IX Sappho in Latin Translations, in Spanish, and in German
We have spoken of Sappho’s influence on the ancient Latin authors and especially of Catullus’ translation and elaboration of the second ode. Horace also may have translated whole odes, but we have only Catullus’ preserved. In later days many of the editions of Athenaeus, Dionysius, Pseudo-Longinus, Hephaestion, and of the Anthology included Latin versions, and many other writers have Latinized the fragments of Sappho, especially Ausonius, Stephanus, Thomas Venatorius, Lubinus, Poliziano, and Thomas Moore. One of Moore’s two versions of Plato’s epigram is quoted here:
Musas esse novem referunt, sed prorsus aberrant.
Lesbia jam Sappho Pieriis est decima.
Among the Latin translators of the odes have been Elias Andreas, Simone Bircovio, Professor Le Fèvre (Tanaquillus Faber), Zacharias Pearce, Valentini, Barbagallo and Allucci, Ambrocio, Emilio Porto and Birkow, etc. Gorsse, A. Stace, Vossius, and Henri Etienne and others have rendered the second ode into Latin.
Spanish. In Spain in 1794 there was a translation of Sappho and many other Greek lyric poets into Castilian verse by D. Jos. y D. Bernabé Canga Arguelles; and in 1832 appeared a prose and verse translation of Anacreon, Sappho, and Tyrtaeus by D. Jose del Castilla y Ayensa. Recently in Paris (1913) has been printed a modern Spanish version by T. Meabe. But in general Sappho has had but little influence on Spanish and German literatures, as compared with her great effect on Italian, French, and English. Mention, however, must not be omitted of the account of Sappho by A. Fernandez Merino. It is written in Spanish and discusses many of the Sapphic problems, giving full references.
German. In 1710 Philander von der Linde translated the second ode, and in 1732 Hudemann translated a few of the fragments, and there were good German editions of all Sappho’s fragments as early as the careful one by Christian Wolf (1734). In 1744 appeared Neukirch’s translation of the first two odes, and in 1746 Götz published his translation in rhymeless verse. In the same year appeared Stählin’s translations. In 1764 “the German Sappho,” Die Karshin, mentions Sappho five or six times and Phaon, but has no direct echoes. In 1776 Meinecke put Sappho into verse; in 1782 Ramler; in 1783 Günther Wahl. In 1787 verse translations were published at Berlin and Liebau, and in 1793 Conz published his translation of the fragment, To an Ignorant Girl. In 1809 Friedrich Gottlieb Born edited an edition for schools; in the same year C. Braun translated the fragments; in 1810 Volger published his very important and rare edition with commentary and musical schemes. He was soon followed by Welcker’s defense (1816), which Goethe mentions four times. But Sappho’s poetry remained a closed book to Goethe.166 There were many succeeding editions or translations: Degen (1821), Neue (1827), Brockhausen’s verse imitations (1827), Richter (1833), Jäger (1836), Gerhard’s free rendering for German student songs (1847), Köchly (1851), Hartung (1857), Weise (1878), Theodor Bergk’s great edition of 1882 reprinted in 1914; Schultz-Geffcken’s Altgriechische Lyrik im deutschen Reim (1895), Stowasser, Griechenlyrik in deutsche Verse übertragen (1910); and Wilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides (1913). There is a good German account of Sappho by Paul Brandt in his Sappho, ein Lebensbild aus den Frühlingstagen altgriechischer Dichtung (1905). In Griechische Lyrik (1920) Erich Bethe in a good chapter on Sappho translates into rhymed verse the first two odes and several of the fragments (E. 99, 119, 135, 114, 54, 71, as well as the new papyrus fragments E. 83, 149, 150, 148, 154).
I can quote here only the new fragment 83:
...
Weinend hat sie Abschied genommen,
Immer wieder sprach sie so:
‘Hartes, Sappho, muss ich leiden,
Muss dich lassen, muss nun scheiden.’
Und ich hab zu ihr gesprochen:
‘Lebe wohl und denke mein!
Wisse, dass dich treu geleite
Meine Liebe in die Weite!’
Denn stets werde ich gedenken,
Auch wenn du es einst vergisst,
Wieviel Schönes wir genossen,
Wie du oft um schlanke Sprossen
Veilchen wandest, Rosen bandest
Und du mich damit bekränzt,
Und die duft’gen Purpurblüten
Deinen zarten Hals umglühten...
There are only a few distinct cases of Sappho’s influence on the great German poets, and so I limit myself to comparing Grillparzer’s melodramatic adaptation of the Aphrodite ode with the beautiful rendering by the German lyric poet of modern times, Geibel, who as a tutor in Athens learned to love Lesbian lyrics and Greek literature, though he could not reproduce the wonderful soft sound of the Aeolic Greek:
Golden-thronende Aphrodite,
Listenersinnende Tochter des Zeus,
Nicht mit Angst und Sorgen belaste,
Hocherhabne! dies pochende Herz!
Sondern komm, wenn jemals dir lieblich
Meiner Leier Saiten getönt,
Deren Klängen du öfters lauschtest,
Verlassend des Vaters goldenes Haus.
Du bespanntest den schimmernden Wagen,
Und deiner Sperlinge fröhliches Paar,
Munter schwingend die schwärzlichen Flügel,
Trug dich vom Himmel zur Erde herab.
Und du kamst; mit lieblichem Lächeln,
Göttliche! auf der unsterblichen Stirn,
Fragtest du, was die Klagende quäle,
Warum erschalle der Flehenden Ruf?
Was das schwärmende Herz begehre,
Wen sich sehne die klopfende Brust
Sanft zu bestricken im Netz der Liebe;
‘Wer ist’s, Sappho, der dich verletzt?
Flieht er dich jetzt, bald wird er dir folgen;
Verschmäht er Geschenke, er gibt sie noch selbst,
Liebt er dich nicht, gar bald wird er lieben,
Folgsam gehorchend jeglichem Wink!’
Komm auch jetzt und löse den Kummer,
Der mir lastend den Busen beengt,
Hilf mir erringen, nach was ich ringe,
Sei mir Gefährtin im lieblichen Streit!
(Grillparzer)
Die du thronst auf Blumen, o schaumgeborne
Tochter Zeus’, listsinnende, hör’ mich rufen,
Nicht in Schmach und bitterer Qual, o Göttin,
Lass mich erliegen.
Sondern huldvoll neige dich mir, wenn jemals
Du mein Flehn willfährigen Ohrs vernommen,
Wenn du je, zur Hilfe bereit, des Vaters
Halle verlassen.
Raschen Flugs auf goldenem Wagen zog dich
Durch die Luft dein Taubengespann, und abwärts
Floss von ihm der Fittiche Schatten dunkelnd
Über den Erdgrund.
So dem Blitz gleich, stiegst du herab und fragtest,
Sel’ge, mit unsterblichem Antlitz lächelnd:
‘Welch ein Gram verzehrt dir das Herz, warum doch
Riefst du mich, Sappho?
Was beklemmt mit sehnlicher Pein so stürmisch
Dir die Brust? Wen soll ich ins Netz dir schmeicheln?
Welchem Liebling schmelzen den Sinn? Wer wagt es,
Deiner zu spotten?
Flieht er: wohl, so soll er dich bald verfolgen;
Wehrt er stolz der Gabe, so soll er geben;
Liebt er nicht, bald soll er für dich entbrennen,
Selbst ein Verschmähter.’
Komm denn, komm auch heute, den Gram zu lösen!
Was so heiss mein Busen ersehnt, o lass es
Mich empfahn, Holdselige, sei du selbst mir
Bundesgenossin!
(Geibel)
In 1793, Franz von Kleist at the age of twenty-four had written a tragedy Sappho, a typical eighteenth century play of intrigue, an immature performance, however, lacking in clear portrayals of character and in dramatic development. In 1816 F. W. Gubitz had published an unimportant monodrama Sappho, which was almost a caricature of what a dramatic work of art should be. In these dramas there was little of the real Sappho, but the case is different with Grillparzer’s Sappho, which was given April 21, 1818, in Vienna with great success. Some of the motives of von Kleist reappear in Grillparzer, and there are resemblances in language and thought. He may have used Amalie vom Imhoff’s Die Schwestern von Lesbos (1801), where there is a reference to the Leucadian Leap. But he rises to higher heights, and if he did use the above authors, their “crude ore,” as one critic has expressed it, “yields pure gold.” Grillparzer tells us himself in his autobiography167 how he conceived the idea of the drama. On June 29, 1817, he was strolling along the banks of the Danube when at the entrance to the Prater, the great park of Vienna, he met Dr. Joël, who remarked that Weigel, the orchestra-leader, wanted a libretto. Dr. Joël stated that Sappho would be a good subject, and Grillparzer immediately replied that it certainly would make a good tragedy. They parted company, and Grillparzer walked deep into the Prater, and when he returned home late in the evening the plan of Sappho was complete. The next day he went to the Imperial Library and secured a copy of the extant fragments of Sappho, in which he found one of the two complete poems, which is addressed to the goddess of love, entirely suited to his purpose. He translated it at once, and the very next morning began work on the drama. The spirit of the play is German, not Greek, and takes some motives from Goethe’s Tasso. But Sappho is depicted as a woman rather than a poetess, and the story of the tragedy is really that of an unhappy woman disappointed in love. While it is a genuine love-tragedy, it also portrays the hard lot of the poet and the struggle between art and life even more vigorously than Goethe’s Tasso did. At the very beginning of the play Sappho has been crowned with the wreath of victory at the Olympic games and meets Phaon, who is represented as only slightly younger. Carried away by her triumph, he throws himself into her arms, only to spurn her later. To Phaon she sings (Act I, vi) Sappho’s hymn to Aphrodite, which we have just quoted, with a few changes to adapt it to the situation. Of course there were no such contests at Olympia in Sappho’s day, and Sappho’s victory is a pure invention. Neither was the original hymn addressed to Phaon, nor did the usual legend say that Sappho cast herself from a Lesbian cliff; but Grillparzer must preserve the three unities, and such dramatic licenses and many anachronisms, such as the mention of Croesus who lived after Sappho’s time, are permissible to a master of dramatic technique. What interests us is that Grillparzer actually studied Sappho’s fragments and was much assisted by them. In Act I, lines 173 ff., he seems to be referring to the Adonis fragments, including the one on the loneliness of midnight, and to the verses which name Andromeda and Atthis:
vom schönen Jüngling,
Der Liebesgöttin liebeglüh’nden Sang,
Die Klage einsam hingewachter Nacht,
Von Andromedens und von Atthis’ Spielen.
The fragment (E. 74) is echoed in lines 671-2:
Denn, wenn auch heftig manchmal, rasch und bitter,
Doch gut ist Sappho, wahrlich lieb und gut.
While Grillparzer is one of the few German poets who has imitated the content of Sappho’s songs, many have tried the Sapphic strophe with success, especially Wilbrandt in the Adonis song, in Der Meister von Palmyra:
Also will’s der ewige Zeus; du musst nun
Niedersteigen unter die blüh’nde Erde,
Musst die dunkle Persephoneia küssen,
Schöner Adonis.
Many a German novel refers to Sappho, but without any special knowledge of her fragments. One of the most interesting, which adapts with many changes the Rhodopis story, has been translated into English, An Egyptian Princess, by George Ebers (A. L. Burt Co., New York, second German edition 1868). Here Charaxus actually marries Rhodopis and names their child Cleïs, who in turn has a child Sappho whose love-scenes with Bartja make up most of the novel.
“Alcaeus, the greatest poet of his day, and Charaxus, the brother of that Sappho whose odes it was our Solon’s last wish to learn by heart, came here to Naukratis, which had already long been the flourishing center of commercial communication between Egypt and the rest of the world. Charaxus saw Rhodopis, and soon loved her so passionately that he gave an immense sum to secure her from the mercenary Xanthus, who was on the point of returning with her to his own country; Sappho wrote some biting verses, derisive of her brother and his purchase, but Alcaeus on the other hand, approved, and gave expression to this feeling in glowing songs on the charms of Rhodopis. And now Sappho’s brother, who had till then remained undistinguished among the many strangers at Naukratis, became a noted man through Rhodopis. His house was soon the center of attraction to all foreigners, by whom she was overwhelmed with gifts. The king Hophra, hearing of her beauty and talent, sent for her to Memphis, and offered to buy her of Charaxus, but the latter had already long, though secretly, given Rhodopis her freedom, and loved her far too well to allow of a separation. She, too, loved the handsome Lesbian and refused to leave him despite the brilliant offers made to her on all sides. At length Charaxus made this wonderful woman his lawful wife, and continued to live with her and her little daughter Kleïs in Naukratis, until the Lesbian exiles were recalled to their native land by Pittakus. He then started homeward with his wife, but fell ill on the journey, and died soon after his arrival at Mitylene. Sappho, who had derided her brother for marrying one beneath him, soon became an enthusiastic admirer of the beautiful widow and rivaled Alcaeus in passionate songs to her praise.”
We may mention also in closing this chapter the lyrics, published in a small volume, called Stürme, by Carmen Sylva, the nom de plume of Rumania’s late queen, because in these lyrics the tragedy of Sapphic love has a German political rather than a Lesbian setting.