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Sappho Fr. 31: Anxiety attack or Love Declaration?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. Marcovich
Affiliation:
University of illinois

Extract

In a recent article1 the psychiatrist George Devereux reached the following conclusion about fr. 31: Sappho as a ‘masculine lesbian’ experiences ‘a perfect, “text-book case”, anxiety attack’, elicited by ‘a love-crisis’, viz. by the presence of a male rival for the attention of Sappho's favourite girl. He then sums up: ‘In fact, even if there existed no explicit tradition concerning Sappho's lesbianism, her reaction to her male rival would represent for the psychiatrist prima facie evidence of her perversion’ (p. 21).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

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References

page 19 note 1 The Nature of Sappho‘s Seizure in Fr. 31 LP as Evidence of Her Inversion’, CQ. N.s. xx (1970), 1731.Google Scholar

page 19 note 2 Because of the hiatus caused by 2 I accept Page's conjecture (p. 21) | But I prefer writing : P of ‘Longinus’(De sublimitate 10. 2 Russell) has . I take . apogr. to be the fruit of some 15th- or 16th-century scholar.

For the order A … Kal B cf. Sappho, fr. 16. 17 f.; Alcaeus, fr. 283. 7 f. This re has no effect on the meaning of 2 what-soever, contra Wills, G. (‘Sappho 31 and Catullus 51’, Gr., Rom. and Byz. Studies, viii, 1967, 168Google Scholar: ‘ must be taken as general,. not individual’). Wills's reference (n. 3) to Denniston (Gr. Part.2 521–3) is misleading: in fr. 31 is a conjunction (both sits and listens’), while the Homeric (in ) is an emphatic particle (cf. LSJ, s.v. B).

page 20 note 1 Wiener Eranos (Vienna, 1909), 158.Google Scholar

page 20 note 2 Saffo e Pindaro (Bari, 1935), 46–9.Google Scholar

page 20 note 3 Annali delta Scuola Norm. Sup. di Pisa, ser. ii, vii (1938), 63.Google Scholar

page 20 note 4 Rendiconti dell'Istituto Lombardo (Milan), lxxv (1942), 414.Google Scholar

page 20 note 5 As Wills, p. 183, already pointed out.

page 21 note 1 Sappho von eitwn herrschenden Vorurtheil befreit (Göttingen), 68 = Kl. Schriften, ii (Bonn, 1845), 99 n. 45.Google Scholar

page 21 note 2 Sapphonis Mytilenaeae Fragmenta (Berlin) 29 f., quoted by Page, p. 21.Google Scholar

page 21 note 3 Studia Sapphica (Eus. Suppl. 6 [1929]), 9 ff.

page 21 note 4 Hermes, lXVI (1931), 72–6.Google Scholar

page 21 note 5 Sappho und Simonides (Berlin, 1913), 56.Google Scholar

page 21 note 6 GLP 213 = 2nd edn. (1961), 185.

page 21 note 7 The names of Archeanassa and Pleistodice (from P. Oxy. 2292 fr. 213 and 2357) may be added to those mentioned by Page, pp. 133–6.

page 21 note 8 Greek Lyric Poetry (Macmillan, 1967), 271.Google Scholar

page 22 note 1 Supplements by Page, pp. 138 f.

page 23 note 1 RFIC XX (1942), 115 f.Google Scholar

page 23 note 2 The playful, love-exciting fluttering of the girl in fr. 22. 14 does not seem to contradict this.

page 23 note 3 Cf. Plato, Symp. 197 d 7 Eρωs … ίμέου, ; Pind. O. 1. 41 .

page 23 note 4 ‘Longinus’, On Sublimity, translated by Russell, D.A. (Oxford, 1965), 14.Google Scholar

page 24 note 1 There is another misconception which must be dismissed: that in line 5 refers to the whole preceding statement (i.e. not only to the main clause beginning with μοι). The first to suppose so was G. Gallavotti (p.117). But his interpretation seems to depend on the reading shared by Voss, Bekker, Ahrens, which he adopts: ‘Quell uomo … si sente di essere uguale a un dio, cosi felices e tranquillo come è; e questor veramente mi ha stupita nell'animo.’ Now, to refute Gallavotti's inter pretation it is sufficient to say that the reading is far from being likely (al-though the author still seems to insist on it: cf. his Saffo e Alceo Collana di studi greci, x, Naples, 1947, i. 79; RFIC xciv 1966, 257–67Google Scholar): stands only in Apollon. Dysc. De pronomine, p. 82. 17 Schneider, against μοι in Apollon., p. 59. 10; in ‘Longinus’ 10. 2, and in Catullus 51. 1 as well.

Both del Grande, C. (Euphrosyne, ii 1959, 186)Google Scholar and G. Wills (p. 183) read poi and refer : ‘This makes the most probable reading of our text … “The fact that the man is godlike enough to sit there stuns me” (,)’ (Wills). The following objections may be raised to their viewpoints:

(a) If one refers then a consequent equation will be this one (instead of that given by Wills): ‘The fact that the man sitting there seems to me godlike stuns me.’ Now, it is highly unlikely for Sappho to be stunned by her own statement, just advanced with such an emphasis. Nor is this statement so shocking as to provoke her ‘stunning’, ‘stupire’.

(b) Wills's interpretation is aggravated by an unlikely change of the transmitted ; text (pp. 185, 192 and n. 35). He first i changed the transmitted 5 (‘Long.’ P, slightly and convincingly emended by Lobel into ) into ; then he saw himself compelled to add the missing μ’ in the next line 6 καρδίαυ <μ'> έυ . The reason for all this lies in: Wills's desire to save Welcker's improbable interpretation: ‘mir würde es gewiβ (denn der Aorist hat diesen Nachdruck) das Herz erschüttern’(cf. Wills, p. 184: ‘ … then …κέυ…would give Welcker's sense to the passage …‘).

Wills's ‘fatal objection’ to Lobel's always introduces its asseverative clause’. I do not think this objection is a fatal one: in Alcaeus, fr. 344. 1 , ‘I know for sure’, these particles are not initial either; both here and in Sappho, fr. 31 the reason for the unusual order is the pressure of the metre. By the way, there is a sheer mistake in Denniston (Gr. Part.1 350 f.): ‘According to Ditten-berger (l.e., p. 329, n. 4) occurs fifteen times in the Parmenides, as often as in all the remaining dialogues of Plato put together.’. In fact, Dittenberger, (Hermes, xvi 1881, 323Google Scholar n. 2) speaks of , not of .

page 26 note 1 Cf. Turyn, pp. 43–57; Page, p. 29 n. 1.

page 26 note 2 Cf. Archilochus, fr. 104 D., and Bowra, GLP 218 f. = 2nd edn., pp. 188 f.

page 26 note 3 'πιδεύηυ Ahrens, Beattie, A.J. (Mnemos. ser. 4. ix 1956, 108 f.Google Scholar: = Attic ), accepted by Wills, p. 192: πιδεύσηυ ‘Long.’ P: 'πιδεύης Hermann, accepted by Lobel, Page, Bowra, Russell, et al.

page 27 note 1 SIFC xv (1939), 194 n. 3.Google Scholar

page 28 note 1 Cf. Ferrari, W., SIFC xiv (1937), 143 n. 2.Google Scholar

page 29 note 1 Heitsch's argument, p. 285 n. 9.

page 29 note 2 is Lobel's convincing emendation of the transmitted .

page 30 note 1 Miller, M.E., Mélanges de litt. gr. (Paris, 1868), 47.Google Scholar

page 30 note 2 Einleitung in die attische Tragödie (1889), 58 n. 18.Google Scholar

page 31 note 1 Cf. also Lycophron 1385–7:

Both improper acts of Elegeis, this one in Asia Minor and that in Athens while singing the oracle (cf. Tzetzes, p. 381. 28 παρα-γευόμευος ; (sc. Neleus), λεγύσης) Seem to have magic meaning; cf. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 826 n. 1 and Crusius, in RE v. 2258–60 (Elegeis).

page 31 note 2 His new suggestion, ‘but where a more general heroic notion is probably understood at first—μένος, stood at first-, for instance’, is disproved by the very physical epithet παχύ.

page 31 note 3 Cf. Merkelbach, R., Philol. ci (1957), 10.Google Scholar

page 31 note 4 As, among others, Campbell, p. 284, has pointed out.

page 32 note 1 Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Srpske narodne pjesme (The Serbian Folk Songs) i, no. 32 (Vienna, 1841 = Belgrade, Nolit, 1969, p. 20): ‘Kad mladoženja ulazi u kuću djevojačku’ (‘On the occasion when the bridegroom enters the bride's house’):

Sniska strea, visok djuvegija, prijo naša, devojačka majko! streu, novi prijatelji, da naš Ranko ne polomi perje!