Post date: Sep 5, 2016 11:18:21 PM
Sappho is a timeless poet. Her reflections on love and loss and emotions are as relevant today as any other work that we deem "classic". Her ability to express the universal feelings of love and jealousy so succinctly evoke the unnameable emotions that all humans share. For me, emotions can never be conveyed in their entirety since words alone cannot express the breadth of feeling. Yet Sappho calls upon those emotions when she writes. The lines "I say nothing, my tongue broken, / a delicate fire runs under my skin, / my eyes see nothing, my ears roar," instantly reminded me of the all consuming feelings of a crush, of passionate love for another person. Her poetry as it is usually translated is bare, quiet, yet memorable. Perhaps it is memorable due to its broad inking of words. Sappho doesn't use flowery, intricate wording to entice, she's more reserved than that. It is this contrast of scarce words but deep passion that makes her writings stick. The fragments left of her writing get down to the heart of the span of human depth and emotion. We know so little about her, know so few of her writings, and yet the fragments we do have have lasted millennia and influenced Western culture in such a way that few others can claim. She wrote, "I say someone in another time will remember us" and remember we did.