Friday, February 14, 2014
The Old Sappho
Everyone is excited, and rightly so, about the new Sappho. But let's not forget about the old Sappho, in particular one of the first fragments ever printed, i.e. fragment 168b Voigt (tr. Kenneth Rexroth):
Thanks to Joel Eidsath for correcting a misprint in this post.
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The moon has set,The Greek as preserved by Hephaestion:
And the Pleiades. It is
Midnight. Time passes.
I sleep alone.
δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάναOn the fragment see Paula Reiner and David Kovacs, "ΔΕΔϒΚΕ ΜΕΝ Α ΣΕΛΑΝΝΑ: The Pleiades in Mid-Heaven (PMG Frag. Adesp. 976 = Sappho, Fr. 168 B Voigt)," Mnemosyne 46.2 (May, 1993) 145-159, who reconstruct it as follows (at 153):
καὶ πληϊάδες· μέσαι δὲ
νύκτες, πάρα δ' ἔρχεθ' ὥρα·
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα,The reconstruction of Reiner and Kovacs could be translated thus (I borrow some of their phrasing from p. 154):
καὶ Πλείαδές <εἰσι> μέσσαι [δὲ],
νύκτος δὲ παρέρχετ' ὤρα.
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
The moon has set,
And the Pleiades are in mid-heaven,
The night season is passing.
I sleep alone.
Thanks to Joel Eidsath for correcting a misprint in this post.
