[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_93

Fragments, Sappho, c. 630 – c. 570 BC

I would much prefer to see the lovely

the way she walks and the radiant glance on her face

then the war chariots of the Lydians or

their footsoldiers in arms.

This is the beginning of Sappho's Ode to Aphrodite; her only composition remains intact to this day. It is impressive how little remains of her writings when you consider that she was among the most prolific poets of her time, leaving a legacy of around ten thousand verses. What remains of her today are only a few fragments and... the use of her name to indicate homosexual tendencies between women (the umbrella word Sapphism was born with her). Even the word Lesbianism derives from Sappho, from the island where she lived: Lesbos.

When I first met Sappho, I was 14. I studied Ancient Greek at school, and she was among the compulsory poets to tackle in the module. I remember that I could not appreciate her openly for fear of being made fun of by my classmates. Sappho was the only female author we had, not only for the Greek module but also for the Latin and Italian ones, but she was also an author who was considered a freak. In the pantheon of untouchable Greek authors dominated by the Titanic, Homer, a woman Showed for the first time, there was immediately a "but"!

“She's a lesbian,” my classmates laughed, “the only reason she wrote poems well is because she wasn't a normal female,” “Lesbians are more similar to men; that’s the reason why they manage to write poetry.” For many years, every time I heard the name, Sappho, these phrases came to mind, together with the message that being a lesbian means inhabiting a nobody's land and the idea that to be talented, you have to be in some way similar to (heterosexual) men.

It is not unusual attitude to focus on the sexuality of women who are talented or famous; it happens continuously, even today, to female writers, actresses, singers, politicians, and activists. Just think of the recent proliferation of deep-fake porn using their faces. It is a somewhat effective way to shift the focus from the fact that they are independent, successful, powerful women and a punitive tool to bring them back into their “woman role” as a “sexual object” or a “weak in the flesh” creature.

This insistence is also maintained on women who died 2500 years ago, about whom so little is known that not even the dates of birth and death are inevitable. Everyone knows the word "lesbian," but few know that this word originates from one of the greatest poets of archaic Greece. Isn't this unfair? Isn't this mainstream legacy of Sappho only in words indicating sexual orientation unfair? For me, it is, especially considering that Sappho's sexuality is unknown.