Sappho (41 page)

Remember me—for you know how I loved you.

Or if you do not, I'll tell you

so many things you forget

which made our life together a gladness.

All the chaplets of sweet

violets and rosebuds braided

and placed by you on your hair at my side,

all the delicate garlands woven

around your delicate neck

fashioned from a hundred flowers,

all the fragrance of myrrh

fit for a queen and rare

worn on your fresh young skin beside me

While on the softest beds

from the quiet hands of maids

no Ionian was so feted.

There wasn't a single hill,

holy purlieu, rill,

from which we kept ourselves asunder

and never a wood in spring

fretted with the crowded song

of nightingales where you and I

did not wander

She wrapped her lyre and put it by. A rueful smile settled about her lips. This is my doom, she thought, to make songs of my life's end. Atthis had been her last love. Her life as a woman was over. She prayed to altars that had no fire. Weary as she was, a decision must be made, indeed was already made. She would disband the hetaerae, and live retired on her estates with only slaves and servants. She would see her good friend Alkaios, whom she had neglected. And one day Khar would return.

She must rededicate herself, invoke the Muses, listen only to their voices. On the lips of many, she told herself of herself, shall your deeds lie. And to bolster this belief, she sang:

While Earth and Sun abide,

who cherish song

shall cherish your renown

She would be an anchorite:

For me

neither the honey

nor the bees

And with this determination firmly in mind, she ordered an elaborate feast for her hetaerae. They, thinking it was a thanksgiving to the gods for her restored health, were blithe as birds, singing and caroling through all the preparation. Over the courtyard seamen's nets were lifted and heaped with flowers. At the height of the banquet, the attachments to the bower were to be slashed and bouquets drift over the revelers.

As Niobe dressed her hair, Sappho said suddenly, “Good Niobe, for your years of faithful service to me, I am minded to offer you your freedom.”

Niobe's eyes brimmed, and her hands in Sappho's hair trembled. “You are my mistress, my pride. To be your chief slave is my life. Do not deprive me of what I love.”

“O Niobe, I have not lived five times eight years … yet am old.”

“It is not so, Lady.”

“You, who are my slave, are now my one friend. Sometimes I think the only disgrace is to grow old and be blemished by wrinkles.”

“My fingers and the oils I use will fend them off.”

“We cannot change the fact that at the beginning of my life Psamethichus was Pharaoh of the Egyptians. Think what that means—think how many years I have seen close, and heaped my sins upon a scapegoat for purification.”

“You are not an ordinary woman. The name Sappho is known throughout the world. Youth is not everything, Lady.”

“Is it not? I am surrounded by it. I alone, it seems, do not partake of it.”

Niobe worked over her with special care to disprove her words. And when she surveyed herself in the mirror, Sappho was pleased. “You have made me charming, my Niobe. But only the gods can make me young.”

She went to her girls and cries went up at once. “O fairest!” “Sweetest player on the lyre!” “Songstress of Lesbos, beautiful Sappho!”

She hailed her girls in turn, but chastised them gently. “Praise to me might be construed an affront to the Muses, who love beautiful things.”

“You are beautiful,” her girls insisted.

“Not beautiful,” Sappho said, “and not ‘fairest of women.' My skin is lined, my hair from its blackness turning. But who can cure it? It is not possible. Even as rosy-armed Dawn crosses Earth, Death overtakes. But O Olympian daughters—”

Today for you my hetaerae,

these songs right well

will I sing

They shouted their love as she poured out verse after verse. “Ah girls”—suddenly it was to herself she spoke—“here in the House of the Servants of the Muses, Sappho has grown old.”

They would not permit her to continue. They would not hear her, but stamped their feet and tossed their heads, calling out that she was the most illustrious teacher, mentor, a patron to match the goddesses themselves.

Sappho lifted a double-armed goblet to them in a pledge:

Toward you, my beautiful ones,

this mind of mine will not change

For a moment their merriment redoubled, but among the more perceptive an uneasiness grew, until they quieted again. Once more Sappho spoke to them:

I reply:

Gentle …

you will ever remember

our life together in our youth

For both the pure and the beautiful

we then did. And now that you see …

“No!” came the cry. “No, we will not hear you!”

At this moment the net above their heads was severed and they drowned in blossoms falling from Sky.

Sappho's voice rose above the commotion. “My companions. I have hymned you well, but now our life together is ended, as all things end. My own existence enters a new phase.”

Of air are the words I begin

The hetaerae pressed around her and she saw not Praxiona but Erinna, not Margara but Gongyla, not Nariscaa but little Timas.

Her girls importuned her, catching at her hands, her feet, the hem of her chiton. “We do not wish to leave you.” “Do not send us away!” “Gentle Sappho, we would stay with you!”

She raised her arms over them in a gesture of benediction, and they were silenced. Thereupon she swore an eternal oath to Memory. Hearing this, they understood they must accept her decision, and they knelt in obedience. Her blessing rang out over their heads: “May you sleep in the bosom of tender companions.”

P
HAON

In the years following the dispersal of the band of her fair friends, Sappho was sculpted on friezes, her likeness painted on terra-cotta vases; she was even cast in bronze according to a new technique. Sappho, the pride of Eresos, of Mitylene, of Lesbos—even Syracuse claimed her. Solon, great ruler and wise man of Athens, sent gifts. She was called the Tenth Muse, daughter of Aphrodite and Eros, nursling of the Graces, companion of Apollo.

But the world, her world, was changing. Pittakos was waylaid and murdered. Rumor had it that he simply tired of his life and arranged the assassination himself. In the empire of the Persians, Cyrus rose to power. In Egypt, Amasis now ruled. King Alyattes of Lydia died and his son Croesus became monarch there. Sappho felt alien. All she had known was going fast. New names were everywhere and the old lay in the dust.

Aphrodite, that laughter-loving goddess, had withdrawn from Sappho's courtyard and taken with her the dove and the swan, although sometimes a sparrow or two hopped about. It seemed to her the prevailing North Wind was colder than in other years. Eagles and vultures glided over her home. This they had always done, but they swept lower and their wings of ill omen shadowed the ground. The halls of her home held silence and emptiness. It was a place which joy no longer visited.

The three Graces were gone with her hetaerae, especially Euphrosyne, ruler of mirth, and Thalia, goddess of good cheer. Only Aglaia, she of splendor, still presided over the gardens, the groves, and the fields.

Many times, listening to the stillness, Sappho remembered the clash of Armenian cymbals, the quick modulations of lotus flutes, the waving of fennel wands in graceful dance. Though the flutes with their piercing voices were silent, images recurred. Like a column of flame Atthis was leading the chorus, her luxuriant hair braided with ivy.

Now there was neither sistra or sambyke. Torches no longer threw back slender shapes. Nor was there the sound of feet, quick and dainty, flying up the stairs, both inside and out. She did not plait her hair with lavender and roses, nor did waves of joy any longer pour over her.

She lost herself in earlier times. Sappho thought back to the child Sappho:

I want, I want, I want!

And later:

I desire, I desire, I desire!

Had she wanted unreasonably? Desired too much? And her lovers, each so dear to her, but so quickly gone—what had that wild quest meant?

She believed to be bonded with another was the highest good a human can know, and if one encounters the perfect mate, it is the ultimate. Many times with her many lovers she had glimpsed the ultimate. But the Muses alone had lifted her, never wavered or faltered. Only in song was she truly Sappho. To her Muses she had been constant and unflagging—and they to her.

For the first time she stood aloof, judging her work. She was amazed by the raw force she could still employ. Her words she knew were the way in which the world entered her and the way in which she entered the world:

If the battleground were of words,

I could fight gods!

She never ventured timidly but plunged her entire self into work, offering up what she had lived, like a votary, with both hands. Her written books by now reached a total of six.

And I shall leave for thee …

As a widow she was free to look in on any event, and her loneliness drove her to occasional parties, galas, festivities, where Sappho listened with pleasure to the sound of a lyre plucked in the Egyptian manner with a quill. It seemed to her that no matter where she went, she met again and again a young man who stationed himself always in her path. If she graced an evening with song, he above all others was entranced. Sappho finally asked his name, and was told Dionesus, who made a good record at the last Olympiad.

One evening he waylaid her, stepping from behind a colonnade where he must have waited hours, and stumbled through an obviously prepared speech, declaring his love.

Sappho looked at the young man more closely. He was twenty years her junior. Had he any idea of this? Or did celebrity erase such differences?

Sappho smiled sadly at him. She even patted his hand as she discouraged his hope.

That night in her chamber she gazed long and thoughtfully into her mirror. The life she had lived, the loves she had loved, the great joys and desires, the losses—all were there to be read.

She saw how a young man might be attracted to her, for the eyes smoldered with words unsung, and her body was as sensual as a young girl's, while the mark of aristocracy was carved into the delicacy of wrists and ankles. But the lines in her face were scars of battles fought and lost. Why had her nine sisters allowed a white swath to steal into her black hair? Who else had they to so skillfully interpret them? “Soon I will be old enough for death. To whom then will you turn, Undying Ones?” She hated being forty-four years old.

*   *   *

Sappho was not to sit out her life in her garden dedicated to the Nine. A messenger with a berried bay leaf in his hair, to indicate he carried good news, knelt at her feet.

“What news,” she asked, “do you bring?”

“The fleet of your brother, the Lord Kharaxos, has been sighted. He will this day lie within the twin home harbors of Mitylene.”

Blessings were on her lips for the messenger and for the gods. The seven mouths of the fine-sanded Nile had returned him! Forgotten was her brooding fear of age, and the loneliness in which she lived. Like a young girl she ran about the house, ordering a feast as in the old days.

Niobe hummed again at her work. As chief among the slaves she directed their tasks; some she sent into the fields, some to the flower stalls of the city, some to raise the more mature wines from the cistern. A robe was made ready for Khar. “Softer than a light wrap, whiter than milk” were Sappho's instructions. Golden sandals for Khar's feet were purchased, studded with rich gems, a wreath woven for his hair, a garland for his neck. She found time to whisper to the gods in gratitude that she was able to welcome her brother as a prince. Music, feasting, drink—what honor she would show him, the only one of her family left.

She oversaw her dressing with great care and not a little concern. Niobe worked with meticulous attention, drawing the face she wished her brother to see. It did not reflect her recent despondency, nor her solitary life. It showed a fine and handsome woman with great dark eyes that pierced with their own particular seeing.

“All servants, all slaves, and especially those trained in music upon various instruments—in fact, my whole household shall accompany me to the dock, except only the watchers and guards of the house.”

Her finest chariots were brought around, decked and ready, even to the polished hooves of the horses and chains of blooms thrown over their proud throats. Sappho, watching, made a note:

More skittish than a mare

The merry troop with flute and tambourine and the beat of drums wended its way through the streets of Mitylene. Alkaios, having received a messenger from Sappho, joined her with a retinue of his own. It saddened Sappho to look on Alkaios these days. The poet had gone to fat and carried a wobbly belly before him, but his height was imposing. His age was ten years greater than hers. Yet if Alkaios was old, Sappho was old. She perceived a man almost as close to sixty as fifty, who was in no way venerable, but constantly laid himself open to jokes and ridicule. In his case, however, they were guarded, for though his wits were usually addled by wine and his eyes rheumy and unfocused, there were occasions when he struck a well-aimed blow with his staff or devastated his opponent with a well-chosen sarcasm. He was wealthy, and so had young boys aplenty, but in all the world there were only two people whom he truly loved, Sappho and Khar. They embodied for him the sweet days of his youth.