The fame of Sappho has a more stable basis. Her work was in the
world's possession for not far short of a thousand years--a thousand years
of changing tastes, searching criticism, and familiar use. It had to endure
the wear and tear of quotation, the commonizing touch of the school and the
market-place. And under this test its glory grew ever more and more
conspicuous. Through those thousand years poets and critics vied with one
another in proclaiming her verse the one unmatched exemplar of lyric art.
Such testimony, even though not a single fragment remained to us from which
to judge her poetry for ourselves, might well convince us that the
supremacy acknowledged by those who knew all the triumphs of the genius of
old Greece was beyond the assault of any modern rival. We might safely
accept the sustained judgment of a thousand years of Greece.
Fortunately for us, however, two small but incomparable odes and a few
scintillating fragments have survived, quoted and handed down in the
eulogies of critics and expositors. In these the wisest minds, the greatest
poets, and the most inspired teachers of modern days have found
justification for the unanimous verdict of antiquity. The tributes of
Addison, Tennyson, and others, the throbbing paraphrases and ecstatic
interpretations of Swinburne, are too well known to call for special
comment in this brief note; but the concise summing up of her genius by Mr.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25