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Bat Volute seashell (Cymbiola vespertilio) |
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"Sappho" by Thomas Wentworth Higginson -- (p.1)
text pub. Atlantic Monthly, July, 1871
(see also The Greek Goddesses by T. W. Higginson)
Homeric Hymn to Demeter, English & Ancient Greek, Commentary
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HE voyager in the Aegean Sea,
who has grown weary of the prevailing barrenness of the Grecian Isles,
finds at length, when in sight of Lesbos, something that fulfils his dreams
of beauty. The village of Mitylene,
which now gives its name to the island,
is built upon a rocky promontory, with
a harbor on either hand. Behind it
there are softly wooded hills, swelling to meet the abrupt bases of
the loftier mountains. These hills
are clothed in one dense forest of
silvery olive and darker pomegranate,
and as you ascend their paths, the
myrtle, covered with delicate white blossoms, and exhaling a sweet perfume,
forms a continuous arch above your
head. The upper mountain-heights rise
above vegetation, but their ravines are
dyed crimson with fringing oleanders.
From the summits of their passes you
look eastward upon the pale distances
of Asia Minor, or down upon the calm
Aegean, intensely blue, amid which the
island rests as if inlaid in lapis lazuli.
This decaying Turkish village of
Mitylene marks the site of what was,
twenty-five centuries ago, one of the
great centres of Greek civilization.
The city then covered the whole
breadth of the peninsula, and the grand
canal, that separated it from the mainland, was crossed by bridges of white
marble. The great theatre of Mitylene
was such a masterpiece of architecture,
that the Roman Pompey wished to
copy it in the metropolis of the world.
The city was classed by Horace with
Rhodes, Ephesus, and Corinth. Yet
each of those places we now remember
for itself, while we think of Lesbos
only as the home of Sappho.
It was in the city of Mitylene that
she lived and taught and sang. But to
find her birthplace you must traverse
nearly the length of the island, till you
come to Ereso or Eresus, a yet smaller
village, and Greek instead of Turkish.
To reach it you must penetrate aromatic pine forests, where the deer lurk,
and must ascend mountain paths like
rocky ladders, where the mule alone can
climb. But as you approach the village, you find pastoral beauty all around
you; though the Æolian lyric music is
heard no more, yet the hillsides echo
with sheep bells and with the shepherds'
cries. Among the villagers you find
manners more simple and hospitable
than elsewhere in the Greek islands;
there are more traces of the ancient
beauty of the race; and the women on
festal days wear white veils edged with
a crimson border, and falling to the
waist, so that they look, as they follow
one another to church, like processional figures on an antique urn.
These women are permitted to share
the meals of their husbands, contrary to
the usual practice of rural Greece; and
as a compensation, they make for their
husbands such excellent bread, that it
has preserved its reputation for two
thousand years. The old Greek poet
Archestratus, who wrote a work on the
art of cookery, said that if the gods
were to eat bread, they would send
Hermes to Eresus to buy it; and the
only modern traveller, so far as I know,
who has visited the village, reports the
same excellent receipt to be still in
vogue.[1]
It was among these well-trained women that the most eminent poetess
of the world was born. Let us now
turn and look upon her in her later
abode of Mitylene; either in some
garden of orange and myrtle, such as
once skirted the city, or in that marble
house which she called the dwelling
of the Muses.[2] Let us call around
her, in fancy, the maidens who have
come from different parts of Greece to
learn of her. Anactoria is here from
Miletus, Eunica from Salamis, Gongyla from Colophon, and others from
Pamphylia and the isle of Telos. Erinna and Damophyla study together
the complex Sapphic metres; Atthis
learns how to strike the harp with the
plectron, Sappho's invention; Mnasidica embroiders a sacred robe for the
temple. The teacher meanwhile corrects the measures of one, the notes of
another, the stitches of a third, then
summons all from their work to rehearse together some sacred chorus
or temple ritual; then stops to read a verse of her own, or -- must I say it? -- to denounce a rival preceptress. For
if the too fascinating Andromeda has
beguiled away some favorite pupil to
one of those rival feminine academies
that not only exist in Lesbos, but have
spread as far as illiterate Sparta, then
Sappho may at least wish to remark
that Andromeda does not know how to
dress herself. "And what woman ever
charmed thy mind," she says to the
vacillating pupil, "who wore a vulgar
and tasteless dress, or did not know
how to draw her garments close about
her ankles?"
------
1
Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, by C. T.
Newton, I. 99. London, 1865.
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