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Verum—si danda fides est—uti feliciter studuit, sic infelici amor capta est. Nam, seu facetia seu decore seu alia gratia, cuiusdam iuvenis dilectione, imo intolerabili occupata peste, cum ille desiderio suo non esset accomodus, ingemiscens in eius obstinatam duritiem, dicunt versus flebiles cecinisse; quos ego elegos fuisse putassem, cum tali sint elegi attributi materie, ni legissem ab ea, quasi preteritorum carminum formis spretis, novum adinventum genus, diversis a ceteris incedens pedibus, quod adhuc ex eius nomine saphycum appellatur.

But, if the story is true, Sappho was as unhappy in love as she was happy in her poetic craft. Either because of his wit or good looks or because of some other charm she became infatuated with a young man (better still, fell prey to an intolerable pestilence). He, however, did not reciprocate her passion. Lamenting his stubborn resistance, Sappho is said to have composed mournful verses. I should have thought that these would be elegiac distichs, since they are appropriate to such subjects, had I not read that Sappho scorned the verse forms used by her predecessors and wrote a new kind of verse in a completely different meter which is still called ‘Sapphic’ after her.

English translation by Virginia Brown.

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Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

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