Sappho Among the Famous Love Poets Known

Sappho

Among the famous love poets known today, few of them are women, even though women are generally considered to be the more romantic and sentimental gender. However, one of the most influential of the ancient Greek poets was in fact a woman. Sappho is still known today for her incredible influence on the direction of poetry and the passion involved in her work. Also, Sappho is famous for her unconventional lifestyle which influenced her poetry, and also for the controversy surrounding the Christian condemnation of her work. Sappho is an outstanding poet because of her interesting lifestyle, creation of a unique poetic style, and the passion of her work which continues to influence poets and artists today.

Sappho was born between 630 and 612 BC, and lived in Mytilene, a city on the island of Lesbos. At the time, Lesbos was a cultural center of the ancient Greek world. She was an aristocrat who was married to a wealthy merchant, and with him she bore one daughter, Cleis. She spent her time studying the arts, and also was the head of a finishing school for girls. Sappho's family was politically active, and it allowed her to travel widely and become renown for her poetry. Sappho's lifestyle is possibly best known today because she was openly passionate about other women, and most of her love poetry is written for females. It is speculated that, much like most male teachers in ancient Greece, she had romantic relations with her students, for whom her poetry may have been written.

Sappho's love poetry had a unique style. She was referred to as a lyrist because her poems were written to be performed with the accompaniment of a lyre, as was the custom of the time. Sappho composed her own music. She used several metrical forms for her writing, but she is best known for what is today called Sapphic meter. Sapphic meter is a poetic form which spans four lines, which consists of "3 hendecasyllabic lines of trochee, trochee, dactyl, trochee, trochee and a concluding line of dactyl, trochee, known as the Adonic or adonean line." ("Sapphic Stanza") It can be diagramed using "-" for a long syllable, "u" for a short syllable, and "x" for a free syllable as this:

x - u u

- x

Sappho's poetry was noteworthy not only because of her development of this new style of meter, but also because she was among the first poets to write from the first person point-of-view, as opposed to from that of the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. She was considered to be a part of the new wave of Greek lyrists.

In her own time, Sappho was loved not only by her students and husband, but also by the masses. The residents of Syracuse built a statue of her in honor of her visiting their city to show their affection. Plato, the philosopher, was so touched and inspired by her poetic works that he referred to her as the "tenth muse," giving her an almost godlike status.

The melodic style of Sappho's poetry was also well loved by Solon, a ruler of Athens (as well as a lawyer and poet), so much so that he implied he would die a happy man if only to know her work. Modern poets that have been inspired by Sappho include Michael Field, Pierre Louys, Renee Vivien, Marie-Madeleine, Amy Lowell, and H.D.