Sappho in Translation

Sappho of Lesbos (c. 620-570 BCE)

Sappho’s poetry is spontaneous. It is natural. It flows like water from a spring. It is personal and universal. Fragments of verse are tantalizing, the blank lines, the empty words, yearning to be read, spoken, heard. In the best of versions, her voice seems to ring clear, yet there is always that unknown gulf of translation that could not be traversed. And so we must question the fidelity of what we have to the original, given the centuries of time that had passed and the fact that the earliest surviving transcriptions of her poems we have date to centuries or even millenia, after her death. Perhaps Charles Rafferty’s prose poem, “The Problem With Sappho” best captures that aggravating contradiction:

Only one complete poem remains. The rest of it is berries left in the bramble after a visit from midday starlings. For years I couldn’t understand how this redaction moved anyone to tears. She was a dampness in the matchbook. But the world is patient. Eventually the diamond travels from the mantle to the finger of the woman you love. Eventually the light from an exploded star arrives to confirm the emperor’s power. It’s clear now that a very old bruise can tell us how hard someone was punched. The detective solves a murder by the help of a single hair. Archeologists find a molar and build a face to fit.

Even the fragments of her words, as metaphorically compared by Rafferty to the “light from an exploded star” or “a very old bruise”, they can suggest her poetic power, evidence the emotional punch of her verse. It is perhaps the tantalizing gaps in her surviving work, which require an act of love to appreciate. Like all art, sincere admiration takes time. Take these 4 different translations of a sequence of lines from Sappho’s fragment 31, bursting with the intensity of the narrator’s love for a woman.

“…to your sweet speaking
and lovely laughing – oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings” (translated by Anne Carson)

“…as you speak
softly and laugh
in a sweet echo that jolts
the heart in my ribs…” (translated by Willis Barnstone)

“listening from closeby to the sweetness of your
voice as you talk, the
sweetness of your laughter: yes, that- I swear it-
sets the heart to shaking inside my breast…” (translated by Jim Powell)

“and listen to the sound of your sweet speech
so close to him,
to your beguiling laughter: O it makes my
panicked heart go fluttering in my chest,” (translated of Daniel Mendelsohn)

Anne Carson’s translation has a light ethereal quality, accentuated by the assonance and alliteration in “sweet speaking” and “lovely laughing”, as if the words themselves were as light as the narrator’s “heart… on wings.” In contrast, Barnstone’s translation is much more visceral, the power of the verb, “jolt” as opposed to the passivity of the verb “put” in Carson’s. He draws attention to the physical sensation of thumping against the chest, as “the heart” is caged by “my ribs”. Powell gives himself the liberty of more words than the former two, and the lines here are addressed much more explicitly to the narrator’s love. The insertion of an affirmative, “yes, that – I swear it-” in the third line, not present in any of the other three, seems to indicate an emotional ourpouring from the narrator, the “shaking” of the heart suggestive of an uncontrollable and gushing admiration. But personally, I find it extraenous, and choice of the word “breast” seems unnatural also- I feel that the ambiguity of the gender of the speaker is what elevates Sappho’s poetry from the personal to the universal.

Mendelson’s version has several interesting choices. He implicitly uses the second person, asking the reader to “listen to the sound of your sweet speech…to your beguiling laughter”, and thus has a much more intimate feel. His use of the adjective “panicked” to describe the narrator’s beating heart implies the mixed feelings of both fear and awe that we all have in those we love, something perhaps not captured in any of the other translations. Who are we to know what Sappho originally intended? Each translator adds a new shade of nuance, a colour to the crayon box, for good or bad.


The opening line from fragment 16 is particularly beautful.

“Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot
and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing
on the black earth. But I say it is
what you love.” (translated by Anne Carson)

“Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth
I say it is

the one you love.” (translated by Willis Barnstone)

Anne Carson’s translation leaves little to be desired. It is clear, economical, and poetic. The anaphoric “some men say” in the first two lines has a rhythmic quality, a regular regimentation reflective of the militaristic scenes of her description. Compare this with Willis Barnstone’s translation, where “an army of horse” is replaced by “cavalry” and “an army on foot” is replaced by “infantry.”  Personally, I think that some of the viscerality and immediacy of horses, men, and ships evoked by Carson’s simple language is lost in Barnstone’s. And thus, I feel that the transition in the subsequent line “But I say it is/what you love [is the most beautiful]”, is much more powerful in Carson’s. The sparse elegance of Sappho’s point about what she believes is true beauty, exemplified by the three simple words “what you love” is juxtaposed with the lengthy preceding descriptions of armies. At least, that is my interpretation. What do you think?


 

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