Reading the Poems of Sappho translated by Julia Dubnoff is a powerful and emotional experience. Sappho's poetry is known for its intense emotionality, and Dubnoff's translation brings that emotion to life in a way that is both accessible and relatable to a modern audience. One of the most striking things about Sappho's poetry is the way she uses imagery and metaphor to express her feelings and emotions. From the lush and detailed descriptions of nature, to the clever and evocative comparisons she makes, Sappho's poetry is full of vivid and powerful imagery.
Along with their similarities, Aristophanes and Sappho share competing views of erotic love. While Aristophanes views erotic love as a journey to become wholesome,
The most noticeable liberty that Walhouse took with Sappho’s poem was when he changed the pronoun “she” to “he” in the sixth stanza. I suspect this is due to the historical norms of the Victorian Era where women are not supposed to educate themselves on current events and that those educational magazines such as this one would be read by men only so Walhouse changed the pronoun to suite his audience during this time. This change alters the interpretation of the poem greatly, in Carson’s translation with the pronounce she, the message seems to be that Sappho is either contemplating fleeing her relationship even though she can’t or she has a female lover that she wants to ensnared. Walhouse only left one message in his poem, which is Sappho
What one can discern by this evidence is that on the one hand curses were highly formulaic and that even the curse-tablets were probably accompanied by oral prayers, incantations and invocations, thus they were rooted into the oral tradition. They are also caught into a complex intertextual web (epic discourse, prayer, iambus) when they are incorporated into archaic Greek literature. On the other hand, the practicing of cursing (either in poetry or in real life) seems to be common even during the archaic age, especially when it concerned the matters of the heart. It will not be a big surprise if Sappho’s work was affiliated with curses. In the next part of this article I will examine Sappho’s poetry having this assumption in mind.
The poem Eurydice by Ocean Vuong, is constructed off the famous Greek Mythology legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. The many similes, metaphors and allusions to the story, represent the famous story in a more ambiguous style, that conveys Ocean Vuong’s occurring theme throughout his poem as the many different sides of love, including happiness, sacrifice and hurt. The abundant metaphor and simile represent and emphasize the feelings present throughout the poem, as well the transition from radiant happiness, to emotional hurt. The literary devices and symbolism employed through the poem, underscore the underlying messages in Eurydice.
These two poems have a lot of similarities and differences, how are they similar you ask? Well, they both contain first person point of view and they both are about love, they both contain unrhymed poetry. How are they different? They are different because, well obviously they’re not exactly the same and they the one poem is talking about his life about his kids and how he is spending it and the other story is about how he has never been that much in love with a girl and how he likes how it
By being more descriptive in these parts of his poems he shows how much he loves Lesbia focuses in closer on his love for Lesbia. In Catullus V the symbolism of night as death and light as life is used to show how Catullus wants to spend eternity with Lesbia and in turn displays their love. The repetition of d, c, and m sounds mimic kissing as seen in lines 7 to 9 which put in numerical form as 3,300 kisses show how much passion Catullus feels towards his lover. The juxtaposition of “versano catullo” (Catullus VII, line 10) asserts his position as a bold lover and shows how crazy in love he is over Lesbia. Hence, why in Catullus VIII when they break up he asks her a list of rhetorical questions.
The language in Plato’s symposium and the expression of Sappho’s poetry are similar in that they both deal with homoerotic love. Sappho, the only ancient Greek female author whose work survived, talks from the female point of observation, where as Plato’s work concentrates on the idea of love among males. In spite of the fact that both of their points of view are comparative in courses, for example, their thoughts of physical fascination and want, Plato’s work creates a better understanding of the nature of love then Sappho’s ideas. This understanding will be shown with three arguments and counter- arguments in order to demonstrate the dominance of Plato over Sappho. It will than be concluded with an overview of the main idea and a recap of the three arguments made for Plato.
The world of literature offers many different works; some may offer similarities while there are differences between others. There are more similarities than differences between Odysseus and Oedipus. Two great examples of literature is the tragic play “Oedipus the King”, written by Sophocles and “The Odyssey”, an epic poem written by Homer who were both Greek poets. Both poets’ work shows similar examples of life altering changes that were ultimately controlled by the Greek gods.
Sappho’s original poetry, though unbelievably old, is still referenced today. There is not much information about Sappho since she was born in the 600’s B.C. Sappho, or Psappho in her native dialect, is Aeolic
This poem appeals well to the senses of the reader as for it goes into a plethora of detail surrounding how this woman makes Sappho feel. For example she states “then all at
Similarly both works expresses a fervent desire towards someone. In Sappho’s fragment 130 we see can see love and desire has took a hold on Sappho. A feeling that can be described as either pleasant or even painful yet she has a hard time fighting off the overcoming feeling. What’s interesting is
The aspects of poetry vary throughout different poems.
Unlike Euripides, Sophocles characterized his characters as good people with an excess of virtue. This separated Sophocles from Euripides because, “He drew men as they ought to be; Euripides as they are,” (Artistole “Poetics”). What made Sophocles incomparable was his “…ability to blend irony and poetry with effective dramatic technique,” ("Sophocles." Arts and Humanities Through the Eras). Sophocles was known for his beautiful and splendid language.
Love as a theme of the poems actually took a very important place in the collection. These love poems often contain different emotions. There are poems expressing the author fall in love with someone or poems expressing painful feelings about missing someone else. One interesting thing I noticed is that the
