Forty-three ways of looking at Sappho

Or at one Sappho poem, from c. 50 BCE to 2023.

Missing from this gathering is my favorite: from 2002, it’s Stanley Lombardo’s translation, which begins,

Look at him, just like a god,
that man sitting across from you,
whoever he is

“Whoever he is”: perfect haughty contempt.

I suppose that in the new Texas order of things, this poem, like Aristophanes’s discourse on love, would not be permitted. But I suppose Catullus’s version of the poem, which might be said to straighten Sappho’s original, would be allowed. Poor Texas.

Related reading
All OCA Sappho posts (Pinboard)