Day and Night: Conversations With Sapphic Desire

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Brief Preface to Day and Night: Conversations with Sapphic Desire

This work is a collection and arrangement of translations of ancient Greek lyric poets, drawn heavily from Sappho but also including other canonical melic poets (Alcman, Anacreon, Simonides, and a few others), and one Roman poet, Catullus. Sappho was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos who lived from around 630 B.C. Her poems were initially composed to be performed to music. She is the most well-known and celebrated of the ancient lyric poets, both now and with her contemporaries. An epigram in the Palatine Anthology (9.506), ascribed – probably erroneously – to Plato, sums up her reputation by calling her “the tenth Muse.” A few of Sappho’s most common themes are love and desire, death and aging, loss, relationships and community, poetry, and religious rites and invocations. Of the nine books of her poetry that scholars in Alexandria collected, we have merely scraps, fragments, quotations, and a stray poem or two. We might divide Sappho’s extant work into several categories: the few poems that are nearly complete, or complete enough to get a sufficient sense of the original poem or some significant portion of it; complete stanzas, not enough to get a sense of the whole poem, but a stanza complete in itself, often quoted in an external ancient source; longer fragmentary pieces, often from preserved papyrus manuscripts; shorter fragments; a single line or word. The fragmentary nature of the remnants poses peculiar challenges and offers up peculiar joys to the translator. The subtitle of the collection, Conversations With Sapphic Desire, speaks to the way in which the collection might be conceived as a series of calls and responses to the shape of desire in Sappho’s poetry, and the way that Sapphic desire moves and echoes through a tradition. The inclusion of Catullus, although it violates the consistency of the choice to include mostly Greek poets, and is separated from them temporally by hundreds of years, is one example of the way that Sapphic desire remains a vibrant and evolving force in Roman poetry and beyond. Although the arrangement, at the present moment, is a first draft – provisional and rough – I conceive it as telling the narrative, not of a life, but of an affect, the movement of desire from its dawn to its extinction in death. This affective biography at the same time intersects with a number of lives, and the whole arrangement proceeds under the stellar sign of the progression from day to night, from the first poem, in which the sun rises, to the final section, which is plunged into darkness and death. I have attempted to translate the poems in a flowing, idiomatic modern style, and my goal at every point has been to create translations that read as excellent poems in English. Walter Benjamin, in “The Task of the Translator,” writes, “the task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original.” What kind of object of knowledge is an “original”? How do we have access to it if not via our subjective experience of reading, and to what degree is any translation bound to be as much a translation and reproduction of that subjective experience, rather than a translation of an objective “original”? For Benjamin, the unessential, the poetic, and the non-communicative in a source-text are the primary objects of the “good” translator. It seems to me that this poetic element is precisely the subjective, aesthetic element, to which one would have access, not through an objective standard of transparent communication or the transmission of information, but through his own subjective experience of reading. And yet this maximally subjective element—this element that is coterminous with the subjective, that is somehow peculiarly in excess of the communicable (the universal)—is precisely the universal element, the element in a poem that, for Benjamin, persists beyond the disaster of translation, that passes through the desert of impossibility. So we’ve arrived at a strange impasse, wherein the absolutely particular and untranslatable is coterminous with the absolutely universal – the untranslatable is the only element that will make it across the desert of translation. If all translation is a betrayal, then it is my conviction that the most heinous betrayal is taking a poem that, in its source language, is excellent, and turning it into a poem that, in the target language, is stilted, mediocre, and unexceptional. It is in that spirit that I have given the best I have to offer in maintaining fidelity to the originals. Day and Night 1

Anacreontea 1

“Anacreon in a Dream”

you noticed me in a dream, old Teionian poet, Anacreon: in a dream rose up in front of me to speak.

I ran to you and threw my arms around you with a kiss: old graybeard, yes, but lovely;

but eager to love, and lovely.

your lips smelled like wine, and Desire led you by the fingers since you trembled with old age and you took your garland down to give me –

(the flowers, Anacreon, theysmelled like you)

Idiot me, I lifted it and set it on my brow, and from then, even now, I haven’t held myself back from desire.

Sappho 147

someone, someday will remember us, I know it… Day and Night 2

I.

First Rays Day and Night 3

Corinna 691

Dawn plunges up from the ocean deep, drawing off a moon holy brightness from the ash grey sky.

Sea-sons, sons of deathless Zeus, blossomdeep in May.

In the seven-gated city, the chorus of singers cries holy

Sappho 136

bright-songed nightingale, you prophesy the Spring

Sappho 73a

word-sweet Aphrodite, keeping the dew Day and Night 4

Sappho 54

“Eros”

he comes from heaven wrapped with the deep

purple mantle

Alcman 3a

from high Olympus, the Muses call, from Olympus they fill my body with longing: a new song, come, a new song, come:

I want to hear the young girls sing the hymn that breaks the sky, I want to hear the song that scatters dreams from my heavy eyelids, and leads me, willing, to the assembly:

I shake my head and the yellow hair falls down in waves

Sappho 70

Harmonia, I’m going to the joy deep choir, to hear the liquid voices Day and Night 5

Sappho 6

Come with me: we’ll be with golden armed Dawn

Sappho 43

work disturbs the sleeping mind – but we have to hurry:

Dawn is coming Day and Night 6

Sappho 81

But you, Dica, weave together anise stems with your fingers supple; bind back your hair with garlands sweet: the blessed Charites turn to the one wearing flowers; hide their faces from the uncrowned.

Sappho 103

holy Charites, holy Pierian Muses: don’t be upset –

Sing the soft feet of the bride; sing the violet- breasted daughter of Zeus –

songs in my thoughts, hearing a liquid- sweet music, setting the lyre in place:

radiant-sandalled Dawn in my hair Day and Night 7

Sappho 53

Come to me pure rose wristed Charites,

Zeus-daughters

Sappho 118

Holy lyre come to me,

sing through me,

find your voice Day and Night 8

Sappho 2

Here to me from Crete to this holy temple, where the glad- making grove of apple trees waits, and the altars smoke thick with frankincense

here the cold water chimes through apple branches, and rose- dappled shadows stretch, and sleep drips down from bright- shaking leaves

here the horse-pasturing meadow bursts with vernal blossoms, and breezes whisper sweetly.

Here, Cyprian: into our golden cups, pour nectar mixed with joy. Day and Night 9

Sappho 108

O beautiful, O grace- touched girl

Sappho 56

I cannot imagine another

girl with a gift like yours

drinking in sun’s light ever

in time to come

Simonides 567

“Orpheus”

birds swarm in the sky above his naked song, and fish leap up in a vertical

line above the water

to hear his lovely music

Sappho 106

…as much better as the Lesbian poet is better than the other poets Day and Night 10

Sappho 38

you make us burn Day and Night 11

II.

Bright Morning Day and Night 12

Alcman 3b

Her sweetness isn’t empty:

Astymeloisa is coy and quiet. She lifts the garland high like a star that falls from a burning sky, like an incandescent branch, or goose down soft and fluttering:

her glance that melts the limbs like desire, her glance that dissolves like sleep or death.

Alcman 82a

Mnasidica’s body is lovelier

than poor-sweet, innocent Gyrrino

Sappho 36

and I want, I want, I desire… Day and Night 13

Catullus 2

Sparrow, my girl’s little pet: if my desire

wants some plaything she plays with you in her lap;

she gives you a fingertip and startles a painful bite –

I think so that when the fire dies, the sting of her sadness will too.

I’d play with you like she does and soothe my aching mind. Day and Night 14

Sappho 48

when I was mad for you, you came. you cooled my mind that burned with desire.

Sappho 62

you cowered and shook, like a laurel:

anything sweeter than that.

to women a wanderer, but I scarcely heard darling soul.

Now these thing come gently, you came first,

beautiful and the clothing Day and Night 15

Sappho 23

In your eyes when I am close: desire and hope.

you are my yellow haired Helen, or Hermione. I want you

to know you dissolve all my knots.

The dew on the river banks – I will not

sleep tonight.

Sappho 130

Eros sends a seizure again – he’s melting my body and tenderly stabbing my skin

useless to fight you, sweet creature desire Day and Night 16

Catullus 7

Lesbia, do you want to know how many kisses would satisfy me forever?

A kiss for each grain of Lybian sand strewn on the shores of silphium- flowering Cyrene, or between the oracle of desert Jove and the sacred tomb of ancient Battis.

Or, again, one for each of the infinite stars at the dead of night, that gaze down on the stolen kisses of the world.

That many. To kiss you with that many kisses would satisfy and then some your lovesick Catullus,

a number no accountant’s eye could tally, no witch’s tongue could curse. Day and Night 17

Catullus 5

We are alive and in love, my Lesbia:

their senile whispers weigh as much as the pennies that clink in my pockets.

Suns will rise and set, but when the tiny light of our love sinks just once we’ve an endless night to sleep.

Give me a million kisses, then a thousand; another million, a second thousand, always another million and a second thousand –

when we’ve added up a million millions we’ll scatter the sum to the winds like sand

and no one will count our numberless kisses Day and Night 18

Catullus 3

Whoever’s left with a heart that feels, weep aloud and gnash your teeth:

my girlfriend’s sparrow, no more.

Sparrow, my girlfriend’s pet – she loved you more than her own eyes because you were sweet to her, and clung to her like a little girl clings to mother.

You never left her lap, you hopped around from spot to spot chirping for your mistress alone –

Now you hop down the darkest road through pitchy black from which no one has ever come back.

I’ll see you in hell, you ugly emptiness, you dark mouth swollen wet with death – you swallow down all pretty sparrows.

O rotten day! O miserable bird!

Because of you my girl’s poor eyes puff up, and swell wet-pink with sobbing. Day and Night 19

Sappho 94

“Really, I’d rather be dead.”

She left me crying and through many tears said, “Oh,

Sappho, it’s all turned out so badly for us. I promise I don’t want to go.”

I answered, saying, “Goodbye. Go. But remember me. You know how I have cherished you.

Remember all the beautiful times we shared:

Together, beside me, you wove through your hair many crowns of violets and roses,

and put around your tender neck many garlands woven of blossoms,

and anointed your breasts with perfume sweet and flowery,

and on soft beds gave way to delicate longing.

There wasn’t a single shrine we didn’t visit,

not a grove, a dance a sound Day and Night 20

Sappho 16

Some say the most beautiful sight on the black earth’s face is a regiment of mounted troops, or a phalanx of ships, or a throng of infantry in armor.

Not so.

I say it's whatever one wants.

This is easy to show: Helen, a diamond in the sweating rough of humanity, left behind a successful husband, went sailing off to Troy without a backward glance for friends, or parents, or family, or child -

led astray.

(much like I remember now my absent Anactoria; I'd rather see the swing of her hips and the pink glow burning in those cheeks than all the Lydian armada in its splendor.) Day and Night 21

Sappho 105a

Like the too-sweet apple over red on the treetop, on the tip of the topmost branch, forgotten by the pickers (or – not forgotten, no – too high)

Sappho 52

i will never wrap these two arms around the sky. Day and Night 22

III.

Zenith Day and Night 23

Sappho 27

“for mortals, there is one way…”

you were a young girl, once. now we walk to the bitter

sweet wedding: send off

the young women quickly;

sing out this moment as song:

don’t hold back the gifts of the Muses, girls:

may the gods make a way, though narrow, to Olympus’ heights for mortals. Day and Night 24

Sappho 30

tonight, let the girls sing all through the dark hour, until the dawn hears the sweetnesses shared by the groom, and the bride covered purple with violets.

shake yourselves from sleep, dear girls; call to the boys who are tender like you are, and we won’t sleep until the bright toned dawn bird cries. Day and Night 25

Sappho 44a

Leto gave birth to Phoebus Apollo when she lay with Zeus whose name has power:

but Artemis swore a solemn vow:

I want to stay a virgin forever, hunting on the mountain peaks – for my sake nod in assent. So she spoke, and the father of the blessed ones nodded. So the gods have named her Huntress, a name that has great power:

Eros stays far away. Day and Night 26

Anacreontea 2

“Lucid Madness”

Give me Homer’s lyre without the bloody string.

Bring me cups filled with rules, bring them with laws mixed in so drunk I’ll dance with lucid madness; singing to a lute I’ll shout out the wine-song.

Give me Homer’s lyre without the bloody string. Day and Night 27

Sappho 44

“the wedding of Hector and Andromache”

A messenger comes, swift Idaeus announcing – …and the rest of Asia, undying glory: from sacred Thebes and Placias whose waters flow eternally, Hector and his men bring radiant Andromache over the briny deep in ships filled with bangles contrived of pure gold, purple robes anointed with fragrance, intricately crafted adornments, numberless goblets silver and ivory.

With this, Hector’s dear father starts to his feet. The news spreads through the wide laned city; on the spot the Iliadai harness beasts of burden to the smooth running carriages and the gathered crowd of women and tender ankled adolescent girls jumps up, the daughters of Priam separately. The unmarried men harness horses to their chariots:

charioteers with power, godlike, holy, all together to Ilium:

the honey voices of the citharis and the double flute blend with the shout of castanets and the sweet clear voice of the young girls’ holy song that builds in a breath-numbing echo rolling up to heaven: everywhere along the streets, deep bowls and drinking cups and the aroma of myrrh and cassia and frankincense mingle, and the older women cry out ecstatically and the men lift up a high-clear strain of desire, calling on the archer god Paean whose gift is the lyre: a hymn to godlike Hector and Andromache. Day and Night 28

Sappho 111

Up high, hey, the ceiling: Hymenaeus! Raise the rafters Make room, hey, the roof: Hymen! Hymenaeus! Carpenters lift up, hey, the rafters: Hymen! Hymenaeus! The bridegroom is coming tall as Ares, taller than a tall man!

Sappho 103b

from the chamber: the bride with her tender feet Day and Night 29

IV.

Fading Light Day and Night 30

Sappho 88

There’s little you could wish for sweeter: Someone might say you’ve forgotten, but I will love as long as I have breath.

I have been a friend to you.

sweet and bitter, yes. but know that I will love you. Day and Night 31

Sappho 31

He seems so happy, like he’s at the feet of God, that man across from you sitting so close. He laps up your sweetness, your sighs, your smile –

drinks in your laughter. This. This sounds like a drum my heart inside my ribcage beating – I glimpse you for a second from afar and my throat closes up my voice,

my soft tongue snaps in half, I writhe with fire, a slender flame spreads beneath my skin, my eyes darken, a deafening ringing roars around me –

a clammy sweat spreads across my body a trembling grips me entirely, my skin is as gray as drought dry grass –

soon.

I think I’m close to the final darkness. Day and Night 32

Sappho 47

Eros destroys the mind in me,

a wind, shattering the mountain oaks

Sappho 105b

like the mountain hyacinth trampled by shepherd men’s feet,

and on the ground the purple flower Day and Night 33

Sappho 26

the ones I love always hurt me.

I want you to feel

inside myself I know it

Sappho 67

this corrosive demon didn’t love

now because and the cause is neither

nothing much

Sappho

your pain etched face shines back at me Day and Night 34

Sappho 44b

The Muses’ shining gifts make the Charites slender: don’t forget the anger that mortals share Day and Night 35

Sappho 7

Doricha orders, arrogance like a teenage boy

Sappho 15

Cyprian,

don’t let Doricha get stuck on herself, saying she came – not once – but twice to the arms of her aching desire.

Let her discover how bitter barbed you are.

Sappho 91

I’ve never met such an awful pest as you, Irana Day and Night 36

Sappho 71

but how could I let you, Mica? you wanted to make friends

with those Penthilus girls, and you really are a bitch.

our honey song singing soft-voiced:

everything, a mist of dew… Day and Night 37

Sappho 3

You give gifts swollen with hurtful words: have your fill. I am not so disposed, and I know how wicked the heart is.

Corinna 690

self-violence, a heart demanding murder:

she hid it away; she gave gifts that burned with fire. Day and Night 38

Sappho 95

i don’t like it up here above ground: i want

to feel death, i want to see the dew

spotted banks, i want to see the lotus

fringed banks of Acheron

Sappho 65

to Sappho:

a queen in Cyprus great, on whomever blazing radiant everywhere glory –

and you in Acheron Day and Night 39 Sappho 1, a new translation

I’m begging you, Aphrodite: Zeus- born immortal of light- dappled thrones: don’t abandon me—but come.

If ever you’ve heard my cries and quit your father’s golden house in sparrow-drawn chariots, bright wings cutting above black earth, a blur of speed from the middle- horizon: they came—

and you, goddess: depthless eyes smiling, you asked what’s happened, this time, and why do I call on you, this time? What does my frenzied heart need so badly? “What sweet girl will crawl to your arms? Sappho, love, who’s hurt you? If the girl strays, she’ll soon give chase; or spurns your gifts, she’ll give them. Though she feels no desire, she’ll burn for you soon.”

So come to me. Drain tension from my troubled thoughts, whatever my heart wants—do it.

Once again be in battle beside me. Day and Night 40

V.

Middle Night Day and Night 41

Sappho 98a

When she was young, my mother said, the girls used to bind dark locks with purple bands,

or weave fresh flowers through braids of summer yellow, and that was a simple ornament.

Now they wear gaudy things bought from Sardis.

Sappho 42

when winter cold sneaks over the heart, wing beats slow, then stillness

Sappho 49

long ago I loved you, Atthis, when you were a tiny girl, and you seemed so small and awkward. Day and Night 42

Sappho 96

from Sardis, she often turns her thoughts toward you,

like a goddess. she loved your song like no other.

now she shines among Lydian women like the rose-fingered moon in the night

outshines all other stars, its silver light spreading over salt heavy sea, and over the blossom thick meadows.

the grass weeps lovely dew and the roses open wide, beside flowering melilot and chervil.

how many times has she wandered aimlessly, remembering gentle Atthis? while longing gnaws at her fragile heart?

(this mind sings to go there)

it’s not easy for us to be like goddesses in loveliness of form.

Aphrodite poured nectar from her golden hands:

persuasion desire

I will come. Day and Night 43

Sappho 22

the trial: a lovely face – unpleasant, yes. but otherwise

winter.

Abanthis: while desire still flutters around you, pick up your lyre and sing the beauty of Gongyla, and how the sight of her dress made you quiver –

and I’ll be happy.

One time the holy Cyprian even blamed me for praying these words:

I want Day and Night 44

Sappho 20

the glimmer: a chance to return to the harbor’s dusk - black sand:

the sailors in the fierce wind blasts, the sail and the shifting cargo:

much work to dry land. Day and Night 45

Sappho 132

My little girl’s face, like bright yellow flowers: Cleis, more precious to me than all Lydia.

Sappho 98b

but Cleis I don’t know where to get the special ribbons to hold your hair back:

there’s nowhere, Cleis.

just one more reminder that Myrsilus has exiled us from Mytilene.

Sappho 102

Mother I do love you, but I really can’t work the loom –

Aphrodite is making me need that boy

Sappho 24

Remember: we too did the same in our youth.

we are many and lovely in the city, in the city’s foundations we live at a whisper Day and Night 46

Hipponax 32

Dear Hermes, Cyllenian Hermes, son of Maia, I’m praying to you while my teeth are clattering in my skull, and I’m shaking like a seizure: give poor Hipponax a sweater, and a nice coat to keep warm, and nice warm shoes, and a pair of sandals, and, while you’re at it, a pile of coins, to balance the books.

Thanks,

Hipponax

Hipponax 34

Dear Hermes, You haven’t given me a nice warm coat yet as a cure for the freezing winter. You haven’t covered my feet with fur-lined shoes yet, so my chilblains don’t pop.

Thanks,

Your friend Hipponax

Hipponax 39

Dear Hermes, Soon I’ll give my tortured soul over to hanging, if you don’t hurry up and send some barley, about a bushel, so I can brew up a cure for all my boundless suffering.

Thanks, Sincerely, Day and Night 47

Hipponax Anacreon 358

Again Desire smacks me with his purple ball, and calls me out to play with the girl in spangled sandals:

But she’s a city girl from Lesbos. She laughs behind her hand because my hair is gray, and instead makes eyes at a girl!

Sappho 85b

just like an old man Day and Night 48

Sappho 168b

The moon has set and the Pleiades. It’s middle night, and the hour slips past.

Alone in bed.

Sappho 34

The stars hide their shining bodies behind her, when the lovely moon overflows,

and her glow spreads over the earth

silvery Day and Night 49

Alcman 26

No more, sweet girls, sweet holy-voiced girls, will I dance: my knees just shake underneath me. If only I were a cerylus, who glides with the teeming halcyons over waves that blossom white with spray:

strong ocean-purple bird, strong bird, your heart never shakes underneath you. Day and Night 50

Sappho new fragment

Burn for the beautiful unearned gifts and the violet covered breasts of the Muses, girls; long for the song-sweet liquid of the lyre.

As for me, it’s too late: my skin (so supple once) old age has changed. The black has bled from my pale white braids.

There’s a knot in the pit of my stomach, and the same knees that once in the dance leapt light like gazelles now shake underneath my weight.

Not a day goes by that I don’t despair for this state of affairs. But what can I do? Every person alive must someday die.

(which reminds me of Tithonus: They say that once upon a time the rose-fingered Dawn, consumed with longing, carried him off to the ends of the planet.

He was young and pretty and the time, but old age eventually caught up with him, holding on tight to his deathless lover.) Day and Night 51

Sappho 21

Pity me, love: palsy and death hang on my flesh, and Desire flies off, chasing after younger girls.

Sing to me, love: pick up your lyre and sing of a girl with violets on her breasts, who wanders somewhere far from here.

Sappho 140

She dies, Cytherea: gentle Adonis is dying. What can we do?

Beat your breasts, dear girls; tear you clothes and cry out.

Sappho 150

Cleis, it’s a sin to weep in the house of the Muses’ servant:

this is not our way Day and Night 52

Sappho 55

When all your stirrings, of blood and breath cease, and you pass through the outermost silence, where neither remembrance of you nor the heat of desire can puncture once

that final hanging veil,

then (since you take no communion with roses where Music was born with the Muses) you will dart, invisible in the House of Hades, to and fro above the bodies,

that melt like shadow beneath you.

Departed from us. Day and Night 53

Sappho 63

Dream of black you come

whenever sleep comes sweet god terrible, yes, but you

have power to keep away pain: a little hope grips me yet that I will not share in nothing with the blessed – I

do not want to be as I am:

let me have these trinkets Day and Night 54

Stesichorus 15

Like a living thing silent and thirsty, the arrow bites sharp through skin and bone, to lodge vibrating in the middle brain, where it buries itself to the feathers.

Geryon’s neck slumps gently to one side while the blood flows black on gore-stained limbs and breastplate:

a trickle of petals at summer’s end, the poppy’s tender glory. Day and Night 55

Simonides VIII

If righteousness Is a holy death Then Fortune has smiled on us Above all others: we fought To crown Greece with freedom, And now we lie here, Undying praise Our possession.

Simonides IX

Around their country These men set deathless Glory, and around themselves The dark cloud of death.

Though dead, they live. Their courage gives them fame Above, and calls them back From the halls of Hades.

Simonides XLVII

Long ago the savage god Ares Dipped his long-barbed arrows In the breasts of those Who lie here, and gorged them on Bloody droplets.

This stone memorial, touched with dust, stands in the place Of the spear-struck dead, Lifeless rock In place of the living. Day and Night 56

Sappho 104a and b

Hesperus, you carry home the dawn scattered sheep, home the goat that dawn scattered. you carry home the little child to mother.

you are twilight lovely evening star.