On Friday, I'll give you an in-class writing response based on some of the poems in "The Wisdom of Sappho" as well as some of the previous ones. As before, it will connect them to a theoretical approach via Culler. Here are some ideas and things to consider:
* The fragments in "The Wisdom of Sappho" seems to show her responding to or perhaps creating pithy, sage-like advice, the kind mothers would pass on to their daughters. As you read these, consider if this advice sounds familiar to you and where you've heard it before. And if it is familiar, what spin or twist on the advice does Sappho offer?
* Pithy advice like this easily survives fragmentation, since it doesn't need a lot of explanation. Like a fortune in a fortune cookie, it's meant to stand by itself. Which fragments seem to say the most with the least?
* We often offer advice like this in our pop songs, which offer new, catchy melodies over age-old ideas. Which ones do you feel would be sung the most by young girls on the island of Lesbos? What music would accompany it (the mood, rhythm, etc)? Consider that the short fragment on page 83, "Neither the honey nor the bee for me..." sounds like this in the original: "mete moi meli mete melissa." Note the musical alliteration and assonance (the "e" sound).
Also, many of you don't have the most recent edition of this book which includes two newly discovered fragments of Sappho. Here's one of them, very incomplete, but still striking:
How could a person fail to ache,
Queen Kypris, always for the one
she loves and, more than anything
wishes to welcome back again?
Please keep your eagerness in check,
since you have called me here, in vain,
to stab...desire...release...offspring... [these last lines are tattered and almost completely illegible]
Which poem(s) from the book does this fragment most resemble? Does it seem to respond to or finish another incomplete work?
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