Sunday, February 24, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Sappho: the Divine Hetaira
Name of
Birth: Sappho,
in greek Σαπφώ
Place of Birth: Lesbos,
Greece
Date of Birth: 625 BC
Place of Death: Unknown
Date of Death: 510 BC (?)
Sappho, the greatest
lyric poet of
antiquity is probably also
the first woman to do poetry in the history of Western culture.
Little is known for certain about this remarkable
woman. Some have imagined a beautiful woman of sculptural beauty. Others, not very
pretty. But all agree that she possessed a formidable and attractive persona who,
with her beautiful black eyes, could even tame beasts! This is, however, the
reason for her fame. Daughter of a wealthy family, she left her small hometown
Eresso early, and moved to the capital of Lesbos, Mytilene, where she studied dance,
rhetoric and poetry, which was then allowed only to aristocratic women. Although
of noble birth, very little a woman could aspire at this time out of housework.
But Sappho ... was Sappho! A woman with fire! Very young already had more notoriety
due to her personal charms than her art.
At that time, Lesbos was ruled by the
dictator Pitaco (the same as would be later included in the list of the Seven Sages
of Greece). Sappho, accused of participating in a conspiracy against the
dictator, was eventually exiled in the city of Pyrrha. The accusation was
probably due more to the morality of Pitaco (very common characteristic among dictators)
than politics, because, in fact, Sappho never devoted herself to politics. The
dictator Pitaco, fearing her writing, sentenced her to a distant exile, off the
island of Lesbos.
About this exile: Pitaco was the dictator
of Mytilene, the largest of the five cities of Lesbos. Traders and less wealthy
citizens overthrew the aristocracy, making Pitaco the dictator in the mold of his
contemporary and friend Solon. Trying to return to power, the aristocrats conspired,
and were defeated, their leaders were exiled, among them the poet Alcaeus and Sappho.
Alceu would have been a poet who merges his art with politics in a style all
its own that says alcaico and would
clearly have been better known if it wasn’t for the greatness of Sappho ... In
the first exile in Pyrrha, Alceu sent a loving invitation to Sappho: "Oh pure Sappho, crowned with violets and
soft smile, I wanted to tell you something, but shame prevents me."
It is unknown if this affair had consequences,
but that Sappho answered him, then: "If your intentions,
Alcaeus, were pure and noble, and thy
speech is able to express them,
modesty would not be enough to repress them".
When she returned to Pyrrha, Sappho
was soon exiled again,
this time in Sicily. There she met a rich industrial
and, as the
current divas marry millionaires, Sappho married
him. This powerful industrial doubly fulfilled
his duties as a husband with Sappho, giving her a daughter, and soon
after, leaving Safo as a widow and rich.
After five years in exile, she returns to Lesbos, where she soon becomes
the leader of the local society,
intellectually. Seductive, not gifted with the beauty
in the Greek conception of the time (though Socrates
had called her "Beauty"),
Sappho was low and lean, black eyes and hair, and refined elegance, widowed
and living in a society that had no moral rules as
are conceived today.
On her return to
Lesbos, Sappho would
say, "I need the luxury
like I need the sun." But
she didn’t remain a long time
in idleness and founded a school for girls of Mytilene’s
high society. There, her students were instructed in music,
poetry and dance, and called heteras or
better hetairas, which in Greek mean friends or sisters.
Apparently, Sappho was an unparalleled and an inspired teacher. But
also she loved to
inspire her hetairas; Sappho was a great teacher. Then began the rumors in
town about acts and practices
adopted in the large school. Her favorite hetaira
called Attis, was
the first to be taken, angrily, by their parents. Everything fell apart quickly
and the school ended.
To Sappho, this
was a terrible blow. Especially the loss of
Attis, to whom she had an unstoppable
passion. What a
disgrace to Sappho was the
initial spark that sublimated her poetry. She
composed the "Farewell
to Attis", considered today as one of the finest
lyric of all time, which through the centuries has been the model of simplicity
and sobriety style of writing.
So many millennia have passed after the life
of this exceptional female figure,
that mankind lived moments of glory and contempt about her art and personality. In 1073 her works, along
with those of Alcaeus, were burned in Constantinople and Rome. But her
poems were rediscovered in 1897.
Sappho was called a "courtesan" (prostitute), by Suidas.
Some tell that she had committed suicide
by jumping off a cliff on the island of Leucas, because of her
unrequited love for the sailor Faonte - a fact that
is also described
in Menander, Strabo
and Ovid. But there is consensus that this is truly
mythic. Surviving manuscripts say that
Sappho reached old age, and the fact is that no
one knows how or when she died,
being considered by some the greatest of all poets.
Among the Greeks which were her contemporaries and posterity, Sappho was
considered a so-called "Nine
Lyric Poets" (the others were: Álcman, Alcaeus, Estesícoro, Ibico,
Anacreon, Simonides, Pindar and Baquílides).
Strabo wrote that "Sappho was wonderful because
of all the times we have knowledge
about, I do not know of another
woman that could be compared to her, albeit slightly, in terms of poetic
talent."
As Homer was known as "the Poet," Sappho was known as "the
Poetess."
In an immortal line that survived the
fire of the Church and to undermine everything
centuries, Safo said:
"Hopelessly, like the starry night follows the rosy dawn, death follows
every living being until finally catches up ..." And
then came the silence, but neither fire, nor the
centuries managed to erase her
voice, nor forget her name:
Sappho, the divine hetaira!
Some say they are nine muses. What a mistake!
Because they do not see that Sappho of Lesbos is the tenth?
- Plato
Because they do not see that Sappho of Lesbos is the tenth?
- Plato
What creature is it that is
female in nature and hides
in its womb unborn children
who, although they are voiceless,
speak to people far away?
The female creature is a letter.
The unborn children are the letters
(of the alphabet) it carries. And the
letters, although they have no voices,
speak to people far away.”
― Sappho
female in nature and hides
in its womb unborn children
who, although they are voiceless,
speak to people far away?
The female creature is a letter.
The unborn children are the letters
(of the alphabet) it carries. And the
letters, although they have no voices,
speak to people far away.”
― Sappho
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb
Synopsis: Calder is a Fetch, a death escort, the first
of his kind to step from Heaven back to Earth.The first to fall in love with a
mortal girl. But when he climbs backwards out of that Death Scene, into the
chaos of the Russian Revolution, he tears a wound in the ghost realm, where the
spirits begin a revolution of their own.
My Thoughts: this is my first book that talks about the
afterlife. When a person dies, a death escort appears and he or she has the
duty to accompany the dead through the Aisle of the Unearthing, divided in five
parts: the Theatre, the Feast, the Gallery, the Garden and the Cell. After all
this, you’ll reach the Great River, where a boat and its Captain will be waiting
to take you to Heaven. Calder is a death escort, someone responsible for the
dead, but he never felt like he belonged there. He thought he was extremely
lonely and craved for a friend, but he knew that he couldn’t break his Vows as
a Fetch nor disappoint his Captain. But when one of his duties gives him the
chance to go back to Earth, in the middle of the Russian Revolution, to the
woman that he thinks is the one supposed to be his Star Fetch – his apprentice,
a living person able to see and hear him – will he still be faithful to his
Vows?
As I said, this is my first
afterlife novel and I must say I really liked it! And for the first time in my
shelf, the protagonist is a male. Usually I get books that woman are the
leading figures, so it was different to see. What I liked about it is the
detailed description of the surroundings: the Selo Palace of the tsar’s family,
the late 10’s California, Russia and England, everything is so detailed that it
seems that the author actually lived there (though it’s impossible)! Another
thing that I really enjoyed is the way that death is shown: not as a morbid
thing – even though it’s sad – but as a passage to something much better. Each
death sees its Aisle and Fetch differently: it can be a blond angel with silver
wings in a corridor made of pure diamonds and rubies, or a warrior in a
corridor full of Japanese paintings. Time is different too: It can be 1024 for
years or 1570 in an hour.
When Calder realizes that maybe
the woman that he thought was meant to him actually wasn’t, how is he going to
return to his Aisle? He has to take care of Anastasia and Alexis, remaining
children of the tsar, and escort them to Heaven. Also, he has to stop the owner
of Calder’s current body – which is Rasputin – before he starts a revolution
inside the Land of Lost Soul – a place where all the souls that ran away from
their escorts are – and before all those souls attack the Land of the Living.
The scale is unbalanced and Calder has to put it back to its place.
The only thing that lacked for
me was the romance. It’s very subtle and you can almost miss it if you don’t
read it carefully. Ana and Calder have two year difference, but that doesn’t
really interfere in the scenes, but there is no kiss through the WHOLE book,
except in the last chapter. I kept hoping for a kiss scene, but none came, and
the only one was so quick that I couldn’t really see it!! It kind of reminds me
of a 1910’s novel that I read when I was a teenager: its romance is very
delicate and gentle, something that nowadays it’s hard to find, especially
after the release of Fifty Shades of Grey – not saying
that I don’t like the reading, I’m actually planning to read it, eventually.
Last is the cover, which I don’t
have a lot to talk about: the couple in the front is Calder and Ana, and the
key represents the Fetch Key, that is able to open the door to the Aisle of the
Unearthing. The Key is the thing that connects the whole book: when Calder
gives the Key to Alexis and he passes it to Ana, she gives it to a soldier that
was taking care of them in their prison, and to whom she had a crush. Now he is
in CA, and without the Key, no one can go back to the Aisle. So Calder and the
teens go on a journey around the globe in order to get it, but what if it wasn’t
with the soldier? What if he sold it or lost it?
That, my readers (if I have any),
are for you to figure it out.
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