#i wrote this tumblr post about sappho instead of the actual paper i'm supposed to be writing about sappho isn't that embarassing

[transfemhawkeye]

I mean, no. People don't know that Sappho ran a school. one of the most notable aspects of Sappho is that we know virtually nothing about her. She lived in Lesbos in the 7th and early 6th centuries BCE, she wrote lyric poetry-- meaning it was performed in song-- and those two facts nearly exhaust what we know for certain about Sappho.

The idea of Sappho as a teacher is an invention of the 20th century which is all but unsubstantiated, and, considering the pedagogical traditions of the time, pretty anachronistic. ( "Sappho Schoolmistress" by Holt N. Parker is a very good and widely cited article on this). 20th century Sapphic scholarship was very concerned with the question of her sexuality, and the schoolteacher interpretation was designed essentially as a way to portray her as pure and chaste. It's certainly not "the best understanding of the historical context." There's very likely not a single performance context which Sappho fits neatly into; some of her songs were probably performed at wedding ceremonies, and others may have been performed in private, for friends. Given the paucity of information, though, to make a definitive statement any way is intrinsically dishonest.

What we are nearly certain of about Sappho is that she "loved women as deeply as she did music" (a quote from Anne Carson that I'm quite fond of). Although I have my gripes with the way people engage with Sappho today (add that the the list of things I need to write a post about), it would be extremely difficult to, in good faith, argue against the homeroticism of Sappho's work. The single complete poem we have of hers is the Ode to Aphrodite (fragment 1), which clearly expresses romantic desire for a woman, and fragment 31 expresses a similar desire. The question is less whether Sappho had romantic relations with other women, and more so whether we can accurately refer to Sappho as gay, given the social contingency of sexuality. That is a very complicated and nuanced conversation, and I'm far too tired to bring up Foucault right now. Personally, I'm on the constructionist side of this argument, and I'm very hesitant to apply such contemporary terminology to the ancient world. Regardless, the general scholarly consensus is that Sappho loved women, she loved women at a time where it was abnormal for a woman to love women, and in my view, if not lesbian, i think we can fairly call her queer.

Do people know that Sappho ran a school.

Like yeah, people in the centuries afterwards interpreted her poetry very homoerotically to the point of naming lesbianism and the word sapphic after her work, but like. The best understanding of the actual historical context was that she just wrote a poem dedicated to each of her students to celebrate them completing their studies with her.

The queerness is in the interpretation not in the actual historical context. I feel like people don’t know this. Sorry to burst the gay bubble.