Sappho (14 page)

“They keep their women too strictly, Mother. I would have no freedom to go about as I chose.”

“But to take ship across the pathless sea to the land of the Barbarian!”

“The Attic tongue is spoken everywhere. Besides, I bring greetings to your friend, the good Arion, inventor of the dithyramb, who costumed the Dionysos chorus.”

“How you can be serene in the face of another exile, I do not know.”

“O Mother … I long and I yearn!”

“So you have sung. But for what, Daughter?”

“The world, Mother. Nothing less. If I had not been sent, I would go. I want to see strange people and places, to know new customs, taste exotic foods, see the apparel of the women.”

“You speak like a boy. A young man might feel as you do, but it has never been a woman's way.”

Sappho shrugged off the familiar words.

“Be that as it may,” her mother continued, “I have a gift for you, to go where you go. I brought it with me when I turned my face from Eresos. It is your father's soil and patrimony. See, it is wrapped in rags, but the bare roots will flower. Wherever the gods take you, these vines of home go with you.”

Sappho, much touched, hugged her mother, clinging to her now it was time for parting.

Her fifteen-year-old brother, Larichos, said, not for the first time, “If only I could go with you.”

Sappho smiled at him. “Your time will come. You are still very young.”

“But your mother is not young,” Kleis said, “and I have a presentiment that the vines I give you are more fortunate than I, that I will not see my Sappho's face again.”

“You will, Mother, you will. Pittakos will not be in power forever. The rule of his predecessor was short enough. Politics have a way of changing. I will come home, and Khar too.”

“It is hard,” her mother lamented. “Two children gone, and one a girl.”

“Girl? O Mother, I am tiger, Minotaur, nymph, poet! The Sappho that you see and touch is only what binds me in a skin. I am so much more—and many.”

“You are not my Sappho?” her mother asked, bewildered.

“I am she, too!” And with that she kissed both her and her brothers. And sang them words she strung together a year ago in Pyrrha:

A murmurous blossomy June

For such it was when she turned her back on Lesbos. It was to be an exile of nine years.

K
ERKOLAS

Iris, goddess of the rainbow, stretched her iridescent mantle of many colors across the peninsula, from the harbor to the shore of Asia. The fleetest ship in mooring was a high-prowed Phoenician. Sappho and her small retinue stepped aboard the merchantman bound for Corinth. She pressed a silver double drachma into the captain's hand and was shown to the tent set up in the waist of the ship. Cushions and pelts had been spread for her, a bed improvised on sheepskins and fine linens.

She ordered a goblet of Lesbian wine. Niobe, who had followed her into this exile too, motioned the other servants away and poured for her mistress. But Sappho dismissed her and drank alone.

Her mother did not have the heart to come to the dock. And of her friends, young people with whom she had played and sung before Pyrrha, not one came. It was dangerous to be Sappho's friend. But it hurt her that her middle brother, Eurygyos, did not stand with little Larichos on the dock.

There was motion under her feet, and water opened between herself and Larichos, between herself and the quay. She watched it slip away, grow small and smaller. What was distance, that it could erase things as though they had never been? Was it another god, perhaps, one that sailors knew of? The bravado she felt when she stood by her own hearth with her mother and brothers evaporated. For the first time she was utterly alone in an unknown void, sailing between two inverted domes, Sky and Ocean.

The craft hugged the shore as they passed Chios. When the island was sighted, the captain, by prearrangement, informed her. Here was where her father died, in these waters. Little Pebble it was who undid a flower from her hair and tossed it to the undulating surface.

A secret companion traveled with her, Erato, the Muse who loved poetry best. She whispered it was ordained that the daughter of Skamandronymos journey to far places, bringing her songs to strangers.

Sappho became used to the pitch and roll of the ship. She held the rail for hours while the lovely Muse helped her compose an ode to the portals of heaven, which were kept by great clouds piled as temples and colonnades on one side and on the other by the Seasons where Apollo played his harp. She brooded over the lines, trying and discarding words. She wanted to create a perfect work. For the young Sappho was left behind, and the poet in her was more forceful than before.

Journeying toward foreign lands, she swore always to sing in her native Aeolean dialect. She thought in it, and her emotional life was lived in it. She would make the Lesbian accents ring from bronze threshold to bronze threshold where Night and Day meet.

The painted eyes of the vessel found their way through the unmarked water. The ship reached the eastern port of Corinth on the third day without incident.

Corinth, city of fine craftsmanship, city of Periander. The small party disembarked, and her eunuch managed to engage a covered cart. She sent runners ahead and proceeded to the gates of the villa of Arion. For this meeting she reminded herself she was Sappho, whose fame was here in Corinth as it was in all places.

Arion came out to greet her, and his words were winged. “Sappho, of inspirational mind, who catches the bird as it flies, the flowers as they open, the dew on the leaf and in the heart—my joy at this meeting is indescribable. Before you leave, I beg that you teach me your songs. For not since Homer has there been one who combines the simple with that which is most profound.”

Sappho smiled. His reference to her departure indicated there was not room in Corinth for two poets. However, she was grateful for present hospitality, and also for his graceful manner of speaking, which made things clear and confirmed her secret desire—to continue her journey west and settle in Syracuse, that colony of the Hellenes noted for its pleasure-loving sophistication.

Arion's slaves showed her to a sumptuous suite where a bath had been readied. The soothing warmth of perfumed water, the tonic of oils upon her skin dissipated the effects of the voyage.

A feast had been ordered in her honor. She dined and drank and was persuaded to offer up a song. Afterward there was talk of the direction her wanderings should take.

“Yes, yes, of course to Sicily.” Arion did not hesitate in his concurrence. “There are many flourishing cities there. If it were I, my choice should be Sybaris. It is an Achaean colony on the Gulf of Tarentum. For a woman alone, however, Sybaris is perhaps too notorious. It is the town to which we send our best-trained prostitutes. I agree that Syracuse might be preferable. It was founded a century and a half ago by Corinthians, very civilized. They know how to live, believe me.”

Sappho did believe him, for she could see he was an indolent man, perhaps ten years her senior, fond of luxury and soft living. Only the piercing eyes assessing everything that passed before them betrayed the poet. He and Sappho were much interested in each other. She had studied his style, lyric like her own but with a softer, almost oriental alliteration. It was he who had turned the feast of Dionysos into theater.

“Yes, I can recommend Syracuse to you. All the arts are cherished there. Especially the poetic.”

“That is what led me to think of it. And your words have settled my mind.”

“The only thing…”

“Yes?”

He seemed not to know how to begin. Arion had been so fluent until now that Sappho listened with unusual care. “As a poet who is sung wherever the Aeolic tongue is spoken, which as you know, my dear, is everywhere … as Sappho, you will be freely admitted, in fact courted, by society. But as a woman, well, your sex has not the freedom to come and go at will.”

“It is like Athens then! Thanks to the gods I am Lesbian born. I shall take my customs with me.”

“I hope it may be so.”

She was aware of the dubious, dissenting note.

*   *   *

Periander, the Tyrant, having heard that Sappho the poet was in Corinth, invited her and her host to a banquet. The villa lay on the sand shore, and its pools were half indoors and half out, falling with a tinkle in miniature waterfalls. The walls were a mixture of colored marbles, from veined salmon to lavender, while the colonnades were purest white.

At this time Periander, once of powerful stature, was already portly, with a hint of sagging in his jowls and about his knees that made him look older than his forty years. Still, he was a great ruler, one of the seven wise men of the known world, and he did Sappho the honor of coming forward, pressing her hands in his.

“Spellbinder of Lesbos” was his greeting. He had wine of Lesbos in readiness and, after pouring libation, thanked Earth-Shaking Poseidon for bringing this jewel of worth in health and safety to his land.

The first tables were brought. But the main course served that evening were the songs of Sappho and Arion. She sang his, and he replied with hers. It was a glorious exchange. Periander himself had made, by his own account, some two thousand verses and maxims, but in such company he could not be prevailed upon to recite them. “What, when I have here the two most famous bards of Hellene! They do not name me wise for nothing,” he joked.

Arion began one of Sappho's sweetest lays:

I have loved delicacy …

In lines of Arion's, she carried forward the same meter. Periander was enchanted.

Slyly, Arion gave her description of Pittakos:

Crabbed age and youth cannot together live!

The whole company laughed.

She replied with a verse of Arion's in her conversational style, and in their local Lesbian Aeolic dialect. It was irresistible.

Then Arion sang her famous dove song:

But the heart of the doves became cold,

and they drooped beside them their wings …

Toward the end of the evening Periander asked, “What, O golden-tongued Sappho, is the relationship between a poet's life and his works?”

“It is all one, Lord. My song is an expression of my life, which has been bitter. Many times on high Pyrrha I watched the dove and understood her.”

Arion saved until last the verse that was known throughout the colonies of the Hellenes and further:

Though few

they are roses

Periander and his court applauded, insisting that now Sappho render her own songs. She opened herself to the sublime rhythm of the music. Her body was only half seen as she bent over her lyre. The unseen part was felt in her words. Mad with passion, her witchery spun itself in the hearts of her hearers.

Periander, builder of temples, architect of the portage across the isthmus of Corinth, richer than Midas by reason of the tolls collected both entering and leaving his domain, spoke to kings and princes, saying: “Sappho of Lesbos sang me her verses.”

*   *   *

When the next merchantman heading for Sicily put into port, news was brought Sappho and, saying her farewell to Arion, she installed herself and her retinue on board.

The first day's sail was through the straits, past high land on either hand. They sheltered in the bay east of Ithaca before trusting themselves to the six hundred stadia of open sea. In preparation for the crossing they proceeded north to Leucas to take on fresh water. The winds were notoriously uneven in this passage, and they were close to being blown upon the terrible cliffs, which seemed a bridge from Sea to Sky. Joining her at the rail, the captain recounted the story of the many criminals who had been thrown from the pinnacle of the Leucadian heights.

Sappho shuddered. “What a dreadful fate.”

The captain shrugged. “Only for the guilty, for great birds were tied to their shoulders, and they say the innocent descended gently into the arms of friends waiting in boats below.”

Sappho shook her head; the tale was not credible. Small boats would surely be dashed against these perpendicular granite sides. In fact, their own much larger craft seemed to her equally at the mercy of gusts that could easily drive and splinter it against that great white rock. The captain assured her he had put in here innumerable times, and he guided their vessel into the small harbor without mishap. By noon they were securely anchored, and Sappho set out to visit the scene of the executions. Her excuse was that the same spot was known for its shrine to Apollo.

She climbed for the colors above her in the tinted clouds, and for the wildflowers hidden in rock crevices. She climbed for Apollo—the loveliest pair of children descended from Father Sky were Apollo and his sister, Artemis. She thought of the prisoners and their savior birds, and wondered if they had said their last prayers at the shrine. But mostly she climbed because she must, for she was driven by a strange compulsion.

At the top was a series of colonnades of a type she had never seen. Their capitals were carved with great marble leaves in recurrent design. The Harpist willed her past these to the highest rise, where Sea and Sky mingled. This must be the death spot. A wind colder than any she had ever felt swept her. The deep band of Sea seemed all that held the world together.

She turned quickly and laid the wildflowers she had picked on the altar. “I hope you are not lonely here,” she whispered to the god and ran back down the steep path, not pausing for breath. She did not know why the place affected her so strangely.

In spite of the threatening appearance of Sky, the captain refused to delay sailing. Word of their crossing to Sicily must have reached Aegae, that impenetrable place beneath Sea where winds are born and hurled in all directions. Sky had reason to be angry and periodically vent his rage in terrible fury and storm, for had he not been castrated by his own son, Kronos? At times he tore himself open to pour down rain, which beat so that human eyes could not open against it. The ship wallowed in troughs and was hurled to mountain crests. Sappho had no doubt that they were about to be engulfed, that she and all on board were to perish, swallowed by the wrath of Sky.