Sappho was a Grecian singer who performed more than 2,500 years ago. None of her music survives. Of the nine volumes of her poetry that once sat in the library of Alexandria, only two full poems, and a few hundred fragments, remain. Along with her few surviving words, we know Sappho through a rich legacy of praise, conjecture, gossip, and legend. Classical scholars speculated about her lovers, her work, her faith. They accused her of promiscuity, named her death a suicide, and alleged that her poetry was an embellished emptiness, not worth reading. Later scholars butchered her words in attempts to heterosexualize the writing and the life of one of history’s greatest poets.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to read Sappho and remain unmoved by the stark passions of her work. “Fragment 31,” perhaps her most famous poem, describes an experience of romantic transcendence and bodily disintegration so abstract that it might feel modern were it not so distinctly hers. Fragments 94 and 96 effortlessly bridge absolute loss and intense, immediate joy. Sappho’s women touch, taste, and see the world, and are touched in return, a radical assertion in an increasingly patriarchal Greek world, a world where wives were cloistered in the home like property.
Beyond romance and sensuality, Sappho's work touches on religion, aristocratic lifestyle, aging, and the passage of time. Her work, though always rooted in people, remains in conversation with the broader issues of its time. She alludes frequently to Homer, references contemporary political and military issues, and responds to shifting gender norms. Though much of her work is explicitly or implicitly autobiographical, she did not write only about or for herself.
“Fragment 94,” a love poem that feels intensely personal, uses the first person plural and may have been performed by a chorus, as many of her songs were. Other songs were written about other people—either fictional, like Hektor and Andromache in “Fragment 44,” or real historical figures. Her wedding songs, written to celebrate brides and grooms during the ceremony, are well-known, but other works may have been written for less formal, but no less communal, occasions. “Fragment 102,” which laments “…I cannot work the loom/I am broken with longing for a boy,” may have been written by Sappho for a friend overcome with passion. If so, it is a rare document of a girl’s affection in a culture that barely acknowledged the existence of female desire.
Sappho’s most significant works are lyrical, meaning they were meant to be performed with music. Although the tone and meaning of each of her poems and fragments vary from translator to translator, most contemporary scholars agree that Sappho wrote primarily about romantic and sexual relationships for women. In the last century, Sappho has become so closely associated with love between women that modern terms for female homosexuality are derived from her name (Sappho; sapphic) and her home island (Lesbos; lesbian).
Outside those who happen to read ancient Greek, Sappho’s poetry is read today mostly in translation. The popularity and impact of her work mean that Sappho has been translated hundreds of times. The fragmentary nature of her surviving poems, and the inherent difficulties of translating poetry, dictate that these translations vary fairly widely. Anne Carson’s If Not, Winter is widely considered the best translation of Sappho, and will be the source text for most of this guide. When helpful, we reference other translations including those of Josephine Balmer and Mary Barnard for contrast and clarity. If you are studying one particular poem in depth, you might find it useful to consult many translations and look for areas of overlap and difference, in order to see most clearly what Sappho herself wrote.
