'Fearless, bloodless … like the gods': Sappho 31 and the rhetoric of ‘godlike’

Abstract

Poem 31 in our collections of Sappho's fragments is so well-known both through the original version, quoted partially by ‘Longinus’ ( De sublimitate 10.1–3), and through Catullus’ adaptation (no. 51), that it is difficult to achieve sufficient distance from one's preconceptions to permit reappraisal. For the poem has in the modern period elicited such startlingly contradictory responses that one wonders whether we may not all along have been missing, or misconstruing, some point which was obvious enough to Sappho and her listeners. A major source of dissent among modern interpreters of the poem concerns the question of jealousy: is Sappho moved to such convulsions of emotion by jealousy at seeing her beloved girlfriend in intimate colloquy with a man, or is she not? For the situation is, simply put, the following: a man is said to be godlike who sits opposite a certain girl, enjoying her conversation and her laughter. This, says Sappho, makes her boil over with a mixture of passionate emotions. Now one may take these emotions either as a response to the sight of her beloved girlfriend talking to a man (that is, jealousy), or one may refer the emotions described to the love Sappho feels for the girl under ‘normal’ circumstances: the man is simply extraordinarily fortunate (‘like the gods’) in enjoying her affection.

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