Book Chapter

Alcaeus and Sappho

Yatromanolakis, Dimitrios

2009

Overview

In a letter of 25 July 1907 to his wife, Rainer Maria Rilke drew a connection between an ancient dialogic song associated with Alcaeus and Sappho and an early fifth-century red-figure vase depicting the two Lesbian poets. Rilke writes: ‘Alcaeus was a poet, who on an antique vase stands before Sappho with head lowered and lyre in hand, and one knows that he has said to her: “Weaver of darkness, Sappho, you pure one with the honey-sweet smile, words throng to my lips, but shame holds me back”’. The song that Rilke quotes is a conflation of (a version of) Alcaeus fragment 384 V and Sappho fragment 137 V, while the kalathoid vase he has in mind depicts (on its obverse) two musicians, with their names, Sappho and Alcaeus, inscribed next to their figures (Fig. 5). Holding – or having just struck the strings of – his barbitos, Alcaeus is shown singing. The string of vowels that come out of his mouth do not disclose what he is singing about, but modern scholars – and Rilke – have seen in the lowered position of his head an indication of αἰδώς (‘shame’), thus connecting the image on the vase with the dialogic song between Sappho and Alcaeus that Aristotle quotes in his Rhetoric 1367a – a (fragmentary) song attributed by a number of editors to Sappho (137 V).

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: 6th century / Epic literature / Gays & lesbians / Greek civilization / Musical performances / Narratives / Poetry / Poets / Politics / Rilke, Rainer Maria von (1875-1926) / Society / Traditions
• ISBN: 9780521614764, 9780521849449, 0521849446, 0521614767