Sappho # 58b
Yμμες πεδα Μοισαν ι]οκ[ο]λπων καλα δωρα παιδες
[…young girls, the Muses’ lovely gifts…]
Unheard Melodies
By Sappho, trans. by
Kent H. Dixon
A tune for you, girls. . .
each of you more delicious than the gifts of muses;
heed my song, this lyre’s sad plink not the half of it:
This poor wood thing—like this wood thing my body,
dried, its fine black strings now all gone to white.
Desire trudges to catch up, no matter how slow ahead I plod,
on gams that once weaved dances, taught and light as gamboling fawns’.
What’s left, but to complain? Remedies are gone:
Woman, like man, grows old.
The goddess of Dawn fell in love once, mortal Tithonus,
and the goddess planned ahead: Zeus,
make him immortal, she pled.
He did, granted life eternal,
but no one said anything about equally enduring youth.
He grew old, older, really than time,
a groaning, feeble, nasty but living corpse.
She shut him away after just a century—
Open his door a crack: his moaning is this song.
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#58b, first translated by Martin West, TLS, June 21, 2005
Yμμες πεδα Μοισαν ι]οκ[ο]λπων καλα δωρα παιδες
σπουδασδετε και τα]ν φιλαοιδον λιγυραν χελυννανεμοι
δ’ απαλον πριν] ποτ’ [ε]οντα χροα γηρας ηδη
επελλαβε λεθκαι δ’ εγ]ενοντο τριχες εκ μελαιναν
Βαρυς δε μ’ ο [θ]υμος πεποηται γονα δ’ [ο]υ φεροισι
τα δη ποτα λαιψηρ’ εον ορχησθ’ ισα νεβριοισι
τα στεναχισδω θαμεως αλλα τι κεν ποειην
αγηραον ανθρωπον εοντ’ οθ δυνατον γενεσθαι
και γαρ π[ο]τα Τιθωνον εφαντο βροδοπαχθν Αθων
ερωι φ… αθεισαν βαμεν εις εσκατα γας φεροισα[ν
εοντα [κ]αλον και νεον αλλ’ αυτον υμως εμαρψε
χρονωι πολιον γηρας εχ[ο]ντ αθαναταν ακοιτιν
Commentary
There’s a wonderful story with this poem. Roughly half of it was found and translated way back in 1922—the right half! It was torn down the middle. It made little sense. Then in 2004, at the University of Cologne, a papyrus from Egyptian mummy cartonnage (wrapped around a crocodile) was recovered—the left hand side! Someone recognized the match-up between the two fragments, giving more than 90% of the whole poem—the best preserved of Sappho’s three, now four (and now six!), ‘complete’ poems.
And, almost appropriately, we’ve jumped in time: the young passionate sui generis voice of intimacy has become middle-aged, right before our eyes, a little squeaky itself. Tithonus’ voice had become so high pitched the goddess finally turned him into a grasshopper.
But hers is a voice just aching with lost youth, lost beauty, lost energy—wistful, sharp (in both senses), accepting—or, not really accepting, when you consider that last little tale of Tithonus. Really just making a sad enduring monument to growing old, and lighting it with her youthful memories, behind a scrim of beautiful maids, music of the lyre, song and dance, consolations of philosophy, in memoriam amoris. And then she knocks the wind out of you with poor Tithonus (or rather, poor Dawn!) Which is she identifying with? I hear her hinting that the decrepit, moaning mortal lover here, is her present self, bemoaned by the immortal goddess she once was. And she knew she was immortal: see
# 147: Someone, I tell you, in another time, will remember us.
~trans. W. Barnstone
I like my liberties. The synesthesia in the second line—each of you more delicious—which veers as close to risqué as it does to synesthesia, this forcing of the senses in two directions followed by a metamorphosis of her body into the wood of the pectis—
This poor wood thing—like this wood thing my body,
dried, its fine black strings now all gone to white.
Barnstone has the girls seeking the gifts of the Muses in the song of the lyre, while
Old age has grasped my earlier delicate skin
and my black hair has become white.
The only Martin West I’m finding is even more literal, and a bit stuffy:
[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair’s turned [white] instead of dark;
Whereas, I got the lyre’s song, the lyre’s body, her body, and her grey hair all into one fluid image; I was pleased with that.
My last line I think I stole from myself: back when I aspired to be stuffy, I used
# 111, the epithalamium that J.D. Salinger borrowed, Raise high the roof beam, carpenters, for a toast at my son’s wedding. God knows, I probably threw in a line of the Greek:
Raise high the roofbeam, carpenters,
for the groom is as tall as Mars, (son is 6’5”)
and the bride is more lovely
than any singing of it.
That last, about the bride, is not in Sappho, just my Sappho, and I borrowed from ‘her,’ to flip that last line around to poor Tithonus’ groans: Open the door a crack: his moaning is this song. Sheer me: the Greek doesn’t go back to the opening lyre. Thus does translation swing across the concatenations of the desultory dendrites, mine anyway.
Finally, Sappho knocks off the Dawn/Tithonus story in four lines. I took six in an earlier translation, and then rewrote to eight, because I think Sappho lifts herself out of indulgent complaining when she switches to the lesson of Dawn. But she could count on readers knowing the story; we, despite Tennyson, can’t. So I put a lot of weight on the mortal decrepit husband and the immortal bride. I wish now I’d gotten the grasshopper in.
I do like my polysyllabic stumble with but no one said anything about equally enduring youth, as if reaching for Rewind could run us back to make the wiser supplication to Zeus.
You have to wonder about Zeus’ Olympian indifference here: did he know, was it a trick, a be-careful-what-you-pray-for sort of thing, which takes me to that tantalizing fragment #139:
Among gods
Right off
The one who sheds
No tears
You can complain about it all you want, says Omnipotence and Everlasting, but the best thing you can do, the dignified and truest thing to do, is to make art of it.
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