Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you missed in History class from how
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Speaker 1: to have a splendid time. We're both extremely excited. Hello
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry. The poet Sappho is the first known
Speaker 1: woman writer in the European literary tradition, and she is
Speaker 1: described as the greatest female poet of Ancient Greece or
Speaker 1: the greatest Greek lyric poet period regardless of gender, or
Speaker 1: even the greatest female poet of all time. There's a
Speaker 1: addition to her work where C. R. Haynes, who edited
Speaker 1: that edition, put it this way quote with the possible
Speaker 1: exception of Shakespeare, Homer is still the supreme poet, and Sappho,
Speaker 1: without any exception, the poetess par excellence. Except those last
Speaker 1: two words were in Greek, so I got to figure
Speaker 1: out how to translate them, which was a challenge. Sappho's
Speaker 1: reputation as one of the world's finest poets has persisted
Speaker 1: for more than hundred years, and that's fascinating because the
Speaker 1: overwhelming majority of her work has not. And then also
Speaker 1: fascinating is that the words sapphic and lesbian, which is
Speaker 1: derived from the island of les Boss, where Sappho lived,
Speaker 1: they've become synonymous with same sex relationships among women. But
Speaker 1: we actually know very very little about Sappho's life or
Speaker 1: her relationships, and two thousand years ago those terms had
Speaker 1: really different meanings from what they do now. So we
Speaker 1: are going to get into all of this today. Sappho
Speaker 1: is also a frequent listener request and over the past
Speaker 1: few years we've gotten requests from Helen Sillian pat Esther
Speaker 1: and one person who didn't have a name on their emails,
Speaker 1: and then as a heads up, we talk about people's
Speaker 1: relationships often enough on the show, we don't usually need
Speaker 1: to mention a specific sex act. That is not the
Speaker 1: case today, so use discretion if it seems like that
Speaker 1: sort of territory might be an issue for you or
Speaker 1: people that you listen with. Now, I feel like we
Speaker 1: need to do a show called sexy History, be a
Speaker 1: whole other thing, completely different, and we wouldn't need as
Speaker 1: Runnings new. So the most referenced source of information about
Speaker 1: Sappho's life is a tenth century Byzantine compendium called the Puda.
Speaker 1: In the Studa is sort of a lexicon or encyclopedia
Speaker 1: of the ancient Mediterranean. It has two Sappho entries, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into why that is a little bit later.
Speaker 1: Sappho's name also comes up in lots of other entries
Speaker 1: in the Suda, including ones for her relatives, places she lived,
Speaker 1: people she knew, and definitions of various literary terms. She's
Speaker 1: also mentioned in lots of other historical writing that has
Speaker 1: survived until today, although usually those references are shorter and
Speaker 1: less detailed than what's in the Pseuda. This all makes
Speaker 1: it very tricky to piece together Sappho's biography. The Pseudo
Speaker 1: was compiled more than a thousand years after Sappo actually lived,
Speaker 1: and then on top of that, it's not exactly reliable
Speaker 1: all the time. It's cobbled together from all kinds of
Speaker 1: different sources, and some of its entries pick up information
Speaker 1: that is clearly not factual. In terms of the entries
Speaker 1: on Sappho, it's just not clear how much of the
Speaker 1: information came from historical sources, how much from what people
Speaker 1: just knew in quotation marks about Sappho in the tenth century,
Speaker 1: and how much of it was gleaned from things that
Speaker 1: are mentioned in her poetry. It's always tricky to try
Speaker 1: to use poems as a source for the poet's biographical details,
Speaker 1: but it's even more of a challenge here because by
Speaker 1: the tenth century a lot of Sappho's work had already
Speaker 1: been lost, so we don't know the full context of
Speaker 1: those lines that we have. According to the Suda, Sappho
Speaker 1: was born in the forty two Olympiad, which was between
Speaker 1: six twelve and six O nine b C. But the
Speaker 1: wording of it could also be translated as flourished and
Speaker 1: not born, which would mean that those years were the
Speaker 1: height of her career and not her birth. The pseudolists
Speaker 1: eight different men as Sappho's potential father. Herodotus, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, lived about two hundred years after Sappho did,
Speaker 1: and he wrote that her father was named scam Andronymus,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the eight men that the sud
Speaker 1: elicit as a possibility. Hundreds of years later, Sappho's mother
Speaker 1: may have been named Claius, and we have to say
Speaker 1: may have been, because a couple of Sappho's fragments mentioned
Speaker 1: a daughter named Claius, and it was traditional for daughters
Speaker 1: to be named after their grandmother. But even that is
Speaker 1: pretty murky because the the word that's used for daughter
Speaker 1: could also just mean child, and in some cases it
Speaker 1: could actually be translated as slave. So this Claius, who
Speaker 1: may or may not have been named after Sappho's mother,
Speaker 1: may or may not have been her child. This is
Speaker 1: like the most provisional discussion of history ever. I feel
Speaker 1: like if you've heard the words possibly and may have been,
Speaker 1: you've heard most of Sappho's biography. We do know she
Speaker 1: lived on the island of Lesbos and the aegan C
Speaker 1: and that's just across the water from what's now Turkey.
Speaker 1: At the time that was Sartists, which was the capital
Speaker 1: of Lydia. Sappho's place of birth on the island was
Speaker 1: probably the town of Heiressis or the capital of Middlini.
Speaker 1: She most likely lived most of her life in Middlini,
Speaker 1: although it is possible that she and her family either
Speaker 1: moved or fled to Sicily for a time, either because
Speaker 1: of general political upheaval on Lesbos or because of their
Speaker 1: own political affiliations. She may have had three brothers. The
Speaker 1: Suda names them as Larkos, Caraxos, and Eurygios, and two
Speaker 1: of those names appear in a poem that was unearthed
Speaker 1: in which we talked about in one of our Unearthed
Speaker 1: episodes that year, and that poem has been nicknamed the
Speaker 1: Brother's Poem because it contains these two names. From here,
Speaker 1: the pseudo wanders into some more questionable territory. It says
Speaker 1: that Sappho's husband was Kirklius of Andros, but Kirklius is
Speaker 1: very close to a slang term for the word Penis
Speaker 1: and Andross was a real place, but was also the
Speaker 1: word for man. So the suitas name for Sappho's husband
Speaker 1: is sort of like saying he was Dick Johnson of
Speaker 1: Man Island. So this is more likely to be a
Speaker 1: crude joke than her husband's actual name. I want to
Speaker 1: make a sitcom now about Dick Johnson on man Island. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the suda names three of Sappho's friends, Athis, Tellusippa,
Speaker 1: and Megara, using a word to describe them that could
Speaker 1: mean companion, but it could also mean cortisan, and the
Speaker 1: studha says her relationship with them led her to be
Speaker 1: accused of a friendship or a love that was shameful.
Speaker 1: From there, the student goes into some more mundane territory,
Speaker 1: naming a few of Sappho's students, saying that she wrote
Speaker 1: nine volumes of poetry and crediting her with inventing the plectrum,
Speaker 1: which is like a pick for plucking the strings on
Speaker 1: a liar. It also describes her poetry as including epigrams,
Speaker 1: l j x iambics and monodies. Her surviving work also
Speaker 1: includes a lot of epithalamia, and these are poems that
Speaker 1: were celebrating a marriage which she was probably commissioned to right.
Speaker 1: In addition to the Sudas mentioned of students, a number
Speaker 1: of classical sources described Sappho as a teacher, but none
Speaker 1: of these sources mentioned what or where she taught. In
Speaker 1: spite of that lack of detail, a lot of articles
Speaker 1: that exist today definitively say that Sappho ran a thesos,
Speaker 1: which is sometimes described as a sort of finishing school
Speaker 1: for women waiting to get married, and it's also sometimes
Speaker 1: described as a religious community dedicated to Aphrodite, and sometimes
Speaker 1: as a group of temple courtisans. But really there's no
Speaker 1: substantiation to any of this or for the idea of
Speaker 1: a Theosos as an actual established school of some sort.
Speaker 1: None of sappho surviving writing mentions that the asos at all.
Speaker 1: You will see a lot of just incredibly definitive saying
Speaker 1: with a h confidence, statements that are like, Sappho ran
Speaker 1: this the ass that taught these young women how to
Speaker 1: be wives and mothers, and maybe it's not documentation of that.
Speaker 1: And then there is the story of Sappho and Phayon,
Speaker 1: and the basic gist of this story is that Sappho
Speaker 1: fell in love with a ferryman named Phayon, and when
Speaker 1: he rejected her, she threw herself off a cliff. That
Speaker 1: story makes up the bulk of the Suda's second Sappho entry,
Speaker 1: which says that this supposedly different Sappho was also from Middelini,
Speaker 1: also played a harp and may have written lyric poetry
Speaker 1: as well. This story about the ferryman is repeated over
Speaker 1: and over and over. It's depicted in numerous works of
Speaker 1: art and literature, including in Avids herodes or epistles of
Speaker 1: the heroines. But Phayon was a mythical figure, and it
Speaker 1: seems like this idea that the real Sapphos threw herself
Speaker 1: over a cliff for him dates back to a comedy
Speaker 1: by Menander written about two hundred years after Sappho died,
Speaker 1: and in the thousands of years since then, the fact
Speaker 1: that at least one of Sappho's fragments mentions Phayon has
Speaker 1: been used to try to substantiate this fictional story as
Speaker 1: though it were fact. So when it comes to Sappho's biography,
Speaker 1: we have a whole lot of contradictions and questionable sources,
Speaker 1: and in some cases or poetry has been used to
Speaker 1: try to substantiate those claims. So we are going to
Speaker 1: take a look at her poems and some more detail
Speaker 1: after we take a quick sponsor break. Sappho was a
Speaker 1: lyric poet, meaning that she composed poems that were meant
Speaker 1: to be sung accompanied on a liar in In ancient Greece,
Speaker 1: lyric poetry tended to be short and very personal, often
Speaker 1: sung from one person to another or written in the
Speaker 1: voice of one person addressing another. Many of Sappho's poems
Speaker 1: that have survived until today either are or are believed
Speaker 1: to be love poems. It's hard to tell sometimes because
Speaker 1: what survives can be incredibly short. Homer, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: wrote epic poetry, and this was much longer, with a
Speaker 1: narrative that told the story of the heroic deeds of
Speaker 1: the characters in the poem. And we should also note
Speaker 1: that it's very possible that the work attributed to Homer
Speaker 1: was really written by several people and not just one. Regardless,
Speaker 1: though in the ancient Western world he was called just
Speaker 1: the poet and Sappho was the poetess. Lyric poetry really
Speaker 1: flourished in ancient Greece between about six hundred and four
Speaker 1: fifty b C. So that was when Sappa lived. It
Speaker 1: wasn't newly invented during that time. This was more a
Speaker 1: revival of an earlier poetic form. And then two people
Speaker 1: were considered to be the most notable lyric poets of
Speaker 1: this period. They were Sappho and I'll see Us, both
Speaker 1: of whom were from Lesbos and may have known each
Speaker 1: other and even written to each other. Sappho wrote her
Speaker 1: poems in Aolic Greek, which is sometimes also called Lesbian Greek,
Speaker 1: and in that dialect her name was more like Shapa
Speaker 1: than the Sappho that we know today. In about the
Speaker 1: third century b c. E Sappho's poet Tree was compiled
Speaker 1: into an eight or nine volume collection in Alexandria, Egypt.
Speaker 1: The volumes were arranged by the meter used for each poem,
Speaker 1: which set it apart for most other compilations, which tended
Speaker 1: to be organized instead by subject or seem. There were
Speaker 1: as many as ten thousand lines of poetry in this compilation,
Speaker 1: but it's possible that Sappho wrote much more than that,
Speaker 1: especially since many of her works were commissioned for special
Speaker 1: occasions like weddings, and they might not have been preserved
Speaker 1: after they were performed. Today, Sappho was known most for
Speaker 1: one particular poetic form, and that's the Sapphic, which is
Speaker 1: also called Sapphic meter or Sapphic stanzas. We don't really
Speaker 1: know whether Sappho developed this form herself or refined a
Speaker 1: form that already existed, but she was so skilled at
Speaker 1: writing in this form that it ultimately carried her name.
Speaker 1: The Sapphic used four line stanzas, with three longer lines
Speaker 1: followed by one shorter line, and then within those lines.
Speaker 1: The meter came from Lesbian Greek's pattern of long and
Speaker 1: short syllables. When people are translating Sappho's work today, sometimes
Speaker 1: they approximate the meter using the characteristics of whatever language
Speaker 1: they're working in. So, for example, in English, there's a
Speaker 1: pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, with the stressed syllables
Speaker 1: standing in for the long syllables in Greek, and the
Speaker 1: unstressed syllables taking the place of the short ones. These
Speaker 1: tend to be very personal, passionate, and emotional poems, and
Speaker 1: they're simultaneously very simple and elegant. During Sappho's lifetime, poetry
Speaker 1: was also believed to be magical, so poetry was thought
Speaker 1: to be able to influence or shape reality. So Sappho's
Speaker 1: poetry was considered to be beautiful and melodic and powerful.
Speaker 1: But we have unfortunately very little of this poetry today,
Speaker 1: and even less of it in the form of complete poems.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of what we have is just short fragments,
Speaker 1: and some of these fragments are from damaged pieces of
Speaker 1: writing material or pieces of clay pots. Other are quotations
Speaker 1: from other people's surviving work. For example, Cassius Longinus quoted
Speaker 1: four stanzas by Sappho in on the Sublime, which was
Speaker 1: published around one hundred CE. Today, out of those ten
Speaker 1: thousand or so lines that we think that Sappho wrote,
Speaker 1: we have roughly six hundred and fifty lines of poetry remaining.
Speaker 1: That is spread out across about two hundred and fifty fragments,
Speaker 1: And of those six and fifty lines, fewer than a
Speaker 1: third of them or even complete lines of poetry. A
Speaker 1: lot of them are partial lines. Six of the fragments
Speaker 1: are longer and more substantive, but still not entirely intact,
Speaker 1: and one of those longer fragments is the brother's poem
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier, which is missing only its first
Speaker 1: few stanzas. Only one of Sappho's poems is believed to
Speaker 1: be complete today, and that is the Ode to Aphrodite.
Speaker 1: Different collections of Sappho's poetry use different numbering systems to
Speaker 1: keep up with all of these fragments, but most of
Speaker 1: the time Owed to Aphrodite, sometimes translated as Him or
Speaker 1: Prayer to Aphrodite is number one. Here's the beginning of
Speaker 1: Ode to Aphrodite, translated by T. W. Higginson in event
Speaker 1: one quote beautiful throned immortal Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus beguiler.
Speaker 1: I implore THEE weigh me not down with weariness and anguish.
Speaker 1: Oh Thou most holy, come to me now, if ever thou,
Speaker 1: in kindness harkenist my words. And in the poem, Aphrodite
Speaker 1: does come and says, who has harmed thee? Oh, my
Speaker 1: poor Sappho. Though now he flies ere long, he shall
Speaker 1: pursue THEE. Fearing thy gifts. He too, in turn, shall
Speaker 1: bring them loveless. Today tomorrow he shall Woozee, though thou
Speaker 1: should spurn him. Another of the longer fragments is the
Speaker 1: one that was quoted in On the Sublime, which we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and it describes the speaker's response to sitting
Speaker 1: across from a woman that the poem is addressing. This
Speaker 1: is usually interpreted as Sappho herself describing her own response
Speaker 1: of the woman that she's facing, but that's not really
Speaker 1: clear here. It is as translated by John Addington Simmons
Speaker 1: in three Peer of the Gods. He seemeth to me
Speaker 1: the blissful man who sits and gazes at the before
Speaker 1: him close besides these sits and in silence, here's the
Speaker 1: silverly speaking laughing Love's low laughter. Oh this this only
Speaker 1: stirs the troubled heart in my breast to tremble. For
Speaker 1: should I but see thee a little moment? Straight? Is
Speaker 1: my voice hushed? Yea, my tongue is broken, and through
Speaker 1: and through me neath the flesh impalpable fire runs tingling
Speaker 1: nothing see mine eyes and our noise of roaring waves
Speaker 1: in my ear sounds. Sweat runs down and rivers. A
Speaker 1: tremor seizes all my limbs, and paler than grass in autumn,
Speaker 1: caught by pains of menacing death, I falter lost in
Speaker 1: the love trance, But almost all the aments are not
Speaker 1: nearly so long as this. Here is an example, Sweet mother,
Speaker 1: I cannot weave my web broken as I am by
Speaker 1: longing for a boy at soft aphrodite's will. One that
Speaker 1: we think from a wedding poem goes neither honey nor
Speaker 1: be for me. I don't know why I love that
Speaker 1: I do neither of the above. Another fragment just says
Speaker 1: shot with a thousand hues, and one reads and I
Speaker 1: flutter like a child after her mother, And one fragment
Speaker 1: is simply the words you burn me. Sappho's fragments can
Speaker 1: be really evocative, and then combined with her pretty mysterious biography,
Speaker 1: they can just be beguiling. But the fact that they're
Speaker 1: so fragmented and scattered makes her work really difficult to study.
Speaker 1: We have a sense that she wrote lots of love poems,
Speaker 1: and that she wrote lots of poems for people's weddings.
Speaker 1: Her work seems to carry a lot of affection as well,
Speaker 1: including physical affection from and women, but we don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have the greatest sense of what the whole body of
Speaker 1: her work is like. There's some guesswork going on, especially
Speaker 1: since some of the fragments are so short that we're
Speaker 1: not even a hundred percent sure that Sappho really wrote them,
Speaker 1: And we'll get into why there's so little of Sappho's
Speaker 1: work left today to study after we have another sponsor break.
Speaker 1: As far as we know, during her lifetime and at
Speaker 1: least for a while afterwards, Sappho was deeply respected and
Speaker 1: admired as a poet and a person. Plato, who lived
Speaker 1: roughly two hundred years after she did, wrote quote some
Speaker 1: say them uses are nine, but how carelessly look at
Speaker 1: the tenth Sappho from Lesbus. It doesn't seem as though
Speaker 1: her contemporaries really questioned her character in any way. I mean,
Speaker 1: after all, she was getting a lot of commissions to
Speaker 1: write poetry for people's weddings, and that doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it would be happening if she were socially reviled. But
Speaker 1: in the century since then, people have interpreted Sappho in
Speaker 1: vastly different ways. In the words of Holt and Parker quote,
Speaker 1: every age creates its own Sappho, and many of these
Speaker 1: creations have imagined Sappho as being, at least in the
Speaker 1: morality of the time, deviant or depraved. Some of these
Speaker 1: shifts are thanks to her being from the island of
Speaker 1: les Bus. While she was living, les Bus was considered
Speaker 1: to be a place full of passion and poetry and sensuality,
Speaker 1: although also with a lot of political turmoil and in fighting,
Speaker 1: which is why Sappho and her family may have fled
Speaker 1: at some point possibly see our Haynes, who we quoted
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, described it this way
Speaker 1: quote the Aoliens of Lesbas were a vigorous and gifted race,
Speaker 1: brave and war enterprising and trade, vehement and politics eminent,
Speaker 1: and poetry and music. But within a few centuries after
Speaker 1: her death, prevailing opinion of the island of Lesbas had shifted.
Speaker 1: That tendency towards passion and wealth moved more into perceived
Speaker 1: hedonism and excess. Lesbis went from being thought of as
Speaker 1: a place of beauty and refinement to one of licentiousness
Speaker 1: and corruption. The Greek word lesbias in meaning acting like
Speaker 1: someone from Lesbus, became associated with impurity and one specific
Speaker 1: sex act, that being Fallacio. It wasn't just about the island,
Speaker 1: though eventually this also extended to Sappho herself. Greek comedy
Speaker 1: tended to be in one way or another satirical, although
Speaker 1: the exact nature and the primary targets of the satire
Speaker 1: shifted over time. In the in the sort of history
Speaker 1: of Greek comedy, and starting a couple of centuries after
Speaker 1: she died, Sappho became the target of this satire. Her
Speaker 1: name was used for characters in several Greek comedies, and
Speaker 1: those characters were usually depicted as wanton and lustful and
Speaker 1: just excessively sexual with young men. Society's understanding of relationships
Speaker 1: and gender roles shifts over time, so it's certain that
Speaker 1: romantic and physical relationships were viewed very differently on Lesbos
Speaker 1: in the seventh century b c. Than they are in
Speaker 1: various cultures today. But we know virtually nothing about the details,
Speaker 1: and many of the authors who have speculated about it
Speaker 1: have tried to draw conclusions based on ancient Sparta. But
Speaker 1: our understanding of Spartan society is also limited, and it
Speaker 1: was a completely different society from Lesbi's, located in a
Speaker 1: different part of Greece, and it flourished starting two hundred
Speaker 1: years or so after Sappho's death. However, we do know
Speaker 1: that same sex relationships became increasingly taboo in parts of
Speaker 1: Europe in the centuries after Sappa lived, so they don't
Speaker 1: really know how they were regarded while she was living
Speaker 1: and where she was living, but we do know that
Speaker 1: it became more and more taboo afterward, and as that happened,
Speaker 1: the idea that Sappho was dv because of her lust
Speaker 1: for young men morphed into the idea that she was
Speaker 1: deviant because of her lust for young women. The first
Speaker 1: reference to this that we know about was written in
Speaker 1: the second or third century CE. In the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: humanist scholars claimed that Christian Church officials had burned Sappho's
Speaker 1: work for this reason at least twice. That Bishop Gregory
Speaker 1: nazi Enzen of Constantinople had done so in three eighty,
Speaker 1: followed by Pope Gregory the Seventh in ten seventy three,
Speaker 1: but it's not clear whether these burnings actually happened, especially
Speaker 1: since Bishop Gregory himself was known to quote from Sappho. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there's some conjecture that over the centuries, two different
Speaker 1: Gregory's were conflated together into this one person who supposedly
Speaker 1: did this burning. Even if her work was burned by
Speaker 1: the church because of perceptions about Sappho's morality, that would
Speaker 1: not account for so much of its loss. There were
Speaker 1: also floods and accidental fires, and that aging of the
Speaker 1: material that the poetry was recorded on, and fewer and
Speaker 1: fewer people speaking a Olian Greek, meaning that there was
Speaker 1: less and less demand for new copies of her work
Speaker 1: to be printed or written or copied. Sappho didn't fade
Speaker 1: into total obscurity, though we mentioned in our Christine to
Speaker 1: Pizzant episode that she's named in the Book of the
Speaker 1: City of Ladies, which was written in fourteen o five.
Speaker 1: By the sixteenth century, though, what most people knew about
Speaker 1: Sappho really came from Ovid's Herodies rather than from anything
Speaker 1: about her actual biography or her work. By the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: even less of Sappho's poetry was known to the world
Speaker 1: than the six hundred fifty lines we have today, and
Speaker 1: the words Sapphic and lesbian had taken on entirely different
Speaker 1: meanings than what they'd initially meant, which was basically related
Speaker 1: to Sappho or related to the island of Lesbis. Lesbian
Speaker 1: was first used in writing to describe a woman who
Speaker 1: is physically or romantically involved with another woman in seventeen
Speaker 1: thirty two, and saffic was used in association with same sex,
Speaker 1: desire and relationships among women. A few years later. The
Speaker 1: first appearance of the word sapphic in writing was in
Speaker 1: a seventeen sixty one translation of Plato, which read quote,
Speaker 1: their affections tend rather to their own sex, and of
Speaker 1: this kind are the sapphic lovers. So by the Romantic
Speaker 1: era in Europe, both Sappho and the island of Lesbus
Speaker 1: had become inextricably connected to the idea of homosexuality among women,
Speaker 1: which was also culturally very taboo and in some cases outlawed.
Speaker 1: But in spite of that, in the nineteenth century, Sappho's
Speaker 1: poetry experienced a surge in popularity. The Romantics found the
Speaker 1: emotional depth of her poems and the fragments really appealing.
Speaker 1: She started appearing in poems by people like Byron and
Speaker 1: bade Laire, although not necessarily in what we would call
Speaker 1: a favorable light. Then, in the late nineteenth and early
Speaker 1: twenty centuries, a collection of manuscripts was unearthed near the
Speaker 1: Egyptian city of Oxyrynchus, drastically increasing the number of known
Speaker 1: Sappho fragments and giving people way more of them to
Speaker 1: study and read. Running alongside this increasing popularity was an
Speaker 1: attempt to reform Sappho's image into something that wasn't contrary
Speaker 1: to nineteenth century morality. In eighteen sixteen, Frederick Gottlin Welker
Speaker 1: published Sappho Freed from a Prevailing Prejudice, which tried to
Speaker 1: reinterpret her poetry in a way that minimized the homo
Speaker 1: eroticism of her work, and this did start to shift
Speaker 1: people's opinions about Sappho. But then in Pierre Luis published
Speaker 1: Chanson de Bilitis, which was supposedly a collection of newly
Speaker 1: discovered poems written by one of Sappho's female students, who
Speaker 1: was named in the French pronunciation beauty. These were really
Speaker 1: a work of poetic fiction, though these poems are very
Speaker 1: erotic and sensual on though people really quickly figured out
Speaker 1: that they were not really written by one of Sappho's students,
Speaker 1: it did reinforce the connection between Sappho and homosexual relationships
Speaker 1: among women that Welker had been trying to minimize and
Speaker 1: his earlier work, and that led to another effort to
Speaker 1: try to reimagine Sappho's identity in nineteen thirteen led by
Speaker 1: Ulrich von Velamovitz. His Sappho and somonodies drew from Welker's
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen work, and it depicted Sappho as a spinster
Speaker 1: ish schoolmarm. This work also really reinforced the idea that
Speaker 1: Sappho was a teacher at a formal school with young
Speaker 1: women as her pupils, and this depiction is based on
Speaker 1: his reinterpreting her poetry, not on historical research. Today, Sappho
Speaker 1: seems really intrinsically connected to the idea of lesbian, which
Speaker 1: can describe a person's sexual orientation as well as their
Speaker 1: political or social identity, and that connection was really reinforced
Speaker 1: during the early years of the gay rights movement in
Speaker 1: the United States when it was still known as the
Speaker 1: homophile movement. In nineteen fifty five, for lesbian couples formed
Speaker 1: the Daughters of Belts that's spelled the same way as Belaitis,
Speaker 1: which Tracy said earlier pronounced differently uh. They included activists
Speaker 1: Phillis Lion and del Martin, who later became the first
Speaker 1: same sex couple to get married in San Francisco, and
Speaker 1: it began allowing same sex marriages in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: and this was part social club, part support group, part
Speaker 1: education and advocacy organization. They named themselves the Daughters of
Speaker 1: Beltis after that eight Chanson Debilities collection. And by this
Speaker 1: point everyone knew and quotation marks that the historic Sappho
Speaker 1: was a lesbian. So the name Belitus let the organization
Speaker 1: connect itself to Sappho and signal to potential members what
Speaker 1: the organization was for without needing to publicly express who
Speaker 1: and what the organization was for. Because of the social
Speaker 1: climate and in some cases the law, just publicly declaring
Speaker 1: that this was an organization for lesbians was not possible.
Speaker 1: In the Daughters of belid Has created a newsletter called
Speaker 1: The Ladder, which developed a national readership, and the organization
Speaker 1: itself became the first national lesbian organization in the United States.
Speaker 1: And as time went on, Sappho became increasingly present in
Speaker 1: the pages of The Ladder, which also had a poetry
Speaker 1: column called Sapphistries. All of this continued to reinforce that
Speaker 1: connection between Sappho and the lesbian community. So that is Sappho.
Speaker 1: We know literally almost nothing about her, and this whole
Speaker 1: story reminds me a lot of Jenny Lynde who was
Speaker 1: supposed to be just the world's most incredible opera singer,
Speaker 1: but of whom we have no recordings. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's always that thing. Right. We talked about how
Speaker 1: there are many attempts to reinterpret and and shift her
Speaker 1: identity over time, And it is like that trick when
Speaker 1: you only have these tiny bits and fragments. The people
Speaker 1: can want a thing so badly that they will interpret
Speaker 1: it in whichever way makes them the most comfortable with
Speaker 1: the material or like aligns with their ideas of of
Speaker 1: this historical figure that we really have just the vaguest
Speaker 1: smattering of information about. Yeah, well, and there's so many
Speaker 1: of the things that we in in theory know about
Speaker 1: her are like, Okay, are these three brothers? Are those
Speaker 1: three brothers her brothers and she mentioned them in her poetry?
Speaker 1: Or have those names been picked to stand for her
Speaker 1: brothers because those are names that appeared in her poetry.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a chicken and egg situation where like
Speaker 1: we don't really know which then led to which, or
Speaker 1: they someone else's brother nothing to do with her at
Speaker 1: all because it was a commission. Right, Was this poem
Speaker 1: written in a someone else's voice, not Sappho's personal expressions. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I love her and I think she's fascinating, even though
Speaker 1: I know literally tiny amount about any of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: There you go. Do you have a listener mail? Uh?
Speaker 1: Sort of. Um. We recently did an episode about Olga
Speaker 1: of Kiev, and when we started promoting that episode, we
Speaker 1: heard from a couple of listeners about the spelling that
Speaker 1: we used for Kiev. Because we used the spelling ki
Speaker 1: e V, which is like the spelling you'll find it
Speaker 1: a lot of American English dictionaries and style guides and
Speaker 1: a lot of news media used that spelling. It is
Speaker 1: not the preferred spelling in Ukraine, which is where the
Speaker 1: city is actually located. And it's not just that that's
Speaker 1: not the spelling in Ukraine, it's that the government of
Speaker 1: Ukraine has literally asked all of the news organizations and
Speaker 1: publications and just general people to please use a different
Speaker 1: spelling for the name. Um. I was absolutely ignorant of
Speaker 1: this entire discussion, so I apologize for my oversight, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to read the statement that the Ministry
Speaker 1: of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine put out about all of it,
Speaker 1: because I think it's sort of clearly sums up why
Speaker 1: the spelling difference exists and why it matters um and
Speaker 1: it says, in accordance with the tenth United Nations Conference
Speaker 1: on the Standardization of Geographical Names, we politely request all
Speaker 1: countries and organizations to review and where necessary, amend their
Speaker 1: usage of outdated Soviet era place names when referring to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Ukraine has been an independent sovereign nation for more than
Speaker 1: twenty seven years, but the Soviet era versions of many
Speaker 1: geographic names stubbornly persist in international practice. The transliteration of
Speaker 1: the names of cities, regions, and rivers from the Cyrillic
Speaker 1: alphabet into Latin are often mistakenly based on the Russian
Speaker 1: form of the name, not the Ukrainian. So this uh
Speaker 1: statement then goes on to list a lot of the
Speaker 1: most commonly misspelled names. That one at the top of
Speaker 1: the list is the Ukraine with a the which we
Speaker 1: have fortunately avoided using our own show. The second one
Speaker 1: after that is Kiv, which is spelled k y i V,
Speaker 1: not ki e V the way we spelled it. There's
Speaker 1: a slight nuance to how these are pronounced, and it's
Speaker 1: as a speaker of neither Russian nor Ukrainian, I like
Speaker 1: I can't really accurately replicate that slight difference. UH to
Speaker 1: return to the statement. Under the Russian Empire and later
Speaker 1: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic's USSR, rucification was actively
Speaker 1: used as a tool to extinguish each constituent country's national identity, culture,
Speaker 1: and the language and light of Russia's war of aggression
Speaker 1: against Ukraine, including its illegal occupation of Crimea. We are
Speaker 1: once again experiencing rucification as a tactic that attempts to
Speaker 1: destabilize and delegitimize our country. You will appreciate, we hope,
Speaker 1: how the use of Soviet era place names rooted in
Speaker 1: the Russian language is especially painful and unacceptable to the
Speaker 1: people of Ukraine. To help avoid these mistakes, we refer
Speaker 1: you to page twenty seven of the Resolution x slash
Speaker 1: nine Romanization of Ukrainian Geographical Names adopted by the tenth
Speaker 1: u N Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names, which
Speaker 1: recommends the Romanization system in Ukraine as the international system
Speaker 1: for the transliterations of Ukrainian geographical names. To better inform
Speaker 1: the international community about the correct forms of Ukrainian place
Speaker 1: names and to avoid mistakes. We are launching the campaign
Speaker 1: hashtag correct UA. Your support in helping to ensure that
Speaker 1: the correct internationally agreed place names for Ukraine are adopted
Speaker 1: in your organization is greatly appreciated, So thank you to
Speaker 1: the folks who pointed out that oversight to us. I
Speaker 1: apologize for it. It was a hut of sent me
Speaker 1: being ignorant um and not an attempt to wilfully ignore
Speaker 1: the wishes of the nation of Ukraine um, and we
Speaker 1: will uh be better about that going forward. I have
Speaker 1: bookmarked the most commonly misspelled names for my future reference.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcast history podcasts at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com and then we're all over social media at
Speaker 1: miss in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and Twitter. You can also come to our website, which
Speaker 1: is missed in history dot com and find show notes
Speaker 1: for all the episodes Holly and I have ever worked
Speaker 1: on together. Today's show notes include links to a lot
Speaker 1: of the poetry from Sappho that you can read online
Speaker 1: for yourself if you would like. You can also find
Speaker 1: a searchable archive of every episode ever, and you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to our show on Apple podcast, the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Mmmm