Searching for Sappho: 'The Anactoria Poem'

On today's episode of Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Maiya and Joe dive into the ancient Greek poet Sappho's Fragment 16, commonly referred to as the Anactoria poem. 

To complete the podcast, get the PDF Resources for this poem, created by the team at PoemAnalysis.com:

• Full PDF Guide
• Poetry Snapshot PDF
• Poem Printable
  • with optional Meter included
  • with option Rhyme Scheme included
  • with both Meter and Rhyme included 
• Sappho PDF Resource

This poem highlights various themes including the interplay of love and warfare, the significance of the poem's fragmented nature, and allusions to the story of Helen of Troy. Joe provides historical context on Sappho's life and the era she lived in (around 600 BCE in Lesbos), emphasizing her legacy in LGBTQ+ literature. They explore how Sappho's fragmented biography and extant works influence contemporary interpretations, noting the use of regular four-line stanzas and the voice of beauty and love.

The hosts analyse the first stanza of the poem, focusing on Sappho's contrarian tone and her distinct voice against the male-dominated tradition of the time. They discuss the implications of female agency, the poem's commentary on the consequences of choice, the enduring impact of Sappho's work on modern literature. The discussion also touches on controversial reinterpretations by male poets like Swinburne and Lowell, exploring how they often reduce Sappho to a mere sexualised figure.

Ending on a discussion of Sappho's evolving legacy and her impact on later literary traditions, the hosts invite listeners to continue the conversation and look forward to discussing Rudyard Kipling's 'If—' in the next episode.

Transcript

Searching for Sappho: 'The Anactoria Poem' (Transcript)
===

Joe: [00:00:00] She's not here, and I'd rather see her lovely step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and glittering armour.

Maiya: Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse with me, Maiya, and my co host, Joe. A poetry podcast brought to you by Poemanalysis.com and Poetry+. 

Now today we're talking about the poem Fragment 16, otherwise known as the Anactoria poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho. We'll be touching on the relationship between love and warfare, the significance of fragmentation, and allusions to the infamous story of Helen of Troy. Now, Joe, thank you for reading the final lines of the poem 

can you tell us a little bit more about where this poem is situated , in 

Joe: .......... thanks, Maiya. Yeah, so, the ancient world is a pretty broad [00:01:00] canon, and it's important, I think, just to situate exactly where and when Sappho was writing. So, the exact biography And this is a theme we're going to return to again and again in today's podcast. But Sappho is living and writing around 600 BCE and just to give listeners a sense of what that means, that's 250 years before Alexander the Great, 600 years before the Roman Empire, and before , the birth of Christ, and interestingly and very significantly for this poem, it's about 600 years after the Trojan War was said to have taken place, because some of the figures from that war are going to feature very prominently in this poem. In terms of where, , Sappho is associated with the island of Lesbos, where she lived and produced most of her work, and the word lesbian is retroactively attributed to the island of Lesbos for reasons we will go on to discuss. But Maiya, that's when and where. But tell us a little bit about Sappho herself, what little we do know of her.

So of course, as you mentioned there, Sappho is well known for being one of the most prominent ancient LGBTQ plus poets. [00:02:00] She's inspired many a queer poet. This is where we get the term sapphic poetry from. Her work and her biography are so fragmented, we know so little about Sappho's life.

We are under the impression that she came from a wealthy family, we know that her poetry was generally performed with music or sung at events, however, we know very little about her relationships, other than through the poetic fragments, we do have this poem, I believe, is one of the most complete poems we have from Sappho.

there are other fragments that are, two lines long, a stanza long. So, in terms of our general understanding Sappho, a lot of it, Has been framed by historians filling the gaps , and using the words of, you know, a historian who spoke to one person who once heard Sappho read.

Sappho has a very complicated story because it's been put together almost as a puzzle of so many different stories. 

Just 

to give a sense of that fragmentation that you were just discussing, Maiya, [00:03:00] it is believed that Sappho composed about 10, 000 lines of poetry, and today we have about 650 of those. So the overwhelming majority of her work is lost to us. So, in terms of this poem, as you say, it's become known as the Anactoria poem, as Sappho gave to it, it's a title that's been given to it by more recent scholars. Effectively, the poem is A comparison piece between the mythical figure of Helen of Troy and this named figure, Anactoria, and the exact relationship between Sappho and Anactoria is unknown. , but effectively what Sappho is doing is she is contrasting the decisions taken by Helen of Troy, with this personal relationship she had with this woman, Anactoria, who seems to have left Sappho for some reason or another.

It's not clear whether that was to go and get married, whether that's because she's died, or some other reason that we're not privy to. But that's the poem in broad strokes, Maiya. But in terms of Sappho's style for listeners that aren't familiar, she's an incredibly iconic and distinctive poet.

Can you speak to that style a little bit more?

Maiya: Yes, [00:04:00] absolutely. So for anyone who, who reads this poem, they will see it is structured in very regular four line stanzas. That is typical of all of Sappho's poetry and all the fragments that we do have . Now obviously this creates a sense of regularity and a very unique and distinct voice that comes from Sappho.

Generally, I would say in my understanding of Sappho's poems, that voice has an element of beauty and love and the topics that she covers All relatively full within a very similar framing. , this poem specifically, obviously, speaks to Anactoria, who was assumed to be Sappho's lover.

This poem I personally believe does help to frame a lot of Sappho's work. Being one of the longer fragments that we do have, it absolutely sets the tone for a lot of her work. , but Joe, I mean, jumping into this poem, let's talk about that first stanza.

Joe: Yeah, so, for listeners not familiar with the poem itself, the first stanza begins, Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers, others call a [00:05:00] fleet the most beautiful of sights the dark earth offers. And so it continues, but I'd like to start with those first two words of the poem actually, this some say. Now I find that absolutely fascinating because obviously as modern readers we have very little sense of Sappho's canon, Sappho's work. We have even less sense of the kind of. poetry she was writing back against, the kind of prevailing wisdom that those words, some say, assume. Because the poem immediately adopts a contrarian tone.

It's writing back against the grain. But the thing I find so interesting about those two words some say.

It's Sappho making a declaration in the first line of the poem that this is going to be different from what other people are saying. This is going to be different from the dominant thought, which presumably would have been more lording of male figures, would have been more celebratory of the kind of warfare that actually, this poem is relatively dismissive of.

But what do you think about that first, stanza, Maiya?

Maiya: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think the point that you make about the dominant voice [00:06:00] is one that really stands out to me, I think, especially when you look at our understanding as modern readers. of what it means to have a dominant voice, who that dominant voice is. What Sappho offers immediately in this first stanza is, some say thronging cavalry, but I say she offers herself up as the absolute authority in this poem, and I think that's very powerful, , not only for being a woman at the time 

but also in the fact that she's writing , against a tradition that is so predominantly male, to offer herself up as that singular authority is such an interesting take from, you know, the first lines of this poem.

Joe: No, I completely agree, and I think it's important at this point to mention that the figure of Homer looms large in this poem, for listeners who aren't aware, Homer was an epic poet.

He lived around 200 years before Sappho, and he is most famous for the epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which tell the story of the Battle of Troy and the journey home from one of its heroes, [00:07:00] Odysseus. Now, Helen of Troy is most famously known for her role in that story, the Trojan War story. So I'm curious, when Sappho writes about some say, is that a nod to Homer? Is that a dismissive attitude to Homer. What do you think, Maiya?

Maiya: I think when Homer is such a dominant force in the cultural conversation at the time to open a poem and very openly dismiss the importance of 

masculine tenets of honor, cavalry, foot soldiers, a fleet of ships, things that have been lauded by Homer as the most impressive feats of humanity, to compare it to what effectively in this poem translates as a very simple and honest love 

, I think for me it's more of a dismissal. Especially as I mentioned with that sense of authority that I glean from my readings of this poem, 

Joe: I interpret it to be something of a playful dismissal if it is a dismissal at all. I think that. One interpretation of the Trojan War is that there is this great love story at the centre of it.

[00:08:00] There is Helen. purportedly the most beautiful woman who ever lived, who falls in love with the Trojan Prince, Paris, and leaves her family and her husband to be with him. It's a great sort of story of the things people are willing to give up for love. I suppose I interpret this as sort of a slightly playful poke at Homer, which is that despite there being this epic love story at the centre of his poems, the things he is more interested in are the throngs of soldiers, the conflict, the blood, the suffering. And I think, on the one hand, I interpret it to be a slightly playful poke at Homer about to bring the conversation back to the love story rather than focus on the suffering. But I suppose one other thing it could be is it could be in some ways a kind of nod to Homer.

The idea that the some say, it's almost, you can almost picture it being a wink to the audience. And remember, this would have been an audience, not a reader because these poems were performed live. I almost interpret that to be a bit of a doffing of the cap to Homer

Maiya: And obviously what makes Homer's epic is the scale, right? And it's the intensity and the way in which he describes in [00:09:00] the finest detail all of these elements of warfare. So, actually, In the sense that Sappho is almost trying to distill all of that epic into one small sentence, a small nod to Homer if it is construed as that.

It's quite a nice way to do it. So obviously, Joe, there's a very fine line in this poem between the sense of violence and the love that is present. So can you elaborate a little bit more about how violence interplays with love in this poem?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question. And obviously the allusion to Helen of Troy is the place to start here. So as I've already mentioned, Helen of Troy, according to the myth, fell in love with the Trojan Prince Paris and eloped with him effectively, went back to Troy with him, her elopement with Paris sparked the Trojan War, which in many ways was a power grab by a conglomeration of Greek rulers, if indeed it did happen. The sort of more poetic interpretation is that it was all motivated by trying to get Helen back. Now, what we have there is a decision taken by Helen, [00:10:00] selfishly, for love.

She fell in love with Paris, according to this poem, according to some of the sources, and she was willing to give up an awful lot to achieve that. The result, in a broader sense, is the death of thousands of people. and the bereavement, the grief, the destruction, and the terrible crimes that are committed every time there is an invasion. There is a sense, therefore, that Sappho is very conscious of the link between love and what it can lead to, which often is suffering, oftentimes is negative. Now, in a far less grand scale, We see the same thing play out with regard to Sappho and her relationship with Anactoria. And again, Anactoria is absent in this poem.

She is not there and the poem is not addressed to her. We'll talk more about that later on. Anactoria's absence makes the speaker, and if we interpret the speaker to be Sappho, feel the absence of their loved one. They feel that sense of longing. And, of course, had Sappho or the Speaker never opened themselves up to be in love with Anactoria, they would protect themselves from those feelings.

So I think the comparison with [00:11:00] Helen is an interesting one because the Anactoria relationship functions kind of as a microcosm for the relationship between Helen and Paris insofar as The people who are involved in it, the people who fall in love know that they are allowing themselves to one day be hurt because as soon as you allow yourself to love someone or love something you put yourself at risk because what if that thing goes away or is taken away and I think that's a really interesting comparison.

But what do you think about that Maiya, 

Maiya: One thing I'd really like to touch on is, one of the lines that is very often used to describe Helen is the face that launched a thousand ships. Obviously there is a huge sense of scale that comes with that.

This is one of the, largest of the ancient warfares that's been documented, whether it, as you say was true or not, or whether it was fiction. A thousand ships being launched to, to save or to, bring home the woman that you love most in the world is such a grand showing of love and affection. Regardless of which side [00:12:00] of history you fall on, whether you think, you know, it's being contested as to whether Paris and Helen were truly in love, whether it was a kidnap, it's a very complicated story.

But whichever side you fall on you cannot ignore the scale of the war that occurred as a result of this one singular central woman. What I find really interesting in this Anactoria poem is in that final stanza, I certainly interpret what the speaker is saying is, I love you, but I wouldn't go to war for you.

The line, She's not here, and I'd rather see her lovely step, her sparkling glance and her face, than gaze on all the troops and Lydia in their chariots and glittering armour. There is a choice here. And this poem is well known to be a love poem, and yet, as you mentioned, Anactoria isn't there. She's not the one that the poem's being addressed to.

The question I almost have for you, Joe is Does this poem read as more of a warning [00:13:00] against those dangers of love?

Joe: I think definitely. And I think it's very much in keeping with the lessons that we learn from Greek mythology. I mean, anybody who's read interpretations of Greek myth, or if anyone who has gone and read originals, read Ovid's Metamorphoses, for example, will know that Greek mythology and Greek literature is full of lessons against the dangers of excess, whether it's excessive pride, excessive desire, lust, and I think Sappho is writing very much in that tradition. But I just like to come back to that, Point you made earlier on, and I'm so glad you mentioned the face that launched a thousand ships, which for listeners who aren't aware is a quote from Christopher Marlowe and Dr.

Faustus. I'm always been fascinated by that quote because it sort of purportedly celebrates Helen for her beauty. The idea that her face was beautiful enough to launch a thousand ships, but it focuses the agency on what other people did in response to Helen. Her face was there as an object of desire and other people made decisions such as launching a thousand ships in response to that. I think what Sappho does in this poem is she centres [00:14:00] Helen's decision as an active one. She focuses on what Helen herself did and she doesn't shy away from the fact that what Helen did was abandon her family. She uses the word abandoning in this poem and, in the story Helen has a husband, Menelaus, who we'll talk about later on, and she has children. It's a very selfish decision but it at least is a decision that she makes in this poem rather than the way that Helen has so often been presented throughout history since Homer. as a person who decisions are made about and in response to.

Maiya: Yeah, an agency is incredibly important, especially given Sappho's role as a female poet in a throng of male poets who were writing at this time. Offering yourself as a speaker agency is one thing, especially at the time she was writing, but also seeking to revise a history that's been told and sung and fabled time and time again is a completely separate and bold move, really.

Joe: I agree. And I think [00:15:00] Sappho could never have known this, and this is just a thought coming to me right now, but is there a sense of irony with regard to Sappho as an individual and her relationship to Helen? And I only mean that insofar as we've mentioned the fragmentary nature of Sappho's biography and of her written work, but Like Helen, she is somebody who has been projected onto throughout history.

It's almost as though at any point in sort of Western history since Sappho, you can almost work out what society was like and what society was thinking based on what they said about Sappho. Her works were actually burned by Pope Gregory VII around 1000 AD. She's been an inspiration to other poets, Hilda Doolittle, Ezra Pound and the imagist movement in the early 20th century. In many ways, she became this great archetype of an independent, educated woman for the feminist movement in the 1960s. She's almost a mirror to which society looks into and sees what they want to see in Sappho. And I think Helen of Troy is similar. Helen of Troy similarly is a figure that's been reviled and received a lot of sort of misogynistic [00:16:00] interpretations. Other times has been celebrated as an independent forthright female figure.

So is there a sort of a strange irony between those two figures?

Maiya: . I do think it's particularly interesting when you look at both Helen and Sappho's roles in general conversation as you move forward to modern times. Sappho, as we've stated, is well known for being one of the leading queer poets of the ancient world.

She has this monumental legacy, and , on one hand There is a sense of , almost revising her history or picking certain fragments to make it fit a certain story. Yes, Sappho lived on Lesbos, obviously, originated the term lesbian as she wrote love poems to women.

However, There is evidence that she wrote love poems to men as well, or at least explored relationships with people of both sexes. 

And there are certain people on one side of the scale who will say, Well, you know, these love poems to women it was friends. She was a teacher. She actually just had a community of people who she very deeply [00:17:00] cared for, but she actually had a husband this is one of the stories that comes up quite a lot, she threw herself off a cliff of heartbreak as a result of a failed relationship with a man.

That is often thrown as something to almost diminish all of the love poems that she does write to women, and yet, on the other side as well, sometimes there's an ignorance of the fact that she was at least in some cases, a bisexual woman. I think anyone who reads Sappho can take, you know, the smallest of fragments and make it fit a certain narrative. She is someone who is fundamentally mysterious, in, in my view at least.

Joe: I couldn't agree more, and I mean, the relationship between the myth of Sappho and the biography of Sappho is fascinating because it's very hard to work out where the biography ends and the myth begins, and I mean, the story about her throwing herself from a cliff I think we can safely say it didn't happen. It also doesn't massively support our theory that The sad lonely depressed poet stereotype is untrue though, so I'm glad it's a fantasy And we spoke [00:18:00] about that in our last episode our Q& A episode for listeners who haven't picked up episode yet We recommend you go back and check it out. Now.

We're going to be discussing a lot more about Sappho's afterlife and where her poetic legacy has taken her after the break. 

Many of our listeners will be getting ready to go back into the education system, whether it's as a student at school, a student at university, or whether you are a teacher or professor. Now, this can be an overwhelming time of year, but don't worry, a Poetry+ membership is the best way to give yourself the confidence that you can analyze any poem on any given day.

We have thousands of resources available on our website. Weekly newsletters, bespoke resources ready to help you analyze a poem, no matter your level. So when the new academic year comes around, you don't need to be stressed. Sign up now for a Poetry+ membership at poemanalysis.com. 

Maiya: So Joe, in the last few episodes of our podcast, we've been talking about some relatively modern [00:19:00] poets. Now Sappho obviously occupies a completely different space to those. Can you talk a little bit on her influences and the impact she's made on the literary sphere as a whole?

Joe: Yeah, so as you said, I mean, we've done episodes on Maya Angelou, who's been dead for just 10 years, and Danez Smith, who is still very much alive and well, and having conversations about poets whose legacy is still very much being written, either because they're still alive or because they've only recently passed away is, it's very different to having a conversation about a poet who lived a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, or in Sappho's case, obviously more than two and a half thousand years ago. The thing I find fascinating about Sappho in particular is the way that, you know, despite the enormous distance between modern readers and Sappho herself, the story is constantly evolving because of that fragmentation. I'm not exaggerating when I say that fragments are still being discovered.

I mean, as recently as 2014, a poem was discovered called The Brother's Poem, in which Sappho mentions two of her brothers by name. This is the first mention of her brothers in a Sappho poem. Mentioned in other sources, but there was debate whether or not they really existed. So the [00:20:00] idea that thousands of years later these new insights can come to light because of new poems being discovered, I think is an absolutely fascinating way of sustaining the Sappho legend 

although in many ways the Sappho legend is self sustaining now, because as we've spoken about how much she means to people, almost divorced from the actual poetry itself. But in terms of the way that other writers have responded to Sappho, I think there are some interesting examples, there are some potentially quite troubling ones as well, so, for example, The 19th century poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, in his 1866 poem Anactoria, actually adopts the voice of Sappho and it's a far more direct poem written to Anactoria. It's also far more overtly sexual. than the original Sappho poem is. And I think this raises really sort of troubling questions about who has the right to adopt the voice of a person who really lived, and fictionalising that relationship. The idea that a poet, thousands of years later, a male poet, can adopt that voice and write far more assertively and with far less ambiguity. [00:21:00] about overtly sexual themes. It is potentially quite problematic, but, what do you think, Maiya, not only about the Swinburne poem, but in the other ways that Sappho's voice has been inhabited by other poets in the decades and centuries since?

Maiya: Look, I can quite confidently say that that Swinburne poem is deeply exploitative. 

This poem, is deeply problematic. very indirect. Yes, it's a love poem, but there is a sense of distance and, Anactoria isn't the addressee of this poem. The addressee of this poem is actually the audiences that Sappho was likely performing to, 

it's a, an outward nod and a conversational piece. The final lines, that reminds me now, Anactoria, she's not here. There is an absolute sense of distance between Anactoria and the Speaker, regardless of the love that's there. Like the Swinburne poem, to very much change the intention of Sappho's writing and to create a story that may or may not have [00:22:00] existed, I find very problematic, I think, not to mention the fact that he's most likely a straight white male poet writing on behalf of someone who was not those things. 

One really interesting example of this, and it falls in line with the Swinburne poem, is Robert Lowell. He's written a poem called Letters to Anactoria, it's broken into three parts, and very loosely this poem explores the relationship between Sappho, Anactoria, and a third male heroic speaker. Now, in this poem, Lowell unfortunately promotes the man as the central figure of this poem, he completely takes the agency.

From the women of the poem he's using Sappho as divine inspiration and yet crediting her with none of the agency that she originally wrote with. I don't know what you think about that, Joe, but I'm not sure I agree with the intention of any male poet who seeks to kind of inhabit or revise her 

Joe: I agree. And I think it's the latest in a really [00:23:00] strange theme when it comes to Sappho's poetry. Right back to the ancient world, there is this, I don't know, this sort of apprehension about the absence of male figures in poems like this, and there is this desire to insert male voices and male figures.

I mean, if we look at the poem itself, the poem is dominated by female figures. Anactoria is, of course, mentioned by name. Certain translations use the name Aphrodite, but Aphrodite is certainly evoked in the poem. The speaker, one presumes to be Sappho, is obviously a female speaker. The male figures in this poem, where they do appear, are brushed over and dismissed. We've already mentioned that some say might be an allusion to Homer, but he's not mentioned by name. obviously, the story that we think we know is that she leaves Menelaus, her husband, for the love of Paris. Menelaus, is not mentioned by name, Paris is not mentioned in this poem. And in fact, it's almost insinuating that she leaves for the love of Aphrodite or something Aphrodite offers her rather than for Paris himself. Where there are male figures mentioned, they are largely considered as a broad group.

They're not considered to be individuals. We get [00:24:00] references to the soldiers, the cavalry. They're not given personality, they're not given agency. Now, right from the ancient world, writers were trying to insert men into male figures. Sappho's life. There were several comedies written about Sappho in the centuries after her life, several of which have her married, often for comic purposes, but married to a man. This desire to show that she was not gay, this is in part, I think, motivated by, sort of, the insecurity of male readers and subsequent male writers. In some ways, it was motivated by a desire to, erase. Sappho's queerness certainly a lot of interpretations about her being a schoolteacher were rooted more in a desire to show that her love for these women was platonic rather than sexual. And that's, it wasn't always rooted in evidence. And I think it's a really enduring and quite sort of upsetting way in which Sappho has been interpreted.

The idea that male writers can only really engage with her, it seems, if there is some kind of male stake in the game. I know you want to talk about this as well, but the way in which she [00:25:00] dismisses the figure of Helen's husband Menelaus, he is mentioned with the sort of sweeping epithet, best of men. Now, I think at first glance, that looks quite complimentary, but when we dig a little deeper, it actually. yields quite different interpretations. Epithets were sort of popularized by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. They're these kind of repeated short phrases, two or three words normally, which are basically tied to the names of particular heroes, gods, or places.

So common examples would be the swift footed Achilles or the flame-haired Menelaus. One of the things these epithets do is they help shape the legacy of those individual figures and they help give them a sense of identity, they help separate them from the pack. One of the things I find fascinating about Best of Men is it almost appears to be lazy. It's quite a vague epithet. It doesn't mention anything about Menelaus appearance, anything about his specific achievement. It's almost as though, to my mind, Sappho can't wait to get back to talking about the women. And I think in that context It's all the more ironic [00:26:00] that so many male poets subsequently have tried to insert male voices. But what do you think about all that? 

Maiya: I mean, I have two almost opposing thoughts on this. And one is that I agree, I think Best of Men is a very lazy exploration of someone who occupies such a large and looming presence in ancient history, . It seems like a very broad brushstroke over the sort of person that he was. But by contrast, it does also offer the option to read this poem and understand that the people and the stories that Sappho is investing time in are actually the female ones. Obviously, Helen is described in terms of her activity and her choices and her decisions.

And Anactoria is described with her lovely step, her sparkling glance, the language that is used to describe the women in this poem is actually far more invested in their stories than Sappho invests in any of the male stories throughout this.

It almost links into that initial point you made about the some say thronging cavalry, [00:27:00] some say foot soldiers. She doesn't even invest time in, in the male stories that have such a large impact on the cultural conversation at the time. So, it's a fascinating one on one hand. But, on the other, I must say, that stanza that discusses Helen is one that has always sat kind of slightly oddly with me.

In the She, who surpassed all humankind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her husband, the best of men, went sailing off to the shores of Troy and never spent a thought on her child or loving parents. That, to me, reads with a sense of bitterness. To a point, translation must come into play.

This is obviously not written in the original language it's been translated by multiple people. However, when this is so often marketed as a love poem, I'm not sure I can always find the kindness towards Anactoria. Also the criticism of Helen for abandoning her husband and never spending a thought [00:28:00] on her child or loving parents, it places an emphasis on the people that have been left behind. And now for Sappho, obviously that has the context of, if she is the Speaker, her being the one that's left behind, her being the one that's left with that longing.

And it almost places Sappho and the Speaker on a pedestal where they're not the one who's done any wrong, the one who's done the wrong is the one who is left. So it puts a really interesting spin on the Helen Paris story as well. 

Joe: Yeah, I think that sense of bitterness is definitely a valid interpretation, and it brings us back to one of the central problems with Sappho's work, which is that we never got to see it in its entirety. We never got to see it performed. I mean, there's no record of the kind of music this would have been accompanied with, and you know, anybody who's ever watched a film will know how much the type of music used to overlay a scene can change the way a person feels in response to it. So we don't know whether this was intended to be a kind of bitter acknowledgement of the fact that everything you love eventually fades or leaves you, or whether it [00:29:00] is a truly sort of heartbreaking love poem in spite of the fact that they couldn't be together for reasons beyond both Sappho and Anactoria's control.

One of the enduring interpretations is that Anactoria has gone away to get married. And perhaps there is this heartbreaking interpretation of two women who, you know, weren't able to marry at the time, who were sort of driven apart by circumstance rather than choice. But I think the decision to frame Helen's agency and the active role she played in her own outcomes suggests to me that Sappho is trying to suggest Anactoria had a similar level of agency, and that would certainly lend itself to the bitterness argument. the idea that Anactoria left of her own accord because certainly Helen's decisions are her own in this poem in contrast to the way Helen's been presented in other works, but I just think there's one final interpretation of those lines about Helen, and they're not kind. They're not particularly generous.

They emphasize the things that she gave up. They emphasize the selfishness of [00:30:00] her decisions. There could be on some level an attempt here to celebrate the fact that female agency means giving women the space to make bad decisions. I mean, there's a, famous German film director who gave an interview a few years ago in which he said the point where we'll know we've reached equality in the film industry is when female directors are allowed to make bad films, right? We can't just celebrate Female agency when everything works out for everybody there is almost a sense I think that Sappho is defending Helen's ability to make decisions that were terrible

Maiya: I think it's a really interesting point, actually and maybe a point of view that I hadn't considered before.

One argument that I, I think supports what you've just said, and perhaps more of a complicated question for you, Joe, is that This poem is so often referred to as the Anactoria poem, it makes Anactoria the center of this. But what the poem is truly about is Sappho's longing or the speaker's longing for Anactoria.

In many ways, I almost consider that this poem should be renamed the Sappho poem. It's about [00:31:00] her understanding of loss and her understanding of what it means to lose someone. And in that sense, the bitterness that may be present and the love and maybe the anger that plays into that is. Again, affirming that sense that, you know, I am a woman, 

I can also feel these things very deeply, whether they're right or wrong. So in many ways, I do think agency is the most important crux of this poem really, one of the things I don't think we touched on previously when we were discussing Lowell's Letters to Anactoria and other remakes or revisions of this specific poem, is that women so often in literature or poetry and especially with male writers, have to occupy one of two spaces, which is 

To fulfill that kind of very flat character, the maternal in order to be palatable. And one is the overtly sexual and objectified lens that has been, unfortunately, incredibly common throughout [00:32:00] literature. And in a lot of these revisions and these remakes, unfortunately it falls to the latter.

The sexualization of Sappho's relationship with Any woman, or even the sexualization of her relationships with the men that may have been in her life. It reduces her down to something that is so singular, 

and she, throughout all of her poems is affirming her own agency. I think to take that away from her is cruel, 

Joe: agree, and I think what you've done is you've struck at the core of one of the things about Sappho that I find the most strange Is that contrast between the more I talk about Sappho, the more I'm confronted by our ignorance of her.

The more I'm confronted by the complexity that she offers, both within her poems, but also as a historical figure. That stands in such sharp contrast to the way in which people have claimed that Sappho represents this, or that, or the other, at various points in history. The absolute certainty that this is the definitive version of [00:33:00] Sappho, for me, is completely belied by the fact that anyone who reads her work and discusses her and reads about her realizes that. She is so contested, she's so complex, that any attempt to reduce her to a single reading, is doing her a disservice.

Maiya: Absolutely. And maybe slightly against what we've been discussing for this episode , and a question I'd actually like to ask you really is that, the comparison in this poem is so often made between Helen and Anactoria, but when Sappho is the one that's enduring the longing, and the fourth stanza of this poem discusses how Helen could not remember anything but longing and lightly straying aside, lost her way, is there a case to say that the Helen parallel that is being made is actually Sappho talking about herself?

Joe: Wow, yeah, I mean, I hadn't thought about that, really, because I think Sappho deliberately leads us down the line of aligning Anactoria with Helen. But I think definitely, I think there's definitely parallels there. And again, perhaps you mentioned earlier on that the great parallel there is that [00:34:00] Helen's agency is emphasised, so is Sappho's in this poem.

Sappho elected to engage in whatever the nature of the relationship was as Anactoria. She entered it willingly. She wanted to be in that relationship, just as in this poem, Helen appears to have made a very active choice to go with Paris. Now, as I mentioned earlier on, you can't have agency without also having the consequences of agency. And I think that, perhaps, is the biggest takeaway from this poem, is that these female figures live and die by their own choices. And there is something deeply painful about that. You know, you want to be able to revel in the joys of your decisions, but also the consequence of that is you have to live with the suffering when you make bad ones.

Maiya: Yeah, and tone is so important. Obviously this poem is Of course, full of desire and reverence of Anactoria, but it's also contrasted and weighted down by the sense of longing and sadness that accompanies it, really. 

Joe: Now, unfortunately, that's all we have time for, which is a great shame because I could keep talking with you about this for hours, Maiya.

But [00:35:00] for any listeners who are not satisfied and would like to learn even more about Sappho, you can go to the site, read an analysis of this poem and many others by Sappho. Poetry+ subscribers will have access to the Sappho Learning Library. 

Next week we're going to be discussing one of the most famous poems of all time, If by Rudyard Kipling. But in the meantime, it's goodbye for me.



Maiya: And goodbye from me and the team at poemanalysis.com. We'll see you next time.