Being above the earth
Holds no pleasure anymore.
I long for the lotus-covered banks
Of Acheron.
—SAPPHO
THE FIRST DEATH OF a contemporary strikes a group of friends like lightning. Grandparents die, parents die, warriors die in battle and wives in childbirth, but when a girl of fifteen takes her own life, her friends suddenly feel their mortality. Death was a myth before. Now it is a reality.
Dica asked, “Why did we not save her, Sappho?”
“Because we did not realize how deep was her despair,” I said. “We cannot save everyone.”
“Why? Why? Why?” Atthis cried.
“Because the gods are capricious and the spinners both spin and snip. Life is distributed unequally.”
“Tell us we will never die!” cried Anactoria.
“If I told you that, I would be lying, and as your teacher I will never lie.”
We huddled together for warmth in my big bed and reminisced about Timas’ winning ways.
“Why did the gods allow death into the world?” asked Atthis.
“Because they are jealous of mortals and want to control our fates,” I said. “Accept it and make songs about it. That is your best revenge.”
Perhaps Timas’ suicide shattered us because it was a harbinger of everyone’s fate. My students tasted freedom, only to have it snatched away. The plan had been to make them skillful adepts of the arts before they turned good wives. But wives in those days were little better than slaves. And art teaches liberty. It is a paradox. We teach maidens to sing and then we give them husbands to silence them. This breeds a desperation that leads to clinging crushes, simultaneous menstruation, hysteria, melancholy. A group of young women together is sweet yet incendiary. There is so much smothered passion threatening to explode.
The more we closed ourselves off from strangers, the more the rumors flew about us. Rhodopis had been poisoning all of Mytilene against us. Charaxus was using her slanders to keep from paying my share of profits from the family vineyards. Whatever dangers I had braved among strangers, my family was a more insidious foe.
Even Pittacus came to call on me in Eresus to warn me of the trouble I was courting.
“Your mother loved you, Sappho, and I swore to her to pardon and protect you, but the rumors that now fly about you in Mytilene make my promise hard to keep. Your fame is the glory of Lesbos, but it is turning to scandal as I watch.”
“Since when is it a crime for girls to sing together? In my youth we were always famed for our swaying choruses of young girls.”
“Sappho, you’ve been away a long time. While you explored the world, many changes occurred in Lesbos. There was an outbreak of fever that carried away half our citizens. Some said the Athenians and their poisoned spears caused it. In the Troad they were reputed to anoint their spearheads with offal from rotting corpses. Some said the fever was spread by the influx of slaves brought home from the war. Thousands died of this fever, vomiting blood, their faces turning black as earth. Those of us who remained—all of us—became less carefree than in former times. Symposia began to be seen as dangerous places of infection. Songs were snares. Even the pageants of dancing maidens were curtailed. People became less fond of the lyric art and saw it as a danger. They wanted patriotic songs, songs of war and battle, songs of righteousness and revenge. Your mother and I bemoaned this—but we understood. The carefree Lesbos we had known was gone. The climate here has changed. Once we were famed for our easy and luxurious life, now our people are more careful. A long war changes everything.”
“Then we must bring back the Lesbos of old!”
“You can’t bring back the past. The carefree Lesbos of my youth, where girls sang to girls and the entire world was made for wine and song, will never come again. We have other struggles now. We have to repopulate our island. We can’t afford the luxuries of old. Oh, nobody regrets it more than I do. But we must be realistic.”
“Does that mean song is superfluous?”
“Not all song, Sappho, but the sort of song that celebrates love alone is old-fashioned. We need songs now to inspire the people to community solidarity and unity, songs that celebrate the great polis, not songs for lovers alone. Love is selfish. Rebuilding our city is of the essence. Pray teach your girls to sing of civic pride, of Mytilene and its glory, of the joys of wars won and peace achieved. Such songs are needed now—not silly love songs. Look—you are a great singer—you can sing of anything.”
Had I not heard all this before?
“Pittacus—what would you have me sing?”
“Songs about my triumphs in the war—that sort of thing.”
“And if I go on singing of love?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to banish you again—and all your girls.”
When I went to see Cleis, it was no better. I began to see that my fame embarrassed her. When fragments of my songs were quoted, she blushed.
“I wish you could write other kinds of songs, Mother—or else just be a grandmother. Hector needs you. Why do you have to write songs at all?”
And I tried to be a good grandmother. I would stay in my daughter’s house, trying to make myself useful, trying not to offend—and suddenly she would explode at me:
“All through my childhood, I was mocked for being your ‘golden flower’! Everywhere I went, your words preceded me. I hated it! I hated you!”
The longer I stayed with Cleis, the sadder I became. I loved her with all my heart, but my love embarrassed her. The world had changed. The love I offered her was out of fashion.
She would explode at me. I would apologize to her. Then we would both cry and embrace each other and promise to love each other forever. She looked so much like Alcaeus that just being with her made me long for him. I would go back to Eresus and my students with a heavy heart. Of all the people in the world I needed to have understand me, Cleis was the one. There had been a time when I sought my mother’s love—now I sought my daughter’s. It eluded me.
I bounced back and forth between Eresus and Mytilene, dreaming of winning my daughter’s approval. When I was away from her I ached, and when I was with her I ached even more.
We were so different. She was a beauty and she knew how to manipulate men to do her bidding. She could toss her blond curls and smile to get what she wanted. I had always won love with my songs, with my fierce energy and soft sensuality. And now my songs were suspect, and so was my sensuality. They were both aspects of each other, both aspects of Aphrodite—and now they were banned!
My students tried to comfort me. I would take to my bed in despair and they would try to lure me to get up:
“Sappho—if you will not get up and let us look at you, I shall never love you again!”
So said Atthis (I used her phrase in a song). She urged me to walk with her and Anactoria in Mytilene “like a mother surrounded by her daughters.” Sometimes we did and people would stop and stare. They would rush up to me to tell me about my songs and how the songs had affected them, about the lovers they had seduced with my words and the way they had sung my song to Cleis to their own daughters.
“See, Sappho,” Anactoria would say, “you are loved still. People have your words by heart. That is the true test of your genius—not the tyrant’s criticism. You write for the people, Sappho, not for your daughter or Pittacus.” But her words only half comforted me.
Atthis had grown from a graceless monkey-faced child with wild hair to a beautiful young woman in the time she had been with us. She had learned to make songs and sing them. She had learned to please her listeners. And I was proud of her. She had begun to comfort me for the loss of Timas. But just when she was beginning to mend my heart and make me mourn less for Cleis’ coldness, she left me for a rival teacher called Andromeda and renounced everything I had taught her.
Andromeda in her vulgar finery
Has put a torch to your heart!
Andromeda had given up writing of love in order to write political songs that pleased Pittacus. When Atthis went over to Andromeda’s side, she too began to spread ugly rumors about me. At first I thought it was because she could not stand to share me with the other maidens; she was jealous like my real daughter. But little by little I began to understand that she had gone over to Andromeda’s side out of naked ambition. She saw that my songs were out of favor with the tyrant and she wanted to trim her sails to a more favorable wind. Andromeda was asked to sing at all the patriotic festivals and I was not. Andromeda’s songs were in fashion and mine were not. Andromeda was given honors and prizes and I was not. What did anyone care that Andromeda had no talent? She reflected the vulgar spirit of the vulgar age. Oh, the people loved me, but the powers had decreed me irrelevant. The people sang my songs, but they could not do so publicly. Atthis saw this unfold and she fled to Andromeda.
Men could break your bones, but girls could break your heart. That was what I was discovering. The fierceness of women was not found only among the amazons.
Timas had loved me truly, but Timas was dead. Anactoria was engaged to be married and would be leaving soon. When I had seen her talking and laughing and flirting with her intended, my heart cracked in my bosom.
The man who sits opposite you
Seems fortunate as the gods
Listening to your sweet voice,
Your lovely laughter
Which sets my heart trembling
In my breast.
When I so much as glance at you—
My tongue goes numb.
I cannot speak.
A subtle fire
Steals beneath my flesh.
My eyes are blind.
My ears hum.
Sweat pours from me.
Trembling seizes me all over.
I am greener than grass,
And I seem to be
A little short of dying.
But I endure it all
For love of you.
Atthis had defected to my rival and Rhodopis made sure everyone in Mytilene knew it. New girls would come and go. They would suck me dry and leave the husk. No sooner would a girl blossom in song than she would be snatched away by some unworthy man who appreciated nothing I had taught her.
When I thought of this, I wanted to die, to see the lotus-covered banks / Of Acheron as I sang in one of my most melancholy songs. Death beckoned to me. I felt I had lived long enough. I had lost everyone I truly cared for—my mother, my daughter, Alcaeus, Isis, Praxinoa, Aesop. My life seemed soaked in sadness.
Then Phaon appeared, with his agate eyes and his voice like molten honey. The first time I clapped eyes on him, something in me said: Beware. I listened to that voice and pretended that his black ringlets and shoulders like an Adonis did not move me. I played the game of indifference so well that he increasingly humbled himself before me.
Phaon was a rough youth, who plied a ferry between Mytilene and the mainland, but he was beautiful and he knew it. He put himself entirely at my disposal and would ferry me and my students around the island from Eresus to Mytilene and back again. He refused all pay.
“It is an honor to be your boatman,” he insisted. “Your songs are payment enough.” And he would sing to us as he rowed. He always sang my love songs, and he sang them so well it made me blush.
He slept in his boat pulled up on the Eresus beach near my family’s house. He did little favors for us—cutting firewood, carrying heavy things—but he refused to come inside. Sometimes we would offer him food and he would take a crust of bread and go and eat it in his boat. He was crafty. He was biding his time.
One night, when the moon was full and was spilling blue moonlight all over the beach in Eresus, I walked down to his boat, which he had tented with a ragged sail. By the light of an oil lamp, I saw him scratching on an Egyptian papyrus with a reed. When I looked closer, I saw he was copying my songs.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Making you immortal,” he said. Then he realized at once how conceited that sounded and he corrected himself: “The gods made your songs immortal—I am only copying them. The more I copy them, the more I see their genius.”
“I fear you are nattering me,” I said, enjoying it even as I complained of it. The boy looked up at me with a tear in his eye. “These songs will last forever.”
I gave a deep sigh and strode away. Oh, I wanted to believe this was more than flattery, but I knew better.
There is nothing like a pretty boy who adores you to mend your heart when you have been undone by the treachery of women.
I have loved men and I have loved women and I can say that men are more transparent to love. Men are ruled only by their pricks, which are simple and blunt—but the moon rules women. And the moon is a body that gives back borrowed light. Bodily lovemaking with women is tender and sweet, but the minds of women are tricky as moonlight. Men do not scheme in love as women do. What am I saying? Phaon was both tender as a woman and twisted in his scheming. He sweated moon-dew. The drop of moonlight that swelled on the head of his phallus when he became aroused must have been made of magic potion. When later I licked it off, I grew weak as Circe’s sleepy beasts. He schemed so patiently it didn’t seem like scheming. I resisted and resisted and resisted until I could resist no more.
APHRODITE: The gifts I have given Phaon will test her to the limit and—
ZEUS: She will Jail!
APHRODITE: Not this Sappho! My follower is strong—stronger than all the mortal women you have raped.
ZEUS: I’ll win this bet. I always win.
APHRODITE: Not this time, Father.
I had gone back to see Cleis and my grandchild again. Little Hector would throw his arms around my neck and cling until I could hardly breathe. I understood the desire to kidnap a grandchild then. But I would never do it. Grandsons and grandmothers have such a strong and simple bond, while the link between daughters and mothers is often so convoluted. I felt rage toward my mother for leaving us with such a legacy. She had no right to do that! She had taken the prerogatives of the gods upon herself.
I thought of a woman I had once met in Syracuse who had allowed her husband to take her newborn daughter out on a hill to be exposed to the elements.
“How could you have permitted such a thing?” I asked her.
“Because I knew that without her father’s love, she would never thrive and blossom into a good life.”
“But he would have come to love her—how could he not? She would have won his heart. Daughters always win their fathers’ hearts in time.”
And the woman began to weep disconsolately. I had broken her with my blunt words. She had found a way to live with her sadness and I had snatched it from her with my unwelcome truth. Lies are sweeter.
Then I thought of Isis and how she had saved Cleis’ young life. I thought of Alcaeus, who had never really known his daughter. And I cried and cried, clutching my grandson to me, wondering if I would ever have a granddaughter with whom I could remake this sad legacy—and the world!
My beautiful daughter Cleis strode in.
“Mother, whenever you come to see Hector, he clings and will not let you go. And when you leave, I can do nothing with him for days and days.”
“Are you telling me not to come?”
“Not at all, Mother, but I wish you would be less emotional with him, more disciplined. I wish you would not encourage all this emotion. It makes my life difficult. It makes the nurses complain. You stir him up and then you go away.”
“I will try not to stir him up.”
“You can’t help it. It’s your nature. You aren’t happy unless people are weeping and raging around you. You have no moderation in you. Your mother always warned me about that. She said that I should learn calmness, as you never did. Your mind is like a tempest stirring up the whitecaps on the sea. Even Pittacus said that about you.”
“I will try to do better, Cleis,” I said, “but I come from a different world.”
“Then join this world,” Cleis said.
“Perhaps I cannot—what then?”
Phaon was waiting in his boat, so I left Mytilene and I started back to Eresus without thinking very much about it.
It was dark. We sailed by moonlight. The sea was full of little white-caps, but I didn’t care. I almost wished to drown and be at the end of my troubles.
“You seem sad, my lady,” Phaon said.
“All my dreams have come to naught,” I said.
“But look what you have given the world.”
“It’s not worth it to live with so much pain.”
“Your songs make everyone happy but you,” Phaon said.
I bowed my head.
“Andromeda is a fraud,” Phaon said.
At this I perked up.
“She goes around Mytilene in that hideous purple chiton emblazoned with gold embroidery and sings those idiotic songs about the greatness of Pittacus and the wonders of war. People laugh at her privately, but they are afraid to do so in public when the tyrant has so honored her.”
“They know nothing of song. All they know is about honors and prizes,” I said.
“Not true, my lady. The people of Lesbos have always loved song. It is in their natures. We are all the heirs of Orpheus.”
I thought of Orpheus in the Land of the Dead, holding his head in his hands and speaking of the fate of singers. “Torn to bits—but all the bits still sing!” Prophecy!
“I think you are too trusting in the wisdom of the people, Phaon. They don’t know good from bad, beautiful from ugly. All they know is what is anointed by power. If Pittacus says Andromeda is a great singer, then she’s a great singer. If he says she has true genius, it doesn’t matter what she sings. The people bow down to power, even in song.”
“But in their homes, they sing your songs. In their heads, they sing your songs. In their hearts, they sing your songs.”
With that he reached out and touched me on the back with such tenderness it set me aflame.
His touch was lightning. You always know a future lover by touch even if he or she only touches you in the most innocent of places. Phaon looked at me as if I were Aphrodite.
“You are so beautiful,” he said.
“Beautiful I am not,” I said.
“Your beauty is within, but it still sends a subtle flame under my flesh.”
“I seem to recall having written that somewhere. Phaon, be wise, do not romance a woman old enough to be your mother.”
“It seems you are younger than I!” he said. Oh, what a smooth talker this one was!
“Take me back to Eresus,” I said. “This is no time for love between a gray woman and a green boy.”
“Then when?”
“Probably never,” I said. “Cast off.”
On the moonlight sail around the island I refused to speak to Phaon. I looked at the beauty of the sea, the beauty of my island, and thought of all my travels, all my loves. The last thing I needed was a pretty boy who thought to ensnare me with flattery. So what if he was my enemy’s enemy? Maybe he was honest when he spoke slightingly of Andromeda. Maybe he was trying to win my favor. Who cared? He was not Alcaeus.
When we arrived at Eresus, he helped me out of the bark.
“I fear I have offended you, my lady,” he muttered, eyes downcast so I could admire his shiny black lashes on his tawny cheeks.
“Not at all,” I said.
“I would die rather than offend you,” he said.
“Don’t offer to die so readily. It comes soon enough.”
Phaon fell to his knees and kissed the hem of my chiton.
“Please, get up,” I said.
“I cannot. I want to be your slave,” he said. “Brand me, chain me, command me, all I want is to serve you. My life is meaningless unless I serve you.”
“Get up, Phaon, I hate this sort of talk,” I said. “I freed the only slave I loved. I don’t want another one.”
“Then is there a chance that you might love me?” he said, leaping to his feet. He stood above me. His muscled arms were tan from working on the water. When he smiled, the little crinkles at the corners of his mouth seemed to have smiles of their own.
He took me in his immense arms and stroked my back again and again. The flame under my skin grew hotter. My eyes glazed. My fingers trembled. My ears hummed as if a swarm of bees flew toward them. Sweat poured from my armpits. I wanted to say no, but I could not speak. His touch had made me dumb. I shivered and burnt at the same time. Greener than grass? No. But all logic was gone. It was as if my tongue were amputated at the root. Why not? my delta asked. And there was no organ to refute it!
That was how we began. He wormed his way into my life. I had thought I had had enough of love, was sick of love, sated by love—but this beautiful young creature gave a freshness and carelessness to my life I thought I had lost forever. Since my mother died, I had wanted to die myself. Phaon banished that cloud.
He copied out my songs, cut firewood, and sailed me here and there. He pruned the olive trees and vines on my property. He made himself useful in the most cheerful way. And he warmed my bed. Oh, how he warmed my bed!
Shall we talk about that? All lovers are different and all lovers are the same. This man knew his power and he had honed it. He could have seduced Aphrodite herself! Perhaps he had!
He was not Alcaeus, but he had his own sweetness—the sweetness of youth. If he was false or conniving, he hid it well. But he had something I had never known before except in maidens. He had the most powerful drug—the drug of youth. His skin seemed as fresh as my grandson’s. His hair was as shiny as a young centaur’s mane. Phaon made me understand the seductions of Zeus. Phaon made me know why Aphrodite loved Adonis. In fact, I felt like Aphrodite with Adonis. Tear your garments, maidens, and weep for Adonis! Phaon was so beautiful, he made me weep.
And then there was the matter of his potency. A boy of twenty never tires. The phallus empties and fills again. The phallus stands up, lies down, and stands up again before you know it. No wonder even Alcaeus loved pretty boys. I was beginning to understand the attraction.
ZEUS: You see! True wisdom dawns in our heroine.
APHRODITE: Wisdom comes before the fall, you think—but she will surprise you!
ZEUS: Never! Not with this boy and his indefatigable implement! Hah! Even the cleverest women are brought low by love!
APHRODITE: You’ll see!