(now again)

Sometime in the last ten years, my copy of Anne Carson's gorgeous translation of Sappho, If Not, Winter (New York: Vintage, 2003)—which, it should probably be noted, I bought for a rather remarkable January-term class on Sappho and Catullus in 2004—disappeared. I don't know if I lost it in one of my many moves since, or loaned it to someone and never got it back, but it took me a long time to admit that it was probably gone for good. I finally replaced it this year, and that means it's time for Carson's Sappho. This is one of my favorite fragments (although it's hard to pick favorites; they're all pretty exceptional. Even fragment 176, lyre lyre lyre).

            ]

            ]work

            ]face

            ]

            ]

            if not, winter

            ]no pain

            ]

]I bid you sing

of Gongyla, Abanthis, taking up

your lyre as (now again) longing

            floats around you, 

you beauty. For her dress when you saw it

stirred you. And I rejoice. 

In fact she herself once blamed me

            Kyprogeneia

because I prayed

this word: 

I want

—Sappho (b. c. 615 BCE), fragment 22, translated by Anne Carson (b. 1950), from If Not, Winter (2003). In her introduction, Carson writes: "In translating I tried to put down all that can be read of each poem in the plainest language I could find, using where possible the same order of words and thoughts as Sappho did. I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through. This is an amiable fantasy (transparency of self) within which most translators labor" (x), and, later: 

When translating texts read from papyri, I have used a single square bracket to give an impression of missing matter, so that ] or [ indicates destroyed papyrus or the presence of letters not quite legible somewhere in the line. It is not the case that every gap or illegibility is specifically indicated: this would render the page a blizzard of marks and inhibit reading. Brackets are an aesthetic gesture toward the papyrological event rather than an accurate record of it. ... Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp—brackets imply a free sense of imaginal adventure. (xi)

I love a lot of things about Anne Carson, but perhaps my favorite is the poetic grace with which she approaches scholarly practice. It is an adventure.