Sappho

Sappho (Sappho Mitilenskaya, Sappho) - ancient Greek lyric poet, first in the history of literature glorifying sensual love between women.

Her biographical data are contradictory and controversial, as it should be at polulegendy-polucheloveka. Thus, according to legend, Sappho - the daughter of an aristocrat Skamandronima engaged in commerce and Kleysy - was born in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea between 630 and 620 years BC. At six years old orphan girl, why - according to some reports - and the mother had to send her to school heteras, where he taught singing and dancing. Even at school she felt a calling to Sappho's poetry: the Greek culture of that time was a culture-sounding words, rhyming lines were written not for the dry rolls, but passed from mouth to mouth and were composed by ear, and hearing the girl was an absolute. At a young age Sappho wrote odes, hymns, elegies, holidays and drinking songs. According to contemporaries, Sappho was small in stature, very dark, with bright vivid eyes and long dark curls down her cheeks.

Around the age of 17 for the whole family with brothers Sappho - Charax, Larihom and Evrigom - had to flee from the island of Sicily, since unrest broke out against the tyrant Pittakii and wealthy aristocrats. Only in 595, when Sappho was over thirty, she was able to return to Lesbos and continues to live in the city of Mytilene.

According to legend, when she was carried away the poet Alcaeus, but the relationship turned into a strong sense of. Soon Sappho was married to Kirk (Serkolasa) and gave birth to a daughter Kleysu (Kleis), which has dedicated a cycle of poems. But fate was cruel to her: for unknown reasons, a husband and child Sappho lived long. Trying to drown the sorrow, the poet gave herself wholeheartedly praise lesbian girls and women - their beauty, tenderness, ability to empathize, sympathize, give and give. Even then, women's attraction to women in the 'customs and habits' of a number of Greek cities (eg, at Sparta), but it was particularly prevalent on the island of Lesbos. According to Lucian (Dialogues), Sappho anything 'not invented', but only became a vivid exponent of a similar passion.

The social status of residents of the island of Lesbos - as well as some other parts of the Aeolian-Dorian Greece - differed more freedom than that of the Ionians. They were not seclusion. Part of the family property in the region, according to tradition, could be transmitted through the female line. As remnants of the primitive age-groups, in 7.6 cc. on the island remained closed community of men and women who spent their lives for the most part, together, outside the family.

Sappho was the head of one of these communities - schools of rhetoric devoted to Aphrodite, which the hearers were young noble girl. Their Sappho taught music, dance and prosody in eeoliyskom dialect. The room where they met a woman, herself Sappho termed 'house servants of Music'. Girlfriends and student Sappho constantly exchanged folded lines of poetry, thematically related to the rituals of female cults. Dating, marriage, communication between friends, mutual attraction and passion for women, rivalry, jealousy, separation - all of it finds its place in the lyrics of Sappho and her students. Close to expressions of folklore, the lyrics of Sappho rarely went beyond a purely female experiences, but these feelings were expressed by the poet with the utmost simplicity and clarity. The main advantage of Sappho's poems was their intense passion, feeling naked.

Such emotions are fueled not only by tradition or platonic pursuits. The Roman writer Apuleius (genus. app. 125 g. BC), who lived a century later, after Sappho, legedu told that the brother of Sappho Charax, engaged in wine trade, fell in love with a beautiful courtesan Rhodope, who lived in Egypt. As for the huge amount he bought it from previous owner and brought to the island of Lesbos, Sappho herself conceived a passion for the Rhodopes. Noticing the harassment of young sisters charmer, enraged brother was forced to leave the house with his charming 'acquisition'. 'I loved, I have many in despair appealed to his lonely bed, - wrote Sappho, to make sense of yet another fiasco in the poem to my lover. - I spoke the language of true passion: And let me dishonor for, . I threw my heart into the abyss of pleasures, . but, . at least, . I learned the divine mysteries of life! My eyes, . blinded by bright light, . seen emerging dawn of divine love! ",

. A lyre in his hands, Sappho reciting their hot verses, they recorded her student
. Surviving descendants of her appeals to the passionate love and acceptance have influenced the work of Socrates, who styles her his 'mentor' in matters of love, Plato, who called it a 'tenth muse', Horace and Catullus. The eminent historian of antiquity, as well as Strabo called it 'a miracle', and claimed that 'look in vain throughout the course of history, a woman who in poetry could survive at least some comparison with Sappho'.

In addition to the love lyrics, Sappho was known for her prothalamium - wedding songs map the parting of the bride from girlhood, a contest between the chorus boys and girls choir, songs and jokes to calm marriage. In style prothalamium Sappho remind folk wedding songs and richly colored with comparisons folk type

. Of the entire array of creativity Sappho came only a few poems and the entire set of fragments, however, the poet gave the history of literature a special type of alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, known as the 'sapphic string':

. Motley glorious throne of Aphrodite
. Zeus' daughter, a clever gimmick kovah,
. I pray thee: nor break me grief
. Heart good!

. In Russian works of Sappho presents the most complete in the translation of the Russian writer Veresayev
. His vivid, poetic translations from the Greek, retaining their original size, equipped with detailed comments, the scientific value of which is not outdated. From the lines of Sappho, post time, especially known for her aphorism: 'If the death was a blessing - the gods would not have been immortal'.

According to legend, Sappho committed suicide around 572 BC, throwing himself into the sea from a cliff on the island of Lefkada, - such things were regarded as ritual and practiced in the cult of Apollo. According to legend, at the end of the life of Sappho again got carried away a man - a young Greek Phaon, transporting passengers from Lesbos to the Asian coast. Not finding reciprocity, she went to where hit by mad love found oblivion forever.

Since heterosexual Sappho alternative forms of female eroticism became known as 'lesbian'. In theory, radical feminism, lesbianism is treated as a self-sufficient, . independent and sovereign, . needs no heterosexual divide, in ordinary consciousness for love, . glorified Sappho and her followers, . refers to the replacement type of erotic female impulse, . appearing in the absence of 'normal' sexuality and male.,