“A semi-circle of marble seats, veined and stained, a screen of olive trees that fling their branches against the sky, and against the sapphire seas, a singing man, a listening woman, whose listening is so intense that nothing else in the picture seems to listen—not the wreathed girl in flowered robe who stands by her and rests her hand familiarly on her shoulder. Not she, for though she holds a scroll in her other hand, the full face, the round eyes, show a soul that matches wreathed head and flowered robe. She is the pride of life. Nor she on the upper seat, who props her chin with her hand and partly hides her mouth with her fingers and lets her vision reach into the distance of her own musings. Nor her neighbor whose composed attitude is that of a regular church-goer who has learned the art of sitting still and thinking of nothing. Nor yet the remotest figure—she who has thrown her arms carelessly on the back of the seat and is looking out on the waters as if they would bring her something. A critic tells us that the object of the poet is to enlist Sappho’s support in a political scheme of which he is the leader, if not the chief prophet, and he has come to Sappho’s school in Lesbos with the hope of securing another voice and other songs to advocate the views of his party. The critic seems to have been in the artist’s secret, and yet Alma Tadema painted better than he knew. Alkaios is not trying to win Sappho’s help in campaign lyrics. The young poet is singing to the priestess of the Muses a new song with a new rhythm, and as she hears it, she feels that there is a strain of balanced strength in it she has not reached: it is the first revelation to her of the rhythm that masters her own. True, when Alkaios afterwards sought not her help in politics, but her heart in love, and wooed her in that rhythm, she too had caught the music and answered him in his own music.”
SAPPHO’S PHYSICAL APPEARANCE, THE PHAON STORY, THE VICE IDEA
So far we have been dealing with ascertained facts, reasonable inferences as to other facts, and strong probabilities: in a word, with the real Sappho so far as her history can be made out with at least some measure of certainty. There is, however, a legendary fringe attaching to every great outstanding personality. It is one of the penalties of personal or literary greatness to become the centre of fanciful stories, personal detraction, misrepresentation, and wild legends often conceived in a most grotesque and improbable fashion. To all this Sappho is no exception. First the question will be discussed whether she was a dwarf. The famous and far-flung story of Phaon and the Leucadian Leap will then claim our mention, and thirdly a word must be said about her character.