For Monday: Sappho, Stung With Love: Desire and Death-Longing (pp.21-29) & Troy (p.59)

Helen of Troy from the 2004 film, Troy

READINGS: Desire and Death-Longing (pp.21-29) & Troy (p.59)

Answer TWO of the following as before: 

Q1: Compare the following translation by Anne Carson with the poem on page 21 that begins "Like a gale smiting an oak." (each stanza on this page is a separate incomplete poem):

Eros shook my

mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees. 

Though both are the same poem, the translation almost suggests otherwise. What does our translator, Aaron Poochigian, add to the poem that the one here leaves out? Which ones seems to call more attention to itself? Which one seems to you the richer (or more literary) experience?

Q2: Try to recreate the context for the poem on page 23 that begins "That fellow strikes me as god's double..." which is almost a complete poem. What relationship does the speaker have with the two other people in the poem? Can we assume or guess at any of the genders in the poem? Is the speaker a man or a woman? We know that one of the characters is a "fellow," but is there anything else? What causes the speaker's jealousy?

Q3: Which poems seem the most autobiographical of the poet's experience? While we can't really say who Sappho was with any certainty, are their poems that seem too personal to be complete fabrications? Discuss at least one poem and explain where you see more truth than fiction.

Q4: One of Sappho's most famous poems (almost complete) is the one on page 59, which begins "Some call ships, infantry or horsemen..." It's one of the few poems where Sappho uses allusions to Greek myth, in this case, Helen of Troy (who abandoned her family to run away with Paris to Troy, which started the Trojan War). How does she envision and relate to Helen? In her eyes, what made Helen do what she did? Would Sappho do the same?