This resonance between flowers and the goddess of love informs their presence throughout her work. In “Fragment 2,” they symbolize Aphrodite, and adorn the grove dedicated to her. Flowers (motif)įlowers are perhaps the image that appears most frequently in Sappho’s poetry. Although the emotional example is a powerful argument on its own, it is also an example of how to see Helen’s story as allegorical, an example that the audience can follow. The speaker compares her own desire for a departed lover to Helen’s willingness to abandon everything for her own beloved. She hence becomes an allegorical figure for the audience, who are meant to place themselves in her specific story.

Part of the poem’s assertion is that Helen’s story is representative-that anyone would do as Helen did. The specific figure of Helen is important, but it also stands in for the generic “you” at the beginning of the poem. Helen abandons her home without a thought in order to pursue Paris, the one she loves who has become, to her, the most beautiful thing in the world. “Fragment 16” makes its argument through allegory, using the story of Helen to represent the broader dynamic it attempts to illustrate. By extension, song helps to suggest resonances between apparently disparate people-to find the male in female, the youth in old age. Song thus becomes a way for Sappho’s poetry to imagine a society that unifies everyone. Indeed, the essence of celebration is a bringing-together of many people. The symphony of voices which make up choral performance are not indistinguishable in Sappho’s work, but are instead a varied, yet unified, community of people. In several fragments, Sappho torques this youthful character of song by also characterizing the celebratory character of song as inherently communal. Song also surrounds weddings, which at the time, required especially youthful brides. It is associated with the sweet voices of young women, and is joyful, fresh, and often celebratory. It isn’t surprising that Sappho makes frequent reference to music, given that her poems were written as song lyrics and she herself was, in her time, celebrated as a great musician.

The moon was also associated with the virgin goddess Artemis, who Sappho praises in “Fragment 44Aa.” The lunar cycle echoes women’s menstrual cycles, while the way its silvery light pours out over the earth suggests another model of female fertility independent of the reproductive functions of women’s bodies. It symbolizes the possibility for love across a distance, and the ability to see beauty from afar, themes that resonate with the poet’s devotion both to women who have departed, and to the immortal goddess Aphrodite. Sappho celebrates the beauty of the moon in “Fragment 34,” and again, at length, in “Fragment 96.” In Sappho’s work, the moon isn’t just a glowing celestial body, but rather a complex symbol of the kinds of womanhood and love for women that Sappho’s poetry celebrates.

Sappho fragments