Construction of Desire in Sapphic Poetry Essay -- Sappho Poem Poet Ess

Construction of Desire in Sapphic rhymeMany scholars in the past, looking at Sappho by means of the eyes of masculine experience, know heaped lukewarm praise on Sapphos chaste poems, have translated them with an unyielding heterosexual bent. However, when read through with(predicate) a womans experience, when read through people who do not wish to hide Sapphos relish for separate women or hetero-sexualize it, Sapphos writing takes on a new light, and we can have to piece together her passion and its contexts.In the work of Sappho, the goddess Aphrodite is frequently wedded homage, making her a kind of patron (a matron perhaps?) of lesbian desire. Sappho constructs her desire with three distinct components a visual component, a physical component, and a repetition and renewal component. She also modified traditional mythological viewpoints to invoke the image of her view of desire. Through this woman-centered interpretation of Sappho, I want to vagabond emphasis on Sapphos lesbian individuality and reconstruct the desire that she felt towards other women.Sappho frequently gives poetical situation to Aphrodite, the goddess of Love and Desire. In subdivision 2, Sappho creates this space by inviting Aphrodite in. ... to this sacred/temple, where you have a pretty plantation/of apple trees, and alters smoking with incense/here icy water echoes through the apple/boughs, shadows of roses cover/the ground, from shimmering leaves/a heavy sleep descends. Author Jane Snyder, in her own translation of Sapphos works, remarks that lesbian desire, as Sappho envisions it, blossoms in a nurturing space under the benevolent patronage of the Cyprian goddess Aphrodite herself. Snyder also states that Sappho fragment 2 creates a private female space in the descripti... ...helming force that resembles a go with the force of a tornado, which completely overpowers the body.Sapphos view of lesbian is very whimsical and unmatched, for indeed we have very little else that gives us the language of desire among two women in the ancient world. Under Aphrodites homage, with components of visual, physical, and repetitious components, and with her unique view on traditional narratives, Sappho gives us her view of desire between two women. I hope that my woman-centered reading of Sappho helped reconstruct her lesbian identity and conceptualize her desire and passion for other women.Works CitedBing, Peter and line Cohen. Games of Venus An Anthology of Greek and Roman Erotic Verse from Sappho to Ovid. London Routledge, 1991.Snyder, Jane McIntosh. lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho. New York Columbia University Press, 1997.