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| John William Godward - In the Days of Sappho - 1904 |
heart
completely
I can
may it be mine
to shine on me
your face
close whistling
- Sappho (17)
Sappho's poetry is emotional. Beautiful. Haunting. Visceral. Roberta had us try an exercise to try and eliminate the duality of thinking and feeling when reading poetry.
It was not an easy exercise, and less so in a group setting, but it took me back to my first reading of these poems. These aren't words that I want to analyze, they're something I just want to enjoy, and that's somewhat rare for texts delivered in class. I don't want to know if the translation for a girl or boy is accurate. I don't want to know the missing words of the poem. I just want to enjoy these fragments as presented.
Typically, it's the other way around... the texts are relatively dry or inaccessible until they are read a few times and the layers are peeled back to show the depth or complexity of what the author was trying to get at. Sappho, however, reaches that complexity immediately, by cutting through the pretense and exposing the intensity of the moment, and without having to "think" through the situation, one just identifies with it, thus proving the efficacy of poetry. Roberta's hypothesis has proven true in this case.
I think the strongest reason for looking at this collection with an eye for historical detail is because it, as mentioned, shows the human experience in our western story which is dominated by tales of religious and political propaganda. For millenniums, we have told exciting adventure tales of war. We know of Paris's love for Helen, but we also know how Agamemnon parlayed her abduction/abdication into the Trojan war. We know of the Trojan horse, of Achilles' heel, of Beowulf' and Grendel, of Oedipus avoiding his fate, of Don Quixote's madness. Very few of these stories tell of the quiet times, of the intimate thoughts and feelings of the people behind the action, or of the stolen moments that we share with our ancestors.
Typically, it's the other way around... the texts are relatively dry or inaccessible until they are read a few times and the layers are peeled back to show the depth or complexity of what the author was trying to get at. Sappho, however, reaches that complexity immediately, by cutting through the pretense and exposing the intensity of the moment, and without having to "think" through the situation, one just identifies with it, thus proving the efficacy of poetry. Roberta's hypothesis has proven true in this case.
I think the strongest reason for looking at this collection with an eye for historical detail is because it, as mentioned, shows the human experience in our western story which is dominated by tales of religious and political propaganda. For millenniums, we have told exciting adventure tales of war. We know of Paris's love for Helen, but we also know how Agamemnon parlayed her abduction/abdication into the Trojan war. We know of the Trojan horse, of Achilles' heel, of Beowulf' and Grendel, of Oedipus avoiding his fate, of Don Quixote's madness. Very few of these stories tell of the quiet times, of the intimate thoughts and feelings of the people behind the action, or of the stolen moments that we share with our ancestors.
* * *
I have jumbled all of our stories together, and my mind's mind has come up with this romantic connection between romance and evolution. I've taken Plato's origin story (as told by the character Aristophanes in The Symposium) and my subconscious has blended this with the idea of bicameralism as proposed by Naomi, and then folded that in with the idea of the oceanic feeling as defined by Freud.
Is it possible that the evolution of the two halves of our brains is in essence Plato's charioteer reaching enlightenment? Could the two halves of our brains have experienced such a need for companionship and union with their other-halves that after generations and generations of reaching, they made the connection that made modern thought possible?
Probably not, but it's a pretty good theory.
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