古希腊诗人sappho英文介绍.doc

Sappho. The Alexandriansincluded her in the list ofnine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BCE, and it is said that she died around 570 BCE, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments. Sapphos lifetime witnessed a period of political turbulence onLesbos and saw the rise ofPittacus. According to theParian Marble, Sappho was exiled to Sicily sometime between 604 BCE and 594 BCE andCicero records that a statue of her stood in the town-hall of Syracuse. Unlike the works of her fellow poet,Alcaeus, Sapphos surviving poetry has very few allusions to political conditions. The principal exception is Fragment 98, which mentions exile and indicates that Sappho was lacking some of her customary luxuries. Her political sympathies may have lain with the party of Alcaeus.Though there is no explicit record of this, it is usually assumed that Sappho returned from exile at some point and that she spent most of her life in Lesbos.David Campbell has briefly summarized some of the most arresting qualities of Sapphos poetry Clarity of language and simplicity of thought are everywhere evident in our fragments; wit and rhetoric, so common in English love-poetry and not quite absent from Catullus love poems, are nowhere to be found. Her images are sharpthe sparrows that draw Aphrodites chariot, the full moon in a starry sky, the solitary red apple at the tree-topand she sometimes lingers over them to elaborate them for their own sake. She quotes the direct words of conversations real or imaginary and so gains immediacy. When the subject is the turbulence of her emotions, she displays a cool control in their expression. Above all, her words are chosen for their sheer melody: the skill with which she placed her vowels and consonants, admired by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, is evidenced by almost any stanza; the music to which she sang them has gone, but the spoken sounds may still enchant.Out of over 200 remaining remnants of Sapphos poetry,Fragment 16and Fragment 44in particular are considered lyric retellings ofHomerepics, as Sappho was known to be very familiar with Homers poems.Both fragments make direct allusions to scenes in HomersIliad, while Sappho also expands them with her own narrative illustrations. Fragment 16, for instance, serves to characterise Helen, a key figure of Homers, while Fragment 44 glorifies domestic joy by depicting the events leading to the wedding of Hector and Andromache.The political atmosphere of the Lesbos during Sapphos time paralleled that of Homers Troy, as the cities of Lesbos were constantly plagued with threats from Lydia. Whereas Homer focused depicting beauty through the glory of militarism, however, Sappho focused primarily on the portrayal of beauty through love. As oratory poets, both Homer and Sappho us