I read these two versions several years ago in The Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation, edited by Adrian Poole and Jeremy Maule, and was surprised and delighted when I realized they were actually the same poem. Perhaps because of where I stand in time in relation to the styles of 1964, this version has a bit of a period-piece air to me someone younger (or older) might have a different reaction. In other words, the formal rhyme and meter of Philips's version evoke qualities of the original lost in Groden's version, despite her greater accuracy and evocative language. One result of the fragmentary survival of Sappho's poetry is that her formal structures, her patterns and rhythms, tend to be lost to us it might look as if she wrote evocative free verse, but that is just the depredations of time. Also, Philips has his Venus (note the Roman name, instead of the Greek) promise Sappho that her young man will fall in love with her some of the translators below point out that Aphrodite really doesn't say that, but merely assures the suffering poet that her loved object will suffer in his/her turn.Īnd if she scorns your gifts, why, she will offer hers. These days eyebrows will be raised at his gender switch, as they perhaps would have been in his time if he hadn't switched them.

Philips makes Sappho sound like his contemporary, as do all translators, but it really jumps out here because his poetic styles are so different from ours.

I confess to being very fond of this version it has an eighteenth-century lightness to it. The first translation is from the early eighteenth century and is the oldest of the six presented here:Īmbrose Philips was a contemporary of Alexander Pope, who despised him. The following poem is one of the few that has come down to us complete, or nearly complete. As with most classical authors, her works survive only in fragmentary and sometimes disputed form. Little is known for certain about the life of Sappho of Lesbos (approximate dates 630 to 570 BCE), who was famed in classical times as the Tenth Muse, and whose fame in our own time is worldwide she inspired stories and speculation in classical times, and continues to do so in our own. To mark the halfway point of National Poetry Month, it's Sapphopalooza!: six different translations of the same poem by Sappho.

Sweetbitter Love by Sappho