Chloe Flynn

February 28, 2002

C. Hardy

Sappho’s Sexuality

Sexuality is a loaded topic of for any discourse. In academic discussions, it is more difficult to openly discuss because public settings are far more scrutinized by modern social norms. Historical study of sexuality, particularly of homosexuality, is notorious for being misrepresented or mistranslated to suit the social norms of the translators. Sappho’s sexuality and desire is no exception to this rule. As Erica Redden points out in her paper "Sappho and the Nature of Eros: A Look at the Construction of Desire in Sapphic Poetry," many scholars have "translated [her poems] with an unyielding heterosexual bent." There is an example of this in Peter Bing and Rip Cohen’s Games of Venus. They chose to translate fragment 102 with a masculine subject: "Sweet mother, I just can’t weave the web/I’m mastered by longing of a boy because of slender Aphrodite." In this version, boy is followed by a footnote that explains that "the Greek is of indeterminate gender and could mean ‘girl." (79) The authors chose to make their text heterosexual while stating in the footnote that it could be a homosexual lament. This heterocentric choice enables the audience to make assumptions about Sappho’s romantic choices. The footnote, which some readers will not look at, challenges these assumptions, but does not remove them entirely. While this translation has only one example of these assumptions, others have attempted to heterosexualize or desexualize her writing entirely.

As Redden points out, without these heterocentic assumptions Sappho’s desire for women is visible. One example of Sappho’s desire that Redden does not mention is in fragment 1: "Whom shall I sweet talk this time/and lead back to your love? Who, Sappho/is doing you wrong? /For if she runs, she’ll soon be chasing;/if she won’t take gifts, sell, she’ll give them;/and if she doesn’t love, soon she will love —/even unwilling" (18-24). In this piece, Aphrodite, as Sappho conceives of her, is offering her the love of the woman she desires. This is just one example of female desire; others include fragments 16 and 31. In her writing, Sappho makes her desire for women clear.

While there is evidence of Sappho’s desire for women, presuming that Sappho only loved women only replaces one set of assumptions with another. A number of Sappho’s fragments, such as fragment 102, use indeterminate gender terms. Other examples include fragments 47, 48, and 130. In each case, we do not know the gender of the person she speaks about. This makes it impossible for us to know her sexual orientation, making claims that she was a lesbian unfounded.