Sappho poet. Ancient Greek poetess celebrating lesbianism

Sappho(Sappho of Mytilene around 630 BC, Lesbos - 572/570 BC) - ancient Greek poetess, representative of monodic melika (song lyrics). Contemporaries called her “passionate.”

Biography
The original Aeolian name of Sappho is Psappha (“clear”, “bright”). The poetess called herself a servant of the muses, and her contemporaries called her the tenth muse. Sappho stood at the head of a secret community of ladies, which was dedicated to the muses and Aphrodite. She called the house where the community meetings took place “the house of the servants of the muses,” a house of light and joy. It is also known that travelers have always flocked here to the island of Lesbos in search of healing, consolation and inspiration.
Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos, located in the Aegean Sea near the coast of Asia Minor at the beginning of the 6th century BC. e. Little is known about the life of this woman, whose name, like her name home island, has become a symbol of women’s love for each other. It is known that she married a successful merchant named Sercolas, with whom she gave birth to a daughter named Cleis; it is also known that she took part in the uprising against the tyrant Pittacia and was exiled for this to the island of Sicily, where she lived for some time. Most likely she lived most of her life on the island of Lesvos.
As is commonly believed, in the 6th century BC. e. in Lesvos, women from well-born families organized informal communities where they composed and recited poetic works. Sappho was the leader of one of these communities - a kind of ancient bohemian salon - and was the idol of admiring female fans; some traveled here from distant countries in order to listen to her. She wrote poetry in the Aeolian dialect, using various poetic rhythms, one of which, Sapphic, is directly named after her. Sappho's lyrics, simple and passionate, are rather closer to folk epic than to literature in its pure form. Its themes are love and hate, tender communication between friends, girlish beauty. The names of her most beloved friends - Attis, Anactoria, Gongilia, Mnasadika - live for centuries.
Although not a single one of her poems has survived to this day in its entirety, we can enjoy their wonderful fragments, the longest of which is only twenty-eight stanzas. She was highly respected among the poets of the ancient world. Plato called her the tenth muse; her works had a great influence on such poets Ancient Rome, like Catullus and Ovid. Evidence of her commitment to lesbian love is almost impossible to find in the fragments of her poems that have come down to us; ancient authors, who could form a much more complete impression of her work, gave such a description of her image, which, according to modern ideas, can safely be considered lesbian. Maximus of Tire, for example, compared her relationships with girls to Socrates' homosexual relationships with his students.
By the 9th century AD, one can only find quotations from Sappho given by other authors. The very name of Sappho and the cause she served did not dissolve in the darkness of centuries. She was the bane of homophobes. Just a generation after her death, the Greek poet Anacreon wrote that an evil was spreading from the island of Lesbos that must be eradicated - what he considered abnormal intimate relationships between women. One of the most famous literary hoaxes of the 19th century was the book "Songs of Bilithia" - a collection of erotic poems about lesbian love written by Pierre Louis, at one time considered a translation from ancient Greek works Sappho. This work, even after it became known that it was a literary hoax, was taken very seriously by a generation of women who were just beginning to recognize themselves as lesbians. With her lover Renee Vivien, she went to the island of Lesbos in the hope of founding a school of poetry there, taking the tradition of Sappho as a basis. In the 50s of our century, American lesbians, looking for a name for their nascent organization, named their society “Daughters of Bilithia” in honor of one of the most famous followers of Sappho. In 1972, a book was published that can be called a pioneer in the movement for lesbian rights. It was written by Sidney Abbott and Bernice Love, and it's called Sappho Was real woman"It can be argued that Sappho stands at the origins of an extremely long genealogy - her presence throughout the entire 2500 years, right up to the present day, has mysteriously influenced poetic souls. We can say that the story of lesbian love began with her.

Family
The Oxyrhynchus Papyrus (circa 200 AD) and the Suda agree that Sappho's mother was named Kleis and that she had a daughter who bore the same name. The papyrus line reads: " She [Sappho] had a daughter, Kleis, whom she named after her mother" Kleis is mentioned in two surviving fragments of Sappho's poems. In fragment 98, Sappho addresses Kleis, saying that he cannot get her a decorated hair ribbon. In the 132nd fragment, Kleis is named by the Greek word pais (“child”), which can also mean a slave or any young girl like a child. It is possible that these lines, or others similar to them, were misunderstood by ancient writers, resulting in an erroneous biographical tradition that has survived to this day.
In fragment 102, the lyrical heroine addresses her “dear mother,” from which it is sometimes concluded that Sappho began writing poetry when her mother was still alive. According to the majority historical sources, Sappho's father's name was Scamandronimus; he is not mentioned in any of the surviving fragments. It was written about Sappho that she had three brothers: Erigius, Laricus and Charax. The Oxyrhynchus papyrus says that Charax was the eldest, but Sappho liked the younger Laricus more. Athenaeus wrote that Sappho praised Laricus for pouring wine in the administration building of Mytilene, an institution in which young men from the best families served. This evidence that Sappho was born into an aristocratic family is consistent with the elegant setting in which some of her poems are set.

Exile
Sappho's life was a period of political unrest in Lesbos and the rise of Pittacus. According to the Parian Chronicle, Sappho was exiled to Sicily between 604 and 594; Cicero notes that her statue stood in the administration building of Syracuse. Unlike the poems of her friend Alcaeus, Sappho's surviving works contain few allusions to political conditions. The main exception is fragment 98, which mentions exile and shows that Sappho lacked some of the luxuries she was accustomed to. Her political sympathies may have belonged to the Alcaeus party. Although there is no clear evidence for this, it is generally assumed that Sappho returned from exile at some point and spent most of her life on Lesvos.

Creation
Sappho's lyrics are based on traditional folkloric elements; here the motives of love and separation prevail, the action takes place against the backdrop of bright and joyful nature, the murmuring of streams, the smoking of incense in sacred grove goddesses. Traditional forms of cult folklore are filled with personal experiences in Sappho; The main advantage of her poems is considered to be intense passion, naked feeling, expressed with extreme simplicity and brightness. Love in Sappho’s perception is a terrible elemental force, “a bittersweet monster from which there is no protection.” Sappho strives to convey his understanding through a synthesis of internal sensation and concrete sensory perception.
Such emotions could not originate only in tradition. There are known cases in Sappho’s life that had a direct impact on the emotional structure of her work. Apuleius tells the story of how Sappho’s brother Charax, who was engaged in the wine trade, fell in love with the “beautiful courtesan” Rhodope on one of his trips to Egypt. When he bought her from her previous owner for a huge sum and brought her to Lesbos, Sappho herself lost her head from feelings for the Rhodope; the brother, having discovered this, did not find anything better than to leave home along with his “acquisition.” Along with poems intended for performance in fias, fragments from Sappho have also been preserved, intended for wide audience; for example, epithalamies, traditional wedding songs that depicted the bride’s farewell to her maidenhood, intended to be performed by a choir of boys and girls before entering the nuptial chamber. These poems were distinguished not so much by passion as by naivety and simplicity of tone. Sappho's hymns were not related to the cult and were subjective in nature; they were called invocations, since each one was addressed to some deity.
Sappho's poetry was dedicated to love and beauty: the beauty of the body, girls and ephebes who solemnly competed with her at the temple of Hera on Lesbos; love, abstracted from the coarseness of the physiological impulse to the cult of feeling.

Sexuality and poetry circle
The center of Sappho's poetry is love and passion for different characters both sexes. The word "lesbian" comes from the name of her home island of Lesbos, both of which came into use to refer to female homosexuality only in the 19th century. The lyrical heroines of many of her poems speak of passionate infatuation or love for various women, but descriptions of bodily contact between women are rare and controversial. It is unknown whether these poems were autobiographical, although references to other areas of Sappho's life are found in her works, and poetic expression of these intimate experiences would have suited her style. Her homoeroticism must be understood in the context of the seventh century BC. The poems of Alcaeus, and later Pindar, describe similar romantic bonds between members of a certain circle.
Alcaeus, a contemporary of Sappho, spoke of her like this: “ With violet curls, pure, tenderly smiling Sappho" In the Victorian era, it was fashionable to describe Sappho as the headmistress of the boarding house. noble maidens. As Page DuBois points out, this attempt to make Sappho understandable and acceptable to British high society was based more on conservative sentiments than on historical facts. In the scanty collection of Sappho's surviving poems, teaching, students, schools, or teachers are never mentioned. Burnett, like other scholars, believes that Sappho's circle was in some ways similar to Spartan military boys' camps or sacred religious groups, but Burnett qualifies his argument by noting that Sappho's circle was different from these contemporary examples because "the participation it appears to have been voluntary, irregular, and to some extent multinational.” However, the idea remains that Sappho ran some kind of school.
Legends about Sappho
In ancient times, there were many legends about the relationship of the poetess to her chosen ones and friends. Such legends began with representatives of Attic comedy. They, not fully understanding the meaning of Sappho's poetry, and referring to the cultural development of the Aeolian woman of the early 6th century. BC e. from the point of view of contemporary Athenian reality, some information about the life of Sappho was misinterpreted. Such legends include love for the young man Phaon, who refused the poetess reciprocity, which is why she allegedly threw herself into the sea from the Leucadian rock in Acarnania. Also, along with Phaon and Alcaeus, Sappho’s chosen ones included Anacreon, who lived 60 years later than her, and Archilochus and Hipponactus, separated from each other by an interval of 150 years.
Already in ancient times, there were many controversial opinions regarding Sappho’s relationship with women. The modern concept of “lesbian love” and the word “lesbian” itself, meaning a homosexual woman, is in origin associated with Sappho and her circle. Sappho's friends and students exchanged poems, which were primarily associated with ancient cults of femininity, etc.; on the basis of lesbian freedom of feeling and action, this “female” poetry naturally acquired frank content.
19th century critics explained the passion of Sappho's poetic feeling for women partly as a feature artistic techniques, partly by the fact of the “normality” of such relationships in the socio-cultural tradition of the society of that time. Similar relationships women to women, on the basis of friendship or sublime love for antiquity were as normal as the relations that existed among the Spartan ephebes or between Socrates and his students.
From the surviving fragments it also appears that Sappho's jealousy of her rivals, Iorgo and Andromeda, was caused more by a sense of competition based on poetic and musical art between fias. One way or another, Sappho enjoyed the respect and veneration of Alcaeus, Solon, then Plato, then Horace and many prominent people of antiquity; it is known that the Mytilenians placed her images on their coins. Many of Sappho's poems create her image as a wonderful mother and wife.

SAPFO(Sappho of Mytilene, Sappho) is an ancient Greek lyric poetess, the first in the history of literature to glorify sensual love between women.

Her biographical data is contradictory and controversial, as it should be for a half-legend, half-human. Thus, according to legend, Sappho, the daughter of the aristocrat Scamandronimus, who was engaged in trade, and Kleisa, was born in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea between 630 and 620 BC. At the age of six, the girl was orphaned, which is why, according to some sources, her mother had to send her to a hetaera school, where she was taught singing and dancing. Already at school, Sappho felt a calling to poetry: Greek culture of that time was the culture of the sounding word, rhymed lines were not written for dry scrolls, but were passed on from mouth to mouth and composed by ear, and the girl’s ear was absolute. Already at a young age, Sappho wrote odes, hymns, elegies, holiday and drinking songs. According to contemporaries, Sappho was short, very dark, with lively, sparkling eyes and long dark curls along her cheeks.

At about the age of 17, the entire Sappho family with his brothers - Charax, Larich and Eurygos - had to flee the island to Sicily, as unrest began against the tyrant Pittacia and wealthy aristocrats. Only in 595, when Sappho was over thirty, was she able to return to Lesbos and continue to settle in the city of Mytilene.

According to legend, then the poet Alcaeus became interested in her, but the relationship did not develop into strong feeling. Soon Sappho married Kerkil (Serkolas) and gave birth to a daughter, Kleisa (Kleis), to whom she dedicated a series of poems. But fate was cruel to her: for unknown reasons, both Sappho’s husband and child did not live long. Trying to drown out her grief, the poetess devoted herself entirely to chanting lesbian girls and women - their beauty, tenderness, ability to empathize, sympathize, give and surrender. Even then, the attraction of women to women was in the “customs and mores” of a number of Greek cities (for example, in Sparta), but it was especially widespread on the island of Lesbos. According to Lucian ( Dialogues), Sappho “didn’t invent anything”, but only became a bright exponent of such passion.

Social status The inhabitants of the island of Lesbos - as well as some other Dorian-Aeolian parts of Greece - were distinguished by greater freedom than among the Ionians. They were not recluses. Some of the family property in this region, according to tradition, could be passed down through the female line. As remnants of primitive gender and age associations, in the 7th–6th centuries. closed communities of men and women remained on the island, spending most of their lives together, outside the family.

Sappho stood at the head of one of these communities - the School of Rhetoric, dedicated to Aphrodite, whose students were young noble girls. Sappho taught them music, dancing and poetry in the Aeolian dialect. Sappho herself called the room where the women met “the house of the servants of the Muses.” Sappho's friends and students constantly exchanged folded poetic lines, thematically related to the rituals of female cults. Dating, weddings, communication between friends, mutual female attractions and hobbies, rivalry, jealousy, separation - all this found its place in the lyrics of Sappho and her students. Close to folklore works, Sappho’s lyrics rarely went beyond purely female experiences, but these experiences were expressed by the poetess with extreme simplicity and brightness. The main advantage of Sappho's poems was their intense passion, naked feeling.

Such emotions were fueled not only by tradition or platonic attractions. The Roman writer Apuleius (b. c. 125 AD), who lived centuries after Sappho, told the legend that Sappho's brother Charax, who was engaged in the wine trade, fell in love with the beautiful courtesan Rhodope, who lived in Egypt. When he bought her from her previous owner for a huge sum and brought her to the island of Lesbos, Sappho herself became inflamed with a passion for the Rhodope. Noticing his sister’s harassment of the young beauty, the enraged brother was forced to leave home along with his charming “acquisition.” “I loved, I called many in despair to my lonely bed,” wrote Sappho, comprehending another fiasco, in a poem To my mistress. – I spoke in the language of true passion... And let them dishonor me for throwing my heart into the abyss of pleasures, but, according to at least, I learned the divine secrets of life! My eyes are blinded brilliant light, we saw the emerging dawn of divine love!

With a lyre in her hands, Sappho recited her hot stanzas, and her students wrote them down. Her calls for love and passionate confessions that reached her descendants influenced the work of Socrates, who called her his “mentor” in matters of love, Plato, who called her the “tenth muse,” Horace and Catullus. The outstanding historian of antiquity, as well as Strabo, called her a “miracle” and argued that “it is in vain to look in the entire course of history for a woman who in poetry could bear even an approximate comparison with Sappho.”

In addition to love lyrics, Sappho was known for her epithalamiums - wedding songs that depicted the bride’s farewell to her girlhood, competitions between a choir of boys and a choir of girls, songs and jokes before the nuptial rest. In style, Sappho's epithalamies are reminiscent of folk wedding songs and are richly colored with comparisons of folklore type.

Of Sappho’s entire body of work, only a few complete poems and many fragments have survived, however, the poetess gave the history of literature a special type of alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, called the “sapphic line”:

Glorious Aphrodite with a motley throne,

Zeus's daughter, skilled in cunning forges,

I beg you: don't make me heartbroken

Good hearts!

In Russian, the works of Sappho are presented most fully in the translations of the Russian writer V.V. Veresaev. His bright, poetic translations from ancient Greek, while maintaining the size of the original, are provided with detailed comments, the scientific significance of which has not become outdated. Of the lines of Sappho that have survived time, her aphorism is especially famous: “If death were a blessing, the gods would not be immortal.”

According to legend, Sappho committed suicide around 572 BC by throwing herself into the sea from a cliff on the island of Leucadia - such acts were considered ritual and were practiced as part of the cult of Apollo. According to this legend, at the end of her life, Sappho again became infatuated with a man - the young Greek Phaon, who was transporting passengers from Lesbos to the Asian coast. Not finding reciprocity, she went to where those suffering from mad love found oblivion forever.

Since the time of Sappho, alternative forms of female eroticism to heterosexual ones have come to be called “lesbian.” In the theory of radical feminism, lesbian love is interpreted as self-sufficient, independent and independent, not requiring heterosexual technologies; in ordinary consciousness, love, glorified by Sappho and her followers, refers to a substitute type of erotic female impulse that appears in the absence of “normal” sexuality and masculine.

Natalia Pushkareva

You can often hear that everything genius poets men. If we take centuries not so distant from us, then perhaps this is so. And the explanation for this is simple - women did not have access to education and did not have the opportunity to reveal their talents.

“By naming only nine muses, we offend Sappho.
Shouldn’t we honor the tenth muse in her?”
(Plato “To Sappho” - translation by O. B. Rumer).

However, in centuries where women had such an opportunity, there were talented poetesses. And, probably, the brightest of them is Sappho or Sappho. She is recognized as a genius and called the “queen of poets.”

It is believed that it was Sappho who, as it were, oriented all subsequent poetry, outlined its possibilities and indicated the path of development. So, it’s probably not for nothing that Plato called her the “tenth muse.” And Strabo called Sappho a miracle and was sure that “it is in vain to look in history for a woman who in poetry could withstand at least an approximate comparison with Sappho.”

And at the same time, it is difficult for us to judge creativity, since only a few of her poems, fragments, single lines have reached us. So we have to rely on the statements of her contemporaries and those who lived in times close to her, when there were still sufficient originals of her creations.

It is believed that the work of Sappho had a great influence on such famous poets Ancient Rome, like Catullus and Horace. Socrates called her his “mentor in matters of love,” meaning love lyrics poetesses. Ovid echoed him, exclaiming: “Sappho ignites in me love for my friend!” And he urged: “Memorize Sappho, what could be more passionate than her!”

We also know little about the life of Sappho. It is known for certain that this ancient Greek poetess lived on the island of Lesbos. For a long time she headed a school for noble girls, teaching them music, poetry and dancing.

The main theme of Sappho's lyrics was beauty. But it is from the surviving fragments of her lyrics and some other sources that information about Sappho’s life is drawn. Most of of which looks like speculation.

Even the dates of her birth and departure are very arbitrary - 630/612 - 572/570 BC. e. It is believed that she was born around 620 or a little later.

For example, Eusebius of Caesarea writes that Sappho was already a famous poetess by the first or second year of the 45th or 46th Olympiad (between 600 and 594 BC).

According to some assumptions, Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos, according to others she got there later, and the place of her birth was either in Mytilene or Eres. His father, Sappho, whose name was Scamandronim, belonged to a noble aristocratic family, but at the same time he was engaged in trade, or, as they would say now, business and made a considerable fortune.

Sappho's mother's name was Kleis. In addition to her, there were three more brothers in the family: Erigius (or Eurigius), Laricus and Charax. One of the papyrus that has survived to this day says that Sappho’s older brother’s name was Charax, but she loved her younger brother Laricus most of all.

Judging by the description of the situation in the surviving fragments of poetry, the family lived richly. The younger brother served in the Mytilene administration building, where young people only from the most noble families were given the honor of serving.

Nothing is known about Sappho's mother except her name. But Sappho began writing poetry very early, during her mother’s life, since in some fragments she addresses her directly. For example, in fragment 102 there is an appeal to “dear mother.” There is a version that Sappho was orphaned early and her relatives sent her to a hetaera school. But in this case, she is most likely confused with another Sappho - the courtesan Sappho of Ephesus, who lived much later and had nothing to do with the poetess Sappho.

In the middle of the 7th century. BC e. In Mytilene, royal power was abolished, and management of the city passed to the oligarchy of the royal family of the Penfilids. But as a result of the conspiracy, the Penfelides were overthrown, and a struggle for power broke out between the aristocratic families. In 618 BC. e. Melanhra, whom the ancients called the first tyrant in history, managed to seize power in the city.

But soon he was killed, and a new tyrant of Mytilene appeared - Mirsil, who intended to get rid of all representatives of the old nobility. Among them was the Sappho family. Her parents were no longer alive, and seventeen-year-old Sappho and her brothers left the island in a hurry. This was approximately, according to historians, between 612 and 618 BC. e.

And until the death of Mirsil between 595 and 579 BC. e Sappho was in exile in Syracuse on the island of Sicily.

Returning to Lesbos, she settled in the city of Mytilene. Therefore, she was sometimes called in various written sources Sappho of Mytilene.

The social status of women on the island of Lesbos was almost equal to that of men, unlike other areas Ancient Greece. Part of the family property was passed down through the female line.

Soon Safo married the rich Andrian Kerkilas and the couple had a daughter. In the Oxyrhynchus papyrus it is written that the poetess named the girl in honor of her mother Kleis.

Apparently, Sappho’s love for the child was limitless. She dedicated a whole series of poems to her daughter. In one of the surviving fragments there are the following lines: “I have a beautiful child, like golden flowers, my dear Kleis, whom I would not give for all of Lydia...”. In another fragment, the poetess writes about red sandals for her daughter.

But, alas, Sappho’s husband and child soon died. The reasons and circumstances have not been preserved in history.

ABOUT appearance Sappho also preserved conflicting information. Someone writes that she had extraordinary beauty, her Blue eyes enchanted, and golden hair rivaled the rays of the sun in its brilliance.

Alcaeus, a contemporary of Sappho, wrote: “With violet curls, pure, tenderly smiling Sappho.” Others claim that she was dark-skinned, dark-haired and short in stature. Thus, the 3rd century philosopher Maximus of Tire called Sappho “swarthy and short.” Both descriptions converge before the eyes of the interlocutor.

Antonio Canova (1757-1822)

Contemporaries called Sappho passionate. Sappho understood love as an element - “a bittersweet monster from which there is no protection.” This is exactly how she conveyed it in her poems.

Sappho founded a school of rhetoric and poetry - “House of Muses”, in which she taught poetry and music to girls. Unfortunately, none of her students reached the heights of their teacher.

We often hear about the poetess’s lesbian love for her friends and students. But who knows, it is quite possible that for the most part these are inventions of envious people and bigots of subsequent centuries. It is known that the cult of Aphrodite and femininity flourished on the island, so it is not surprising that the friends exchanged tender lyrical messages.

Apuleius tells the story he heard that Sappho fell in love with the wife of her brother Charax Rhodope, a beautiful slave whom he bought from her former owners in Egypt and brought to Lesbos. It’s as if Sappho lost her head with love to such an extent that she lost control of her emotions, and her brother was forced to leave with Rhodope.

The myth also says that Phaon once transported Aphrodite herself in his boat, and she gave him a gift in gratitude, thanks to which all women fell in love with him.

Historians, relying on surviving fragments of Sappho’s poems, believe that she lived to a ripe old age.

But the main asset, of course, is Sappho’s lyrics, her ability to convey charm surrounding nature and people's feelings. Her own “I” sounding in the lines is striking in its openness and passion.

In addition, Sappho’s merits include the fact that she introduced several rhythmic patterns into versification. Some of them are named after her - the Greater and Lesser Sapphic stanzas.

He was the first to use the Lesser Sophia stanza in Latin Catullus, and then Horace.

According to Sappho's contemporaries, she also invented a plectron - a stick with which the sound of a stringed instrument was produced.

Solon, having once heard one of Sappho’s poems, asked his grandson to read it until he knew it by heart, saying that “I would not want to die without knowing it by heart.”

The image of the poetess on Mytilene coins has been preserved, as well as marble and clay copies of the famous statue of Sappho, sculpted by Silanion.

It is a pity, of course, that so few works of the great poetess have reached us. But if you wish, you can close your eyes and imagine Sappho with a lyre in her hands reading her poems.

To Aphrodite

But come to me as often before
You responded to my distant call
And the palace, leaving her father, rose
To the chariot

Golden. I rushed you from the sky
There is a flock of small sparrows above the ground;
The swift wings of the birds fluttered
In the distance of the ether,

And, appearing with a smile on the eternal face,
You, blessed one, asked me,
What is my sadness and why the goddess
I urge

And what do I want for a troubled soul?
"In whom Peyto owes, tell me lovingly
Kindle the spirit for you? I neglected you
Who, my Sappho?

He runs away and starts chasing you.
He does not take gifts - he hastens with gifts,
There is no love for you - and love will flare up,
Whether he wants or not.

Oh, come to me now from the bitter
Deliver the spirit of sorrow and, so passionately
I want, accomplish and be a faithful ally
Be me, goddess.
(Translation by V.V. Veresaev)

Ancient Greek poetess, representative of melic lyricism. Contemporaries called her “passionate.”

Biographical information about Sappho is scarce and contradictory. Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos. Her father Scamandronimus was a "new" aristocrat, being a representative noble family he was engaged in trade. Her mother's name was Cleida. In addition to Sappho, they had three sons. At the age of six, the girl was orphaned and her relatives sent her to a heter school. Sappho's sense of words and rhythm was revealed in early age, already at the school of hetaeras she wrote odes, hymns, elegies, holiday and drinking songs.

In the middle of the 7th century. BC e. abolition takes place in Mytilene royal power, whose place was taken by the oligarchy of the royal family of the Penfilids. Soon the power of the Penfelides fell as a result of a conspiracy, and a struggle for primacy broke out between the leading aristocratic families. In 618 BC. e. power in the city was seized by a certain Melancher, whom ancient authors call the first tyrant of Mytilene. Soon Melancher, through the combined efforts of the poet Alcaeus, his brothers and the future tyrant of Mytilene Pittacus, was overthrown and killed. A certain Myrsil became the tyrant of Mytilene, whose policy was directed against certain representatives of the old Mytilene nobility, and many aristocrats, including the Sappho family, were forced to flee the city (between 612 and 618 BC). Sappho was in exile in Syracuse on the island of Sicily until the death of Myrsila (between 595 and 579 BC), when she was able to return to her homeland.

She settled in the city of Mytilene, which is why they later began to call her Sappho of Mytilene. According to legend, Alcaeus became interested in her at this time. And even fragments of their lyrics are combined into a poetic dialogue as proof of this, but this was impossible - Alcaeus and Sappho are representatives different generations. There is another legend about the poetess - that she fell in love with the sailor Phaon, who despised women and was only interested in the sea. Every day he sailed away on a boat, and according to legend, Sappho waited for his return on a rock. One day Phaon did not return, and she threw herself into the water. This legend is an interweaving of the myth about the sea deity of the island of Lesvos, Phaon, who once transported Aphrodite, and she gave him a special potion, thanks to which all the women who saw him fell in love. This myth was beautifully intertwined with the famous poetess Sappho, and thus this legend arose.

Sappho married the wealthy Andrian Kerkylas; she had a daughter (named after Sappho's mother, Kleis, or Cleis), to whom Sappho dedicated a cycle of poems. Both Sappho's husband and child did not live long.

Social status of women on the island. Lesbos (and Aeolis in general) was distinguished by greater freedom than in other areas of the Greek world. Women in social activity here had almost no restrictions; part of the family property, for example, could be transferred through the female line; Along with the male heterias, the fias (fias, Greek thiasos - “meeting, procession”), similar to the commonwealth of women, were preserved on the island. Sappho headed such a fias - a cult association dedicated to Aphrodite, one of whose tasks was to prepare noble girls for marriage. As part of the fias program, Sappho taught girls music, dancing, and poetry.

Chronology

Strabo reports that Sappho was a contemporary of Alcaeus of Mytilene (born about 620 BC) and Pittacus (about 645 - 570 BC); according to Athenaeus, she was a contemporary of King Alyattes (c. 610-560 BC). Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, dates her to the 42nd Olympiad (612/608 BC), having in It means either that she was born at this time, or that these were the years of her activity. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, she was known by the first or second year of the 45th or 46th Olympiad (between 600 and 594 BC). Summarizing these sources, we can say that she was most likely born around 620. BC e., or a little earlier.

According to the Parian Chronicle, she was exiled from Lesbos to Sicily between 604 and 594. BC e. If we consider the 98th fragment of her poems as biographical evidence and attribute it to her own daughter(see below), this may mean that she already had a daughter by the time she was banished. If we consider the 58th fragment autobiographical, then she lived to old age. If we consider her acquaintance with the Rhodopes to be historically reliable (see below), this means that she lived in the middle of the 6th century. BC e.

Family

The Oxyrhynchus Papyrus (circa 200 AD) and the Suda agree that Sappho's mother was named Kleis and that she had a daughter who bore the same name. A line of papyrus reads: “She [Sappho] had a daughter, Kleis, whom she named after her mother.” (Duban 1983, p. 121) Kleis is mentioned in two surviving fragments of Sappho's poems. In Fragment 98, Sappho addresses Cleis, saying that he cannot get her a decorated hair ribbon. The one hundred and thirty-second fragment reads in full as follows: “I have a beautiful child, like golden flowers, my dear Kleis, whom I would not (give) for all Lydia or dear...” These fragments are often interpreted as referring to Sappho’s daughter or confirming, that Sappho had a daughter named Kleis. But even if we accept the biographical reading of the poem, this is not necessarily the case. In fragment 132, Kleis is called by the Greek word pais ("child"), which can also mean a slave or any young girl as a child. It is possible that these lines, or others similar to them, were misunderstood by ancient writers, resulting in an erroneous biographical tradition that has survived to this day.

In the 102nd fragment, the lyrical heroine addresses her “dear mother,” from which it is sometimes concluded that Sappho began writing poetry when her mother was still alive. According to most historical sources, Sappho's father's name was Scamandronimus; he is not mentioned in any of the surviving fragments. In Ovid's Heroides, Sappho mourns him with these words: “Six of my birthdays passed when the bones of my parent, collected from the funeral pyre, drank up my tears before their time.” Perhaps Ovid wrote these lines based on a poem by Sappho that has not survived to this day.

It was written about Sappho that she had three brothers: Erigius (or Eurigius), Laricus and Charax. The Oxyrhynchus papyrus says that Charax was the eldest, but Sappho liked the younger Laricus more. Athenaeus wrote that Sappho praised Laricus for pouring wine in the administration building of Mytilene, an institution in which young men from the best families served. This evidence that Sappho was born into an aristocratic family is consistent with the elegant setting in which some of her poems are set.

Herodotus, and later Strabo, Athenaeus, Ovid and Suda, tell the story of the relationship between Charax and the Egyptian courtesan Rhodope. Herodotus, the oldest source mentioning this story, reports that Charax redeemed the Rhodopes from slavery for a large amount, and after he returned with her to Mytilene, Sappho criticized him in poetry. Strabo, who lived 400 years later, adds that Charax traded in Lesbian wine, and Sappho called the Rhodope "Doricha". Athenaeus, another 200 years later, calls the courtesan Doricha, and states that Herodotus confused her with Rhodope, a completely different woman. He also quotes an epigram from Poseidippus (3rd century BC) which refers to Dorica and Sappho. Based on these stories, scholars have suggested that Doricha may be mentioned in Sappho's poems. None of the surviving fragments contain this name in full, but fragments 7 and 15 are often thought to contain a fragment of the word "Doricha". Modern researcher Joel Lidov has criticized this assumption, arguing that the tradition of Dorich will not help restore any fragments of Sappho's poems and that it originated from the works of Cratinus or another comedian who lived at the same time as Herodotus.

Suda is the only source that states that Sappho was married to "a very rich merchant named Kerkylas, who lived in Andria" and that he was Kleis' father. This legend may have been a joke invented by comic poets, since the name of the supposed husband literally means "member from the district of men."

Exile

Sappho's life was a period of political unrest in Lesbos and the rise of Pittacus. According to the Parian Chronicle, Sappho was exiled to Sicily between 604 and 594; Cicero notes that her statue stood in the Syracuse administration building. Unlike the poems of her friend Alcaeus, Sappho's surviving works contain almost no allusions to political conditions. The main exception is fragment 98, which mentions exile and shows that Sappho lacked some of the luxuries she was accustomed to. Her political sympathies may have belonged to the Alcaeus party. Although there is no clear evidence for this, it is generally assumed that Sappho returned from exile at some point and spent most of her life on Lesbos.

The Legend of Phaon

Tradition, going back at least to the works of Menander (fragment 258 K), suggests that Sappho committed suicide by throwing herself off the Leucadian cliffs out of unrequited love for the ferryman Phaon. Modern scholars consider this story to be apocryphal, perhaps invented by comic poets or based on a misreading of a first-person narrative in a non-biographical poem. In part, this legend may have arisen from a desire to prove that Sappho was heterosexual.

Creation

Sappho's lyrics are based on traditional folkloric elements; here the motives of love and separation prevail, the action takes place against the backdrop of a bright and joyful nature, the murmuring of streams, the smoking of incense in the sacred grove of the goddess. Traditional forms of cult folklore are filled with personal experiences in Sappho; The main advantage of her poems is considered to be intense passion, naked feeling, expressed with extreme simplicity and brightness. Love in the perception of Sappho is a terrible elemental force, “a bittersweet monster from which there is no protection.” Sappho seeks to convey her understanding by a synthesis of internal sensation and concrete sensory perception (fire under the skin, ringing in the ears, etc.).

Naturally, such emotions could not originate only in tradition. There are known cases in Sappho’s life that may have had a direct impact on the emotional structure of her work. Eg. Apuleius tells the story of how Sappho’s brother Charax, who was engaged in the wine trade, fell in love with the “beautiful courtesan” Rhodope on one of his trips to Egypt. When he bought her from her previous owner for a huge sum and brought her to Lesbos, Sappho herself lost her head from feelings for the Rhodope; the brother, having discovered this, did not find anything better than to leave home along with his “acquisition.”

Along with poems intended for performance in fias, fragments from Sappho have also been preserved intended for a wide audience; eg epithalamiums, traditional wedding songs depicting the bride's farewell to her girlhood, intended to be performed by a choir of boys and girls before entering the marriage chamber. These poems were distinguished not so much by passion as by naivety and simplicity of tone. “Eternal” motifs of poetry of this kind - the nightingale, roses, Charitas, Eros, Peito, spring - are constantly present in the surviving fragments of Sappho’s poems. Sappho attaches particular importance to the rose; in the “Wreath of Meleager” this flower is dedicated to her.

Sappho's hymns apparently had no relation to the cult and were of a subjective nature; they were called invocations (κλητικοί), since each was addressed to some deity.

Finally, elegies and epigrams are attributed to Sappho.

“Sappho’s poetry was dedicated to love and beauty: the beauty of the body, girls and ephebes who solemnly competed with her at the temple of Hera on Lesbos; love, abstracted from the coarseness of the physiological impulse to the cult of feeling, built on issues of marriage and sex, tempering passion with the demands of aesthetics, causing an analysis of affect and the virtuosity of its poetic, conventional expression. From Sappho the way to Socrates: it was not for nothing that he called her his mentor in matters of love” (Academician A. N. Veselovsky).

Sexuality and poetry circle

The center of Sappho's poetry is love and passion for different characters of both sexes. The word "lesbian" comes from the name of her home island of Lesbos, and in English language the word “sapphic” derived from her name is also used; both of these words began to be used to refer to female homosexuality only in the 19th century. The lyrical heroines of many of her poems speak of passionate infatuation or love (sometimes mutual, sometimes not) for various women, but descriptions of bodily contact between women are rare and controversial. It is unknown whether these poems were autobiographical, although references to other areas of Sappho's life are found in her works, and poetic expression of these intimate experiences would have been consistent with her style. Her homoeroticism must be understood in the context of the seventh century BC. The poems of Alcaeus, and later Pindar, describe similar romantic bonds between members of a certain circle.

Alcaeus, a contemporary of Sappho, spoke of her like this: “With violet curls, pure, tenderly smiling Sappho” (ἰόπλοκ᾽ ἄγνα μελλιχόμειδε Σάπφοι, fragment 384). The third-century philosopher Maximus of Tyre wrote that Sappho was “dark and short” and that in her relationships with her friends she was like Socrates: “How else can we call the love of this lesbian woman if not the art of love of Socrates? After all, it seems to me that they understood love in their own way: she loved women, he loved men. After all, they, as they say, loved many, and were passionate about everything beautiful. What Alcibiades, Charmides and Phaedrus were for him, so were Girinna, Attida and Anactoria for her...”

In the Victorian era, it was fashionable to describe Sappho as the headmistress of a boarding school for noble maidens. As Page DuBois (and many other experts) have pointed out, this attempt to make Sappho understandable and acceptable to British high society was based more on conservative sentiment than on historical fact. In the scanty collection of Sappho's surviving poems, teaching, students, schools, or teachers are never mentioned. Burnett, as well as other scholars, including S. M. Bour, believe that Sappho's circle was in some ways similar to Spartan military boys' camps (agelai) or sacred religious groups (thiasos), but Burnett qualifies his argument by noting, that Sappho's circle was different from these contemporary examples because "participation in it appears to have been voluntary, irregular, and to some extent multinational." However, the idea remains that Sappho ran some kind of school.