It's no use by Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard

It's no use

by Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard

It's no use

Mother dear, I

can't finish my

weaving

You may

blame Aphrodite

soft as she is

she has almost

killed me with

love for that boy

Statue of Aphrodite/Venus in The Oberer Schlossgarten Park in Stuttgart, Germany

Plato was a fan. Her image appeared on coins. Her work filled 9 volumes in the 3rd century BC., and it is thought that she wrote over 10,000 lines of poetry. Even today, poets can write in a form known as Sapphic meter (4 lines per stanza with a strict meter in each).

Unfortunately, Sappho's legacy is just one full poem and many fragments, only a small percent of what she wrote. The few poetic pieces that we know of are due to centuries of scholars doing incredible work.

And given the times we are living through, it is necessary to point this out: "Her reputation for licentiousness would cause Pope Gregory to burn her work in 1073." (Sappho, Academy of American Poets) As with Anna Akhmatova, the censorship of anything has consequences beyond the censored person.

The above fragment seems to me to be a lovely antithesis of the Akhmatova's poem tone, theme, and subject (posted on Wednesday).

Sappho has captured the adolescent voice perfectly, as well as that as a love-struck person of any age. Her speaker cannot stop thinking of the boy she adores and it has gotten so bad she has not/cannot do her household chores.

But why accept responsibility for daydreaming? Blame a goddess! "It's no use," the speaker tells her mother, implying she has been trying to complete her weaving. "You may blame Aphrodite," she continues. If the fault lays with a goddess, certainly her human puppet cannot be punished.

The hyperbole at the end is my favorite part of this, a favorite Sappho poem.

she has almost

killed me with

love for that boy

Ah, young love! To be that enthralled with someone else you feel as if you are dying. Those intense emotions mellow as we age--as they must--but they are wonderful when we are young and beautiful memories when we are oldsters.

We don't know much about Sappho, but we do know quite a bit about Mary Barnard, the translator. She lived from 1909-2001, and was born in Vancouver, Washington, right across the river from Portland, Oregon. Besides being a translator, and one of THE translators of Sappho, Barnard was a poet in her own right. She corresponded with Ezra Pound, met other greats of the Imagist/Modernist schools, won awards and residencies, worked as an editor and a researcher, and wrote nonfiction (her own memoir and myth interpretation).