~by David Aiken~
 | |
| Sappho |
Below are
two different renderings of the poem that interest us.
(#1), Loneliness
Set
are the Pleiades; the Moon is down
And midnight dark on high.
The hours, the hours, drift by,
And here I lie,
Alone
And midnight dark on high.
The hours, the hours, drift by,
And here I lie,
Alone
(#2),
Untitled
The sinking moon has left the sky,
The Pleiades have also gone.
Midnight comes—and goes, the hours fly
And solitary still, I lie.
§ Hephaestion. Our
poem-of-interest is not formally attributed to Sappho in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), which
is the digital library for Greek
literature. Rather, it is recorded for posterity only in Hephaestion’s
textbook, which is called Enchiridion de
metris (A Handbook on Meter). In
context, Hephaestion selected these lines to illustrate a certain Greek
metrical usage called ‘Greater Ionic’, or ionic a maiore. But
our education becomes a shade more well-rounded by consulting an online-source that informs us that in the world of prosody—which
is to say, of or pertaining to rhythm (stress) and sound (intonation) in
language, Greater Ionic uses a metrical foot consisting “of two long followed by two short syllables,” (— — ‿ ‿) while Lesser Ionic uses “two short followed by two long syllables.” (‿
‿
— —). Shorter is definitely better with this type
of education.
Studying Hephaestion’s
grammar of Greek meter in the day must certainly have been a riveting and
satisfying experience for young writers and scholars of that period. But, if truth be told: this
rigmarole about metrical feet and scansions is probably the real reason why the
poor girl of our poem was lamenting! Ennui by association!
Any informational digression on Hephaestion
at this point will not be a lengthy business, because nobody really seems to
know much of anything about this 2nd century AD Greek grammarian
from Alexandria. Wiki-sources inform us that Hephaestion plied his tortuous
trade ‘in the age of the Antonines’, by which historians of the Roman Empire
generally mean the period between 138 and 192 AD, which includes the rulers Antoninus
Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, and Commodus. This means that, against the
backdrop of imperial adoptions and wars and assassinations, Hephaestion’s
grammar students were busily packing up their verses laden with iambs and
trochees, and hoofing it hurriedly almost anywhere else. Hephaestion leaves
behind for posterity the following works:
·
Enchiridion de Metris
·
On Confusions in Poems
·
Poemata
·
Solutions in Tragedy
·
Solutions to Difficulties in
Comedy
 |
| Red Krater/Sappho |
§ Sappho. A
further digression at this point, concerning the poetess Sappho (ca. 630-570
BC), would also not be misplaced, because following the extremely scanty historical
evidence, but wanting nevertheless to comply with Hercule Poirot’s injunction to ‘chercher la femme’, it may
well turn out that this best-known of all Greek women poets has yet some connection with the text of our poem.
To
name ‘Sappho’ is already to say a mouthful, because the Sapphic worldview is a
full-blown, backward reaching, thoroughly sexualized thought-construct. Sappho
is, of course, from the Isle of Lesbos, from which we get the term lesbian. (This,
is an unbeatable starter for any conversation!) The urbanized definition of ‘Sapphic’ is that
it refers to “women who are sexually or romantically attracted to other women.
Applies to both lesbians and bisexual women, as it is only the same-sex
attraction that matters, not any other attractions the women may have.” So, it
goes without saying that any translator working with a poem or fragment
associated with the Sappho-poet already “knows” how the language and imagery of
the poem ought to be oriented.
 |
| Speakers of Aeolian Greek |
The
historical Sappho wrote lyric poetry, in an Aeolian Greek dialect (in yellow on
the map), around erotic themes. The information about dialect is significant
because it acts as a GPS localizer—Aeolian Greek was spoken primarily in Central Greece (Boeotia);
Thessaly; on the Isle of Lesbos in the Aegean; and in some Greek colonies
of Asia Minor.
According
to our wiki-source, Sappho’s poetry was known
and admired in antiquity, “and she was among the nine lyric
poets deemed major by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria,” which covers the
period approximately from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the
consolidation of the Roman Empire after 31 BC. Our source also informs us,
importantly, that so extremely little is known for certain about Sappho’s life,
that the authors of Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary even left “an entire page
for the entry on Sappho, deliberately… blank.”
According to another source, and attributed to the
classicist Judith P. Hallett from her reading of the Greek Anthology, it is claimed that Plato
called Sappho “the tenth Muse.” But this association is unverified and tenuous
in the highest. Be that as it may, historical evidence certainly indicates that
Sappho’s profile was stamped on coins, and that she was paid tribute through
civic statuary. Other traditions from antiquity render a more nuanced history
of Sappho, which includes mocking her obvious sexual predilection for women;
being caricatured by the writers of New Comedy (e.g., Menander); her supposed
suicide as a result of spurned love (per Ovid); and Christian moralists who,
quite predictably and copiously, moralized and anathematized her.
§ Expanded Poem_HEPHAESTION
Gramm. Enchiridion de metris {1402.001} Page 37 line 5 (TLG)—authorship unknown. [Phrontisterion
translation].
Selene is now diminished, along with Pleiades;
And (my) mid-night hours;
Youth, as well, is already on the Wing;
I, alone, remain lying here—still.
δέδυκε
μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ πληιάδες· μέσαι δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
(#1),
Loneliness
Set are the Pleiades; the
Moon is down
And midnight dark on high.
The hours, the hours, drift by,
And here I lie,
Alone
And midnight dark on high.
The hours, the hours, drift by,
And here I lie,
Alone
(#2),
The sinking moon has left the sky,
The
Pleiades have also gone.
Midnight
comes—and goes, the hours fly
And
solitary still, I lie.
Hephaestion the grammarian, who
brings this poem to the world, does not provide any formal attribution as to
the authorship of this poem that had recommended itself to his grammatical
sense by virtue of its metrical form. Also, this poem comes to us with no
title. So, because A Girl’s Lament is as orphaned as a text can possibly be, bereft of both a
demonstrated, historically defining framing context as well as of authorial
intent, that leaves the modern interpreter of this poem in a place of wonderful
existential autonomy—to create a new dialectic, a mixing of voices old and
voices young. This is one of Heidegger’s most important philo-poetic legacies—that
it is precisely in collaboration with such ancient texts that a new dialectical
Dwelling can be created for a contemporary world’s renewal of Thinking.
§ Bits and bobs in the world of words. The Greek structure of this poem is quite deliberate and clear,
which becomes especially evident in the following color-coding.
Selene is now diminished, along with Pleiades;
And (my) mid-night hours;
Youth, as well, is already on the Wing;
I, alone, remain lying here—still.
δέδυκε
μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ πληιάδες· μέσαι δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
[Deduke men a selanna kai plhiades; mesai de
(5)
nuktes, para d’erxeth’hora; egw
de mona katheudw.]
The μὲν [men]
in the first phrase introduces the contrast with everything that follows: the
καὶ [kai] that links Selene to
Pleiades; the δὲ [de] at the end of
(5); the first δὲ [de] in line 6; and
the final δὲ [de] after the ἐγὼ [egw] in the final clause. Which yields
the following structure: On the one hand, [Selene is now diminished, along with Pleiades], and [mid-night hours], and [life’s wending springtime or Youth on the
Wing], and [only me lying here—still], on the other
hand.
δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ
πληιάδες· μέσαι δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
A second observation about the structure of
this poem is the power of the verbs, and especially of the δέδυκε [deduke] that opens the poem. There are
three verbs in this short poem: δέδυκε opens the festivities, καθεύδω [katheudw] closes the games, and nestled
in-between is the emphatically split παρὰ δ’
ἔρχεθ’ [para d’erxeth’]. The verbal strong-man in
this cast of characters is δέδυκε (deduke = perfect, active, indicative, 3rd person singular
verb), which
casts its shadow to some degree over every noun in the entire poem. Selene (the
moon) is now diminished, as is Pleiades, my long mid-night hours, and Youth—all
of these nouns are riding on the coat-tails of δέδυκε, which carries with it the
sense of suns and moons and stars and seasons ‘setting’. The verb is in the
perfect tense, which is used to describe completed action with consequences
reaching into the present.
δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ πληιάδες· μέσαι δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
Much
of the intensity that emanates from this poem has to do with the dichotomy
between action and intimations of inaction, as indicated by the verbs, and which
is also clearly linked to the feminine character both of the author and of
Nature. Selene (f) and the Pleiades (f) are active players in the natural,
rhythmical cycles of the world, in the sense that they are now diminished—they
have arrived at the completion of their (re)productive phases. This is equally
so with the author’s mid-night hours (f),
and with Youth (f)—both also having run
their respective courses. The seasonal cycles of nature and aging are happening
all around our lamenting girl; but she (f) is
the only (μόνα - mona) natural element
in the poem that is (has been? is become?) inactive (lying indolent or still on
her bed), which seems to imply, of course, that her inactive womb has kept pace
with the seasonal decline that surrounds her. Spring, with all of its
potential, has come and gone; fall is now afoot; the earth is already preparing
for its deep winter sleep.
δέδυκε μὲν ἁ
σελάννα
καὶ πληιάδες·
μέσαι
δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
In terms of scholarship, it is comprehensible
that this poem, because of its strongly feminine overtones, has been attached
to the Sappho-poet. Now, whether or not this attachment is historically
demonstrable or actually relevant, it remains nonetheless unfortunate that the assimilation
of this poem into the Sapphic myth tradition will necessarily determine the interpretative
orientation of most, if not all of this poem’s translators. That said: the
feminine persona of the author is tremendously important to the meaning of the
poem; and it is introduced emphatically, unforgettably, by the opening and
closing phrases of the poem: δέδυκε σελάννα [deduke selanna]—the moon/Silene (f) has waned, and μόνα καθεύδω [mona katheudw]– I, alone, remain lying
here—still.
δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ πληιάδες· μέσαι δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
§ Nature
images, and the complexity of literal time verses seasonal and metaphorical
time. There
is an interesting difficulty structuring this poem, which is how to interpret
the aspect of time that permeates, and therefore determines the mood of the
poem. In the first version that we referred
to (#1),
entitled Loneliness, time is embodied
literally, through the viewpoint of the author who is lying in bed, sleepless. The
space of the poem is conceived of as a person’s long, solitary journey through
the tediously ‘drifting hours’ of a sleepless night.
(#1),
Loneliness
Set are the Pleiades; the Moon is down
And midnight dark on high.
The hours, the hours, drift by,
And here I lie,
Alone
And midnight dark on high.
The hours, the hours, drift by,
And here I lie,
Alone
While a literally rendered space and time of poem
(#1) is also shared by the second, untitled
version (#2): moon has left, Pleiades have gone, Midnight comes—and goes, this latter version is yet elastic enough to also allow for an
insight about time that is more perennial, more universal. So, this latter
translation undertones for the reader (by the present tense in line 3) the likelihood
that the author’s ‘solitary tonight’ of this particular night, is also a
metaphor for all the other ‘solitary tonights’ the author has experienced.
(#2),
Untitled
The sinking moon has left the
sky,
The Pleiades have also gone.
Midnight comes—and goes, the hours
fly
And solitary still, I lie.
(Cox;
Fragm. adesp. 976 Page)
In
contrast to these two renderings (#1 and #2), however, Phrontisterion’s translation steps away from the literal or
temporal ‘space of the poem’, because the language itself of these lines is decidedly
not literal, but rather seasonal. The ‘time’ of this poem is not structured
around one sleepless or lonely night. Rather, it is built around a period or season of a woman’s life that, she
feels, has come or is rapidly coming to a close.
Selene is now diminished, along with Pleiades;
And (my) mid-night hours;
Youth, as well, is already on the Wing;
I, alone, remain lying here—still.
δέδυκε
μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ πληιάδες· μέσαι δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
To justify this translation strategy, one has to discover whether the
meaning for this poet’s world—of the moonset (=Selene now diminished); and of Pleiades;
and of Youth (ὥρα = period, time,
season), was in fact about the passage of hours in a day and constellations
through the night sky. Or, whether the conceit is in fact broadly seasonal, as
opposed to temporal.
 |
| Selene at the Louvre |
§ The Moon (σελάννα). Line 5. At the end of the day some things are just what they seem to be. And ‘the moon’ in this poem seems to be one of those things. Lunar mythological imagery for ancient Greece is, of course, richissime. Selene, the Moon goddess who, according to the Homeric cycle’s Hymn to Selene, drives “her long-maned horses at full speed, at eventime in the mid-month” across the night heavens, is brother to Helios, the Sun god who drives his chariot across the day sky. It is more than obvious, as well, that the rhythm of Selene’s waxing and waning have made it a symbol for time, change, and repetitive cycles the world over.
§
The Pleiades (πληιάδες). Line 5. This group of
stars, colloquially known as the Seven Sisters, has long inspired poets. In the
biblical book of Job (38:31-33), for example, which is dated between the 7th
& 4th centuries BC, God and Job are enjoying an alpha-male
moment and, to establish the comparison, God asks Job to assess the extent of
his (Job’s) Power with this almost non-sarcastic question:
Can you bind the chains of the
Pleiades?
Can you
loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the
constellations in their seasons
or lead
out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the
heavens?
Can you
set up God’s dominion over the earth?
In
his poem about man’s Paradise Lost,
John Milton, speaking of God’s creating activity (cf. 340ff), writes:
First
in his East the glorious Lamp was seen, [ 370 ]
Regent of Day, and all th' Horizon round
Invested with bright Rayes, jocond to run
His Longitude through Heav'n's high rode: the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danc'd
Shedding sweet influence: less bright the Moon, [ 375 ]
Regent of Day, and all th' Horizon round
Invested with bright Rayes, jocond to run
His Longitude through Heav'n's high rode: the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danc'd
Shedding sweet influence: less bright the Moon, [ 375 ]
The
Pleiades also have a decidedly mytho-Sapphic presence in astromythology.
According to one study, the Sisters’ cluster is even
associated with the planet Venus (the love planet!).
In a more natural setting, however, the
rising of this sisterly cluster occurs in the southern sky (for Greece) in May,
and marked the opening of the navigation season for Greek ships, as its setting
in late autumn, around November, brought the sailing season to a close. Even
closer to the nature cycles that frame our poem, is the notion found in Hesiod’s
Works and Days that the appearance of
Pleiades “from the sun indicated the approach of harvest,” and that the setting
of the cluster in autumn marked the time for the new sowing.
(ll. 383-404) When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising
[1310], begin your harvest, and your ploughing when they are going to set
[1311]. Forty nights and days they are hidden and appear again as the year
moves round, when first you sharpen your sickle. This is the law of the plains,
and of those who live near the sea, and who inhabit rich country, the glens and
dingles far from the tossing sea,--strip to sow and strip to plough and strip
to reap, if you wish to get in all Demeter's fruits in due season, and that
each kind may grow in its season.
Hippocrates (ca. 460-370 BC), an
important figure in Greek medicine in the day, even being referred to as the
“Father of Modern Medicine,” hence the Hippocratic Oath, apparently
made much of the Pleiades, dividing the year into four seasons,
all connected with their positions in relation to the sun; his winter beginning
with their setting and ending with the spring equinox; spring lasting till
their rising; the summer, from their appearing to the rising of Arcturus; and
the autumn, till their setting again (link).
And,
finally, another source suggests already for the Bronze Age peoples of Europe (ca. 3rd
millennium BC), the ritualized association of the
Pleiades “with mourning and funerals. Between the autumn equinox and the winter
solstice, the cluster rose in the eastern sky after the sunset.” This source
concludes that, “The Pleiades start to shine over the horizon and set in the
West, during October-November, the proper time of the year in Mediterranean
area, to plough and sow the land.”
So, our poem links together and then resolves
two seasonal expressions—the setting of Selene and of Pleiades, as waning cycles
of the natural world, into παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα [para d’erxeth’hora]—time is passing me
by. Per
Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ), the notion
of ὥρα [hora] means variously: “any period, fixed by natural laws and revolutions, whether of the year,
month, or day.” So, its translation may range from the very literal to
the extremely metaphorical, using expressions ranging from: the day; the prime
of the season; the springtime of life; and youth. Significant in this context,
however, is the notion that all of the natural cycles are winding down and beginning
to pass out of reach. First the near: the waning of tonight’s moon, coupled
with the remote: the setting of the Seven Sisters, which marks the end of the belle saison. For our poetess, a period
or season of her life is now diminished, it has ‘set’.
Selene is now diminished, along with Pleiades;
And (my) mid-night hours;
Youth, as well, is already on the Wing;
I, alone, remain lying here—still.
δέδυκε
μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ πληιάδες· μέσαι δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
§ Youth, as well, is already on the Wing. Quite
literally, the phrase παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα [para d’erxeth’hora] yields: the
hour (time) is passing by. The prepositional verb παρέρχομαι [par+erxomai] (which
is to say the joining of the preposition παρa with the verb έρχομαι) means: to go by, beside or past;
to pass by, outstrip; to outwit, escape, elude; to pass unnoticed, escape the
notice of. In our text, though, παρέρχομαι has been manhandled, rent asunder as it were, by the quasi-trivial
postpositive particle δ’, to yield παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’, as if to underscore just how very ‘by’ the passing-by is. In
terms of translational value for this phrase, both the sentiment and the
expression, ‘Time is fleeting’, are hackneyed in poetic English. While ‘’Youth
on the Wing’ at least has the virtue of being distantly reminiscent of the
lovely language used to render Omar Khayyam’s metaphor
in the Persian poem, The Rubaiyat: “and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”
§ Bits
and wordy bobs in search of an interpretation. So, to encapsulate things
in a Hunter S. Thompson kind of way—our poem is far from being merely some lame
lines about a desperately feverish gal who is not getting any action, with
whomever, on a quiet Saturday night; however, this is certainly the meaning in
version #1 of our poem, right down to the title: ‘Loneliness’.
Set are the Pleiades; the Moon is down
And midnight dark on high.
The hours, the hours, drift by,
And here I lie,
Alone
And midnight dark on high.
The hours, the hours, drift by,
And here I lie,
Alone
The second version of the poem, #2 Untitled,
is not even marginally better with its, “And
solitary still, I lie.” Both renderings are studies in triviality, and neither
give us the more perennial lyrical truth, the Philo-Poetry, revealed by the word-images
and structure of these lines. “A Girl’s Lament” is not some thin poem about
unappeased sexual hunger and desperate loneliness. It is, rather, about the natural
mood that accompanies the realization that just as (all) life has a springtime
and summer, it also has an autumn. And a winter. The fields of Poetry are
carpeted with similar expressions and sentiments.
“Sappho” (“A
Girl’s Lament”; ca. 7th century BC; Greece)
Selene is now diminished, along with Pleiades;
And (my) mid-night hours;
Youth, as well, is already on the Wing;
I, alone, remain lying here—still.
δέδυκε
μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ πληιάδες· μέσαι δὲ (5)
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
νύκτες, παρὰ δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα· ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
Omar Khayyam
(Rubaiyat; 1120; Iran)
(VII) Come,
fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter
Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of
Time has but a little way
To fly - and
Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
Dante
Alighiere (Inferno, Canto I; 14th
century; Italy)—
Midway upon the journey of our
life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to
say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little
more;
A sonnet
from Percy Bysshe Shelly (Ozymandias,
1818; England)
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Alfred Lord
Tennyson (Ulysses; 1833; England)
I am a part of all that I have
met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world
whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make
an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine
in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!
Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one
to me
Little remains: but every hour is
saved
From that eternal silence,
something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile
it were
For some three suns to store and
hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in
desire
To follow knowledge like a
sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human
thought.
§ Inspiration for a funeral inscription? “Sappho’s”
poem, “A Girl’s Lament,” is, essentially, a nature poem with Stoic overtones, which
is to say that the author measures the Springtime and Summer of her life against
the ever-present recognition of her decline into Autumn and Winter. The subject
of the poem is certainly “erotic,” in an ancient Greek sort of way, because without
necessarily being strictly-speaking sexual, Nature herself and all of her
patterns and participants are yet fundamentally tuned to the greater Eros that infuses
reality.
To further inform our reading and thinking about “A
Girl’s Lament,” the ‘literature’ also provides cases of inspirational funeral
inscriptions written in the first person. One source (cf. Day, 26) proposes, for
example, an inscription found in the Carmina
epigraphica graeca saeculorum (24; base with kore, Merenda in
Attica, c. 540-530), where one reads:
“(I am or this is the) marker of Phrasikleia.
I shall always be called a maiden, having received this name instead of
marriage as my lot from the gods.”
« σεμα Φρασικλείας·
κόρε κεκλέσομαι
αἰεί ἀντὶ γάμο
παρὰ θεον τοῦτο
λαχοσ᾿ ὄνομα »
κόρε κεκλέσομαι
αἰεί ἀντὶ γάμο
παρὰ θεον τοῦτο
λαχοσ᾿ ὄνομα »
On the subject of the first-person quality of
the funeral text, which corresponds with the first-person voice of “A Girl’s Lament,”
the author concludes that, “All praising epitaphs are in a sense mimetic;
whoever reads one aloud plays the role of a praise poet. Some, however,
emphasize this mimetic quality with first-person forms. In the simplest, the tomb or marker is the complement of εἰμί or referent of μέ, but in
others first- person verbs help create an echo of funerary song.”
This may
well turn out also to be relevant to a future interpretation of “A Girl’s
Lament.”
Selene is now diminished, along with Pleiades;
And (my) mid-night hours;
Youth, as well, is already on the Wing;
I, alone, remain lying here—still.
δέδυκε
μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ πληιάδες·
μέσαι
δὲ νύκτες,
παρὰ
δ’ ἔρχεθ’ ὥρα·
ἐγὼ
δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.
Sources (Sappho):
*This title, “The Deserted Lover: A Girl’s Lament,” is found in Athenaze, An Introduction to Ancient Greek,
Book I (Balme and Lawall, Oxford, 2003, p. 131), but there attributed to D.A.
Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry, p. 52.
Hallett, Judith P. 1979. "Sappho and her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality."
Signs. 4 (3).
Sources (Pleiades):
Sources
(Selene)
Sources
on funerary inscriptions:
https://www.thedodo.com/9-touching-epitaphs-ancient-gr-589550486.html (dedicated to dogs!)
Day, Joseph
W. 1989. “Rituals in
Stone: Early Greek Grave Epigrams and Monuments.” The
Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 109, p. 26.
