Sappho of Lesbos
Arthur E. Weigall
From the Preface, “Every known fragment of Sappho’s poetry is quoted in full in this book, these quotations being scattered throughout the text but printed so as to be easily distinguishable.’ The author gives some account of Sappho’s contemporaries and of the Greek world of her time. The Greek poetess was born circa 612 B.C.E. at Eresos on the island of Lesbos and spent most of her life in Mytilene. Although commonly in the public mind with lesbian love, she was married, had a daughter, and the familiar story of her love for Phaon and suicide by leaping into the sea from the Leucadian cliff is a later fabrication.”
As described in the blog, “BestQuest,” “I’ve just finished reading Arthur Weigall’s Sappho of Lesbos againÂ…I picked it up over 10 years ago and enjoyed it immensely. It’s dangerous to reread a book you’ve once enjoyed, because often you can’t recapture that first impression, but this time I did. Though I saw shortcomings in the book I hadn’t seen earlier, I still think it the best book on the subject I’ve come across. Surprising, because it’s also the earliest. Sappho of Lesbos: Her Life and Times was first published by Thornton and Butterworth in London in 1932.
I’m more aware now that Sappho is a kind of blank template upon which readers imprint their obsessions, rather than just a poet of distinction. She’s a way of recapturing the feeling of longing for a loved one that fills people’s lives, but mostly so long ago. For feminists she’s the world’s first surviving female author, barely surviving at all because of men’s oppression of women and so to be triumphantly celebrated. For homosexuals, she’s the champion of sexual love between women, once practiced on Lesbos but later turned into a thing to be ashamed of, until recent times. For Weigall himself, she is a tragic case of late blooming love, and he spends an inordinate amount of time on her alleged romance with Phaon.”
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Details
| Genre | Autobiography/Biography |
| Publication Date | 1932 |
| Publisher | Garden City Publishing Co. |
| Format | Hardcover |
| No. of Pages | 328 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | NotRated |
| BookID | 11047 |
