave crowns

I have a daughter who reminds me of A marigold in bloom. Kle

Hesperus, you are The most fetching star. What Dawn flings afield You bring back together - Sheep to the fold, goats to the pen, And the child to his mother again. Nightingale, All you sing Is desire; You are the crier Of coming spring

Reminded me of Anaktoria, who is gone. I would rather see her lovely step and the motion of light on her face than chariots of Lydians or ranks of footsoldiers in arms.

for her dress when you saw it stirred you. And i rejoice. In fact she herself once blamed me Kyprogeneia because i prayed this word: i want

Wealth without real worthiness Is no good for the neighbourhood; But their proper mixture Is the summit of beatitude.

you will remember for we in our youth did these things yes many and beautiful things we live the opposite daring

Have you forgotten that a poet lies down in the shade of the future? She is calling out, she is waiting. Our lives are the lines missing from the fragments. There is the hope of becoming in all our forms and genres. The future of Sappho shall be us.

- bind your hair with lovely crowns, tying stems of anise together in your soft hands. For the blesses Graces prefer to look on one who wears flowers and turn away from those without a crown.

Some call ships, infantry or horsemen The greatest beauty earth can offer; I say it is whatever a person Most lusts after. Showing you all will be no trouble: Helen surpassed all humankind In looks but left the world's most noble Husband behind, Coasting off to Troy where she Thought nothing of her loving parents And only child but, led astray... ... and I think of Anaktoria Far away,... And I would rather watch her body Sway, her glistening face flash dalliance Than Lydian war cars at the ready And armed battalions.

In Ancient Greek literature male poets tend not simply to portray women as lecherous but to attribute to them a species of lust different from that of males: a subhuman and automatic reflex, an animalistic urge. Sappho is important because she gives a fulle human voice to female desire for the first time in Western history. Since she defiantly chooses the quintessential love-object Helen of Troy as her freethinking agent, she seems fully conscious of the revolutionary claim she is making.

And with precious and royal perfume you anointed yourself.

if only I, O goldcrowned Aphrodite, could win this lot

delicate Adonis is dying Kythereia what should we do? strike yourselves maidens and tear your garments

but a kind of yearning has hold of me—to die and to look upon the dewy lotus banks of Acheron

I would rather see her lovely step and the motion of light on her face than chariots of Lydians or ranks of footsoldiers in arms.

their heart grew cold they let their wings down” ― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

It seems that she knew and loved women as deeply as she did music. Can we leave that matter there? As Gertrude Stein says: 'She ought to be a very happy woman. Now we are able to recognize a photograph. We are able to get what we want.' -Marry Nettie, Gertrude Stein Writings (1903-1932)

I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through. This is an amiable fantasy (transparency of self) within which most translators labor. If light appears, 'not ruining the eyes (as Sappho says) but strengthening, nourishing and watering,' - Aelius Aristides Orations we undo a bit of cloth.

He seems to me equal to gods that man whoever he is who opposite you sits and listens close to your sweet speaking and lovely laughing - oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking is left in me

καὶ ποθήω καὶ μάομαι

ταὶς κάλαισ᾿ ὔμιν <τὸ> νόημμα τὦμον οὐ διάμειπτον

ἦλθες, ἔγω δέ σ᾿ ἐμαιόμαν, ὂν δ᾿ ἔψυξας ἔμαν φρένα καιομέναν πόθῳ.

κὰτ ἔμον στάλαχμον *** τὸν δ’ ἐπιπλάζοντ’ ἄνεμοι φέροιεν καὶ μελέδωναι

He who is beautiful is so only when seen, but he who is good is beautiful at once.

You may forget but let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us

the doorkeeper's feet are seven armlengths long five oxhides for his sandals ten shoemakers worked on them

Night, you who gather in your lovely lap The things the shining dawn flung far and wide, The ewe-lamb you bring back, the straying goat, The child you lead unto its mothers side.

Dead you will lie and never memory of you will there be nor desire into the aftertime - for you do not share in the roses of Pieria, but invisible too in Hades' house you will go your way among dim shapes. Having been breathed out.

I simply want to be dead. Weeping she left me with many tears and said this: Oh how badly things have turned out for us. Sappho, I swear, against my will I leave you. And I answered her: Rejoice, go and remember me. For you know how we cherished you. But if not, I want to remind you. ]and beautiful times we had. For many crowns of violets and roses ]at my side you put on and many woven garlands made of flowers around your soft throat. And with sweet oil costly you anointed yourself and on a soft bed delicate you would let loose your longing and neither any [ ] nor any holy place nor was there from which we were absent no grove [ ] no dance ]no sound [

Sappho isn't really meant to be read. It's meant to be sung and there were dances for the songs, also. Sappho was a performance artist, and now she exists as a textual project. She was saved by her critics, and by people who wrote of her in letters to each other. As the morning sun lathers the pool through the long windows and stripes the opposite walls in gold, I look at the fragment translations. She's paper, too. A paper poet for a paper boy. People claim to be translating her but they don't, really, they use her to write poems from as they fill in the gaps in the fragments. A duet. She may have meant for these to be solos but they're duets now, though the second singer blends in with the first. The first singer in this case is offstage, like in the old days of stars who couldn't sing, a real singer hidden behind a curtain, which is the velvet drape of history.

I loved you, Atthis, years ago, when my youth was still all flowers and sighs, and you -- you seemed to me such a small ungainly girl. Can you forget what happened before? If so, then I'll remind you how, while lying beside me, you wove a garland of crocuses which I then braided into strands of your hair. And once, when you'd plaited a double necklace from a hundred blooms, I tied it around the swanning, sun-licked ring of your neck. And on more than one occasion (there were two of them, to be exact), while I looked on, too silent with adoration to say your name, you glazed your breasts and arms with oil. No holy place existed without us then, no woodland, no dance, no sound. Beyond all hope, I prayed those timeless days we spent might be made twice as long. I prayed one word: I want. Someone, I tell you, will remember us, even in another time.

Sapphic Chords On what marble stones would you scratch your love today? Spray it on brick walls, rap it in pool halls, hang it on the clothes line with you lingerie? Oh, Sappho! Would you swing a softball bat, wear lipstick, ride a Harley? What novels would you pen, what political party? Is that really tenderness in your final line, or do words hang for what you couldn't say? What remnants you left behind, too little but enough for us to know the luxury of your lust. Your heat, your wisdom, your passion - all left in fragmented trust. Oh, Sappho!

kerisl n. the sorrow of imagining the wealth of knowledge forever lost to history-knowing we'll never hear the language of the Etruscans, the battle cry of the Sea Peoples, or the burial chants of the Neanderthals; that we'll never read any more than a fragment of the works of Blake, Sappho, Aristotle, or Jesus; or enjoy the untold treasures of so many burned libraries and forgotten oral traditions and unrecorded songs-any of which might have made up the cornerstone of canon, that we'd all be able to quote by heart and couldn't imagine living without.

SAPPHO WHO BROKE OFF A FRAGMENT OF HER SOUL FOR US TO GUESS AT.

The fragment, we know, is the infinite promise of Romanticism, the enduringly potent ideal of the modern age, and poetry, more than any other literary form, has come to be associated with the pregnant void, the blank space that breeds conjecture. The dots, like phantom limbs, seem intertwined with the words, testify to a lost hole. Intact, Sappho's poems would be as alien to us as the once gaudily painted classical sculptures.

Song and the lyric poem came first. Prose was invented centuries later. In Israel, Greece, and China came the primal, model lyrics for two and a half millennia. Read the biblical Song of Songs in Hebrew, Sappho in Greek, and Wang Wei in Chinese and be deeply civilized. You will know the passions, tragedy, spirit, politic, philosophy, and beauty that have commanded our solitary rooms and public spaces. I emphasize solitary, because the lyric, unlike theater and sport, is an intimate dialogue between maker and reader. From the Jews we have their two bibles of wisdom poetry, from the Chinese we have thousands of ancient nightingales whose song is calm ecstasy, and from the Greeks we have major and minor names and wondrous poems. However, because of bigotry, most of Greek poetry, especially Sappho, was by religious decree destroyed from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. So apart from one complete ode, we read Sappho in fragments. Yet there survive fragrant hills for lovers and dark and luminous mountains for metaphysicians. Most of ancient Greek lyric poetry is contained in this volume. Do not despair about loss. You are lucky if you can spend your life reading and rereading the individual poets. They shine. If technology or return to legal digs in Egypt and Syria are to reveal a library of buried papyri of Greek lyrics equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, we should be able to keep singing and dancing for ten moons straight. For now, we have the song, human comedy, political outrage, and personal cry for centuries of good reading.

and lovely laughing—oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings

virgin deershooter wild one, the gods call her as her name.

I / rush outside the billow yanks across the sky and into Queens. It's an archive burning, a record storage building near the water. Singed bits of text rain onto concrete, streets swallowed in fragments like a Sappho / How do statues become more galvanizing than refugees / is not something I wd include in a nature poem.

He seems to me equal to gods that man whoever he is who opposite you sits and listens close to your sweet speaking and lovely laughing—oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking is left in me no: tongue breaks and thin fire is racing under skin and in eyes no sign and drumming fills ears and cold sweat holds me and shaking grips me all, greener than grass I am and dead—or almost I seem to me. But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty

wealth without virtue is no harmless neighbor but a mixture of both attains the height of happiness

]of desire ] ]for when I look at you ]such a Hermione ]and to yellowhaired Helen I liken you ] ]among mortal women, know this ]from every care ]you could release me ] ]dewy riverbanks ]to last all night long ] [

Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love. Easy to make this understood by all. For she who overcame everyone in beauty (Helen) left her fine husband behind and went sailing to Troy. Not for her children nor her dear parents had she a thought, no- led her astray ]for ]lightly ]reminded me now of Anaktoria who is gone. I would rather see her lovely step and the motion of light on her face than chariots of Lydians or ranks of footsoldiers in arms. ]not possible to happen ]to pray for a share ] toward [ ] out of the unexpected.

]frequently ]for those I treat well are the ones who most of all ]harm me ]crazy ] ]you, I want ]to suffer ]in myself I am aware of this

]into desire I shall come

He seems to me equal to gods that man whoever he is who opposite you sits and listens close to your sweet speaking and lovely laughing-oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking is left in me no: tongue breaks and thin fire is racing under skin and in eyes no sight and drumming fills ears and cold sweat holds me and shaking grips me all, greener than grass I am and dead-or almost I seem to me. But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty