tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post228268084900126088..comments2024-03-27T23:55:17.673-07:00Comments on Flogging Babel: Sappho and MeMichael Swanwickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18389836784776252022noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-47452135630978422492014-02-01T15:50:39.689-08:002014-02-01T15:50:39.689-08:00I was just recently reading an essay on Kenneth Re...I was just recently reading an essay on Kenneth Rexroth by Gregory McNamee that ties in rather interestingly with your own Sappho Interrupted:<br /><br /><br />"Four lines of poetry, then, led Rexroth as similar lines led Pound, Eliot, Joyce, Aldington, H.D., to the recovery of Greece and the ancient past of the modern mind. It is a blessing that four lines were enough, for Kenneth Rexroth and his anonymous friend, although they would not have known it in 1920, had only a small portion of the complete “Apple Orchard” poem with which to work. The full text, originally painted on an Attic amphora, was not reconstructed until 1937, in Fascist Italy, when Medea Norsa published the restored manuscript. I venture the following translation:<br /><br />Leave Crete for this holy temple<br />Where a lovely grove of apple trees<br />Fringes an altar that smokes with incense<br />In your praise.<br /><br />Shadows of roses fall on the ground,<br />And cold jets of water whisper in branches,<br />And shimmering leaves<br />Rain down deep sleep.<br /><br />In the meadow stallions browse,<br />And wildflowers blossom,<br />And anise fills the air with fragrance.<br /><br />Here, beloved Aphrodite, pour<br />Immortal nectar in golden cups,<br />Fill all with sudden ecstasy.<br /><br />It is curious that Rexroth, who must have come to know the full text, never chose to expand his translation of 1920, but instead reprinted it again and again. A remembered,<br />be loved fragment was talisman enough."<br /><br />http://www.gregorymcnamee.com/articles_and_other_writing/when_we_with_sappho_essay.pdfEileen Gunnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08142274562155993622noreply@blogger.com