Sappho fragments anne carson6/9/2023 ![]() At its best, such meta-creation lives up to the Nobel-winning Polish poet Wisława Szymborska’s lovely notion of “that rare miracle when a translation stops being a translation and becomes… a second original.” ![]() (Available as a print.)īecause it touches on one of the most universal human themes, Fragment 31 is one of Sappho’s most translated fragments, which also means the most interpreted - for poetry in translation is an exponent of creation to begin with, but especially when translating the ancient tongue of a bygone civilization from a world alien to our own. Death of Sappho by Miguel Carbonell Selva, 1881. 570 BC) - the Tenth Muse, inventor of the personal lyric, and poet laureate of heartbreak - in one of the few surviving fragments of her poetry. No one has voiced this hunger with more howling precision than Sappho (c. ![]() ![]() It is also one of the most universal human experiences - homily on the elemental tragedy that the ever-open mouth of choice hungers for more than what chance grants us, so that we live desiring more than we have. Jealousy may be the most staggering scale discrepancy of the inner world - an enormous all-consuming emotion pinched into extreme smallness of spirit. ![]()
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