Sappho: A New Translation - Hardcover

Sappho; Mary Barnard (Translator)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520011171 ISBN 13: 9780520011175

Publisher: University of California Press, 1958

Synopsis

The hundred poems and fragments here translated into modern English constitute all of Sappho that survives, and effectively bring to life the woman whom the Greeks consider to be their greatest lyric poet. Sappho gives us flashes of vivid comment and description - forthright attacks on her enemies, diologues with her friends, and exasperated exchanges with Aphrodite, the goddess who was both enemy and ally. The poems are highly personal and emotional portrayals of the world she lived in twenty-five hundred years ago. Mary Barnard's translations are lean, incisive, direct. As a result, she has rendered the beloved poet's verse, long the bane of translators, more authentically than anyone else in English.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Barnard studied Greek at Reed College and began to translate at Ezra Pound's instigation in the 1930s. Her Assault on Mount Helicon: A Literary Memoir was published by the University of California Press in 1984. Two years later she received the Western States Book Award for her book-length poem, Time and the White Tigress. She has also published prose fiction and a volume of essays on mythology as well as the original lyrics gathered in Collected Poems, 1979.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Although they are

Only breath, words

which I command

are immortal.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1958
• ISBN 10: 0520011171
• ISBN 13: 9780520011175
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 114