> Robin: that's an awfully nice translation of Frag 31,
> particularly your handling of Sappho's greenness as
> "pale as dry grass." Do you have any more translations
> to share?
>
> Candice
Thanks, Candice -- kind of you.
I only ever englished three Sappho texts (mostly having worked with Anacreon
and
Paul the Usher) and The Ode to Aphrodite was as much an exercise in trying
to write in the English Sapphic Metre (stemming from Watt's "Day of
Judgment" rather than the quantitative English Sapphics of Sidney) as
anything else.
For what it's worth, here they are.
Robin
SAPPHO: Fragment 34
Stars assume their veils when she first emerges,
Shyly form her retinue; but at full moon
Draw off to the uttermost reach of chill night:
So with Alexis.
24/1/83 : 16/9/84
SAPPHO: 'To Aphrodite'
Finely-throned Aphrodite, spinner of tricks,
Child of the High One, ever-living Lady,
Do not, I beseech you, destroy my spirit
with sorrow or chagrin,
But come here to me at once, if you ever
In the past attended to my cries of love,
Drew near to me from far off, left the golden
house of your father
In your intricate, yoked chariot: sparrows
Swift and beautiful with rapid, whirring wings
Conveyed you from the sky through the middle air
down to the dark earth
And soon you were come; and then, Fortunate One,
With a curving smile on your immortal face,
You asked what was the matter with me this time,
why I called you now,
And what was it, in the madness of my heart,
I most desired to possess: "Who is it now
That I must persuade back to your clasp of love?
Who wrongs you, Sappho?
For if she hangs back now, she will soon pursue;
Accepting no gifts, soon she will offer them;
And if she does not love, soon she must love you
drawn against her will."
Come to me even now, and deliver me
From these harsh torments; fulfil in me
All my heart would have fulfilled; yourself be
my willing support.
27/1/83 : 6/2/83 : 16/9/84
