Thanks Uche for this.
Assumed, Alison, and maybe wrongly, the 'greaved in gold' was also a pun - where the the gold (booty) greaves were also a source of much grief (fellow soldiers lost in battle).
Nice to read this discussion. For the last bunch of years, I have been in a Classics reading group. Catullus has been 'our guy' for the last three months. We take turns reading aloud different translations (Horace Gregory, Peter Whigam and Peter Green). Amazing they can be so different & with vocabularies that reflect their different time periods - the ways in which the sexuality (homo erotic and bisexual) is variously cloaked, implied, or (ri)baldly in your face. With Sappho some folks still swear by Mary Barnard (Pound's favorite), then Ann Carson's recent foray of a Collected. Which are wonderful for their correspondence to the papyric versions (with blank spaces for the missing words & lines). Personally I find the Carson too reverential (serene) in tone - keeping the lady too much up on the pedestal without much indication in the poems of any possible raunchiness or any real expression of an occasional bout of mad temper. I suspect some
'Victorian Guards' are still on board. (Characteristics of which Catullus - a much later, in part, disciple of Sappho - can wonderfully and outrageously display).
Mymy own take on Sappho - essentially 'counter-translations' of Sappho are in Sleeping With Sappho (a faux ebook) are at:
http://www.fauxpress.com/e/vincent/
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
--- On Mon, 4/12/10, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: New translation of the new Sappho
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Monday, April 12, 2010, 3:00 AM
I was wondering whether Uche's 'crimson-bodiced muses' and Alison's
'soldiers greaved in gold' could get together and start an anthology.
On 12 April 2010 10:51, Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Goodness, the author of a Python/XML column I used to read also translates
> Sappho!
>
> I don't suppose David Mertz is lurking around here somewhere as well...?
>
> Dominic
>
--
David Bircumshaw
"A window./Big enough to hold screams/
You say are poems" - DMeltzer
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
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