Construction of Desire in Sapphic Poetry Essay -- Sappho Poem Poet Ess

Construction of confide in Sapphic Poetry more scholars in the past, looking at Sappho through the eyes of male experience, give way heaped lukewarm praise on Sapphos chaste poems, have translated them with an retentive heterosexual bent. However, when read through a womans experience, when read through pile who do not wish to hide Sapphos desire for other(a) women or hetero-sexualize it, Sapphos writing takes on a new light, and we can begin to world together her desire and its contexts.In the work of Sappho, the goddess Aphrodite is frequently given homage, reservation her a kind of patron (a matron perhaps?) of lesbian desire. Sappho constructs her desire with tierce distinct components a visual component, a physical component, and a repeat and renewal component. She also modified traditional mythological determinepoints to enhance the theatrical role of her view of desire. Through this woman-centered interpretation of Sappho, I want to place accent on Sapphos lesbian i dentity and reconstruct the desire that she felt towards other women.Sappho frequently gives poetical outer space to Aphrodite, the goddess of Love and Desire. In fragment 2, Sappho creates this space by inviting Aphrodite in. ... to this sacred/temple, where you have a pretty grove/of apple trees, and alters smoking with incense/here icy water echoes through the apple/boughs, shadows of roses cover/the ground, from shimmering leaves/a heavy sleep descends. Author Jane Snyder, in her declare translation of Sapphos works, remarks that lesbian desire, as Sappho envisions it, blossoms in a nurturing space chthonic the benevolent patronage of the Cyprian goddess Aphrodite herself. Snyder also states that Sappho fragment 2 creates a private female space in the descripti... ...helming vehemence that resembles a wind with the force of a tornado, which completely overpowers the body.Sapphos view of lesbian is very unique and unmatched, for and then we have very little else that gives us the language of desire amongst ii women in the ancient world. Under Aphrodites homage, with components of visual, physical, and repetitious components, and with her unique view on traditional narratives, Sappho gives us her view of desire between two women. I hope that my woman-centered reading of Sappho helped reconstruct her lesbian identity and conceptualise her desire and passion for other women.Works CitedBing, Peter and Rip Cohen. Games of genus Venus An Anthology of Greek and Roman Erotic Verse from Sappho to Ovid. London Routledge, 1991.Snyder, Jane McIntosh. Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho. New York Columbia University Press, 1997.