1907
THE POETRY OF SAPPHO.—If all the poets and all the lovers of poetry shouldbe asked to name the most precious of the priceless things which time haswrung in tribute from the triumphs of human genius, the answer which wouldrush to every tongue would be “The Lost Poems of Sappho.” These we know tohave been jewels of a radiance so imperishable that the broken gleams ofthem still dazzle men’s eyes, whether shining from the two small brilliantsand the handful of star-dust which alone remain to us, or reflected merelyfrom the adoration of those poets of old time who were so fortunate as towitness their full glory.
For about two thousand five hundred years Sappho has held her place as notonly the supreme poet of her sex, but the chief lyrist of all lyrists.Every one who reads acknowledges her fame, concedes her supremacy; but toall except poets and Hellenists her name is a vague and uncomprehendedsplendour, rising secure above a persistent mist of misconception. In spiteof all that is in these days being written about Sappho, it is perhaps notout of place now to inquire, in a few words, into the substance of thissupremacy which towers so unassailably secure from what appear to be suchshadowy foundations.
First, we have the witness of her contemporaries. Sappho was at theheight of her career about six centuries before Christ, at a periodwhen lyric poetry was peculiarly esteemed and cultivated at the centresof Greek life. Among the Molic peoples of the Isles, in particular,it had been carried to a high pitch of perfection, and its formshad become the subject of assiduous study. Its technique was exact,complex, extremely elaborate, minutely regulated; yet the essentialfires of sincerity, spontaneity, imagination and passion were flamingwith undiminished heat behind the fixed forms and restricted measures.The very metropolis of this lyric realm was Mitylene of Lesbos, where,amid the myrtle groves and temples, the sunlit silver of the fountains,the hyacinth gardens by a soft blue sea, Beauty and Love in their youngwarmth could fuse the most rigid forms to fluency. Here Sappho wasthe acknowledged queen of song—revered, studied, imitated, served,adored by a little court of attendants and disciples, loved and hymnedby Alcæus, and acclaimed by her fellowcraftsmen throughout Greece asthe wonder of her age. That all the tributes of her contemporariesshow reverence not less for her personality than for her genius issufficient answer to the calumnies with which the ribald jesters ofthat later period, the corrupt and shameless writers of Atheniancomedy, strove to defile her fame. It is sufficient, also, to warrantour regarding the picturesque but scarcely dignified story of her vainpursuit of Phaon and her frenzied leap from the Cliff of Leucas asnothing more than a poetic myth, reminiscent, perhaps, of the myth ofAphrodite and Adonis—who is, indeed, called Phaon in some versions.The story is further discredited by the fact that we find no mentionof it in Greek literature—even among those Attic comedians who wouldhave clutched at it so eagerly and given it so gross a turn—till adate more than two hundred years after Sappho’s death. It is a mythwhich has begotten some exquisite literature, both in prose and verse,from Ovid’s famous epistle