The Tenth Muse

This post is about the Sapphic meter, but I cannot get to that before saying a few things about its creator by way of introduction.

I don’t know what you may have heard about Sappho, but it’s probably all wrong so just delete it from your memory. Perhaps you have read or been told she was a Lesbian, which is perfectly true. She lived on the island of Lesbos, born sometime around 630 B.C. Both the towns of Eresos and Mytilene claim the honour being her birthplace, and an honour indeed it is, for this poetess’ fame was so great in the ancient world, that she was popularly styled the “Tenth Muse.” She also belonged to the great canon of the “Nine Lyric Poets” in antiquity. In short, she was very well esteemed.

“But hold on,” I can almost hear you say, “Wasn’t she also the other sort of Lesbian?” No. Rather than listening to what modern “scholars” have to say on the subject, why don’t we look at what people had to say in the ancient world?

“What else was the love of the Lesbian woman except Socrates' art of love? [That is to say, “Platonic.” For further details consult that dusty thing nobody likes to use anymore called a dictionary, or better yet, read Plato’s Symposium] For they seem to me to have practiced love each in their own way, she that of women, he that of men. For they say that both loved many and were captivated by all things beautiful. What Alcibiades and Charmides and Phaedrus were to him, Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria were to the Lesbian.” (Cassius Maximus Tyrius)

Furthermore, even if she was a Lesbian of the “other type”, (and that would seem very unlikely since we know she was married to a very wealthy and politically important man, Cercolas of Andros, and had at least one daughter, Cleis,) it would not matter. See, over here we like to read and appreciate good literature based on its ability to represent human experience and contribute to the moral and social formation of the reader, and unlike feminist-marxist-liberal-queers, we have no need to find our narcissistic selves reflected in everything we read in order to find it of interest.

Other things we know about Sappho are that her family was important enough that they were all exiled to Sicily sometime around 600 B.C., (in case you did not know, Sicily was considered a land far far away at the edge of the world,) and she was famous enough even during her own life time on account of her poetry, that the Sicilians were thrilled to have her as their guest and erected a statue to her honour.

For the most part though, (and apparently she lived to a ripe old age,) her life was rather ordinary. She did not have fascinating adventures in Egypt like her brothers, but spent her time at home, where she ran some sort of finishing school for upper class girls. Her poetry concerns itself with the ordinary experiences around her: marriage, love, friendship, family. One can say that her poetry is akin to what Mary Cassatt did in her painting. By the way, I like Cassatt’s art a lot.

Sappho wrote many poems, and in antiquity, the standard collection of all her works filled nine volumes. Almost all of it is lost. We have only one complete poem, and several fragments, some of which are only one verse long. The majority of authors from the ancient world suffered the same fate, including the “divine Sappho, tenth Muse.” This should give you an idea of just how much has perished. I think it a great pity.

Alright, now we get down to business and talk about the Sapphic metre. It is the second most popular in the Latin Church hymnal, and the same metre used by the hymn we looked at yesterday, in honour of Saint Benedict.

Classical metres, and usually Church metres, are developed by grouping repeating patterns of short and long syllables, not accent, as is the case in a lot of mediaeval poetry and in the vernacular languages. Learning to distinguish long syllables from short requires a little bit of practice in the beginning, but ultimately is not hard to do at all. I will save that for another post however, since this one is already too long. Anybody still reading this?

Sappho wrote lyric poetry, which is distinguished from the other “type” of poetry in the classical world (mostly epic) both in its subject matter and its metre. Lyric metre consists of groups of verses known as cola, (colon in the singular) arranged into stanzas. If we take the following symbol ˘ to mean a short syllable, and this ˉ a long syllable, cola are built up around the following pattern ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ , known as a nucleus. The nucleus of a lyric colon is always the same. To the nucleus can be added a pattern of short and long syllables in front known as a base, and one at the end known as a tail.

Sappho developed a colon, known as the Sapphic hendecasyllable (because it has 11 syllables) that looks like this:

ˉ ˘ ˉ x    ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ    ˘ ˉ ˉ

I’m sure you can see the nucleus in the middle. The “x” at the end of the base means that the syllable can be either short or long. No other variety is permitted in the colon.

Another colon which Sappho used but did not invent is called the Adonic. It looks like this:

ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ    ˉ

Notice how we have a nucleus (it is the one thing which can never change) but no base, and the tail is only one syllable long.

Now like I said before, lyric metres are composed of cola arranged into stanzas. The stanza which Sappho developed and used very often also bears her name. The Sapphic Stanza, or Sapphics for short, consists of three Sapphic hendecasyllables followed by one Adonic. So it looks like this:

ˉ ˘ ˉ x    ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ    ˘ ˉ ˉ
ˉ ˘ ˉ x    ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ    ˘ ˉ ˉ
ˉ ˘ ˉ x    ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ    ˘ ˉ ˉ
               ˉ ˘ ˘ ˉ    ˉ

Now if you compare this with yesterday’s hymn to Saint Benedict, you will be able to check that it follows this pattern. You might even be able to figure out how to tell long syllables from short syllables. Try it.