Sappho - The Dirge

2500 years of collaboration - and this is all I've got

In the previous newsletter, I mentioned that I had submitted a dirge as part of my reflection on the Sappho fragments we read for class. Given that a dirge is a lament for the dead, a mournful song, piece of music, or poem, that seemed an appropriate reaction to a long gone someone’s work where most of the said work has disappeared.

This musical effort was the result of a conversation in class about the fact we are missing some critical information about how to experience Sappho’s poetry because her work was meant to be presented with accompaniment. Though we think she would have performed her work while being accompanied by the lyre, beyond that, we aren’t sure what the music might have sounded like.

One of our classmates is a musician, someone who makes stringed instruments. He noted that the rhythm of some of Sappho’s surviving lines could easily be fitted to 12-bar blues. I found someone on YouTube playing the blues on guitar and experimented a bit with putting a few phrases to the music.

Oh boy… the typo was unintentional… blame the sippy whisky for me getting sappy… sappo…

[Before we go any further, let it be known that not only can I not spell, I am NOT a singer - and, the evening when I went down this path of inquiry, I had a TERRIBLE cold, so as a result, my lamentations sound as though I have been smoking heavily and pounding back considerable quantities of whisky. **]

I wanted to find some appropriate music to which to set a longer piece, but my go-to music guy, Kein MacLeod didn’t have any bluesy options available in his large stock of royalty-free music. He did have something called Southern Gothic and after some experimental moaning and wailing, I recorded this:

Thanks to Sappho, my classmate, and Kevin MacLeod many centuries after she first wrote her words back in Ancient Greece, we now have this weird-ass collaboration.

I wasn’t going to risk my week’s grade on a dirge, so I also submitted this piece, which is a reflection on our other reading of the week (Plato’s Phaedrus) written as a handful of Sapphic fragments. (I posted this before when I was talking about trying to draw Plato’s idea of the soul… if you’ve seen this already, scroll on by…)

If Plato and Sappho Had a Soul-baby

perpetual            flight

in ceasing from movement, perishes.

        principle        into being

at all.               does not perish

First              either be destroyed

come into being, or else the whole

universe                          collapse

                   immortal

no shame

                       essence of soul.

                 powerful winged team

dark, surly

                     all that is light and good.

            travel above       earth

borne aloft by wings designed

  carry what is heavy upwards.

horses grazing in a meadow

there rose

         the rattle of castanets

   all the chariots

   road to great Olympus.

Stand upon the outer rim of the heavens

turn        gaze upon

                             what is unseen

but for Aphrodite.

Why come this time

    to speak

      reading, the ruin of memory

When you are dead you will lie forever unremembered

                fragments.

Deathless Aphrodite, you asked,

        what in my heart

longs for an orphan, ugly, weak

Draped in burlap

                   pull her rags

down over her ankles.

Come… walk with me

             fairest of stars

      gardens of letters.

Gardens of Letters [Nikki Tate]

And, because I wasn’t going to risk only handing in some fragments, most of which were stolen from Plato and Sappho, I also submitted a short introduction, which we discuss in the Intellectual Magpies podcast episode about Plato and Sappho - coming soon to a podcast provider near you.

**To be clear… despite the typos and the gravelly voice, no whisky was harmed in the completion of my homework or this newsletter.