Sapphic
Sapphic - pronounced SAFF-ik, IPA: /'sæfɪk/ - is the adjective from the proper noun Sappho - pronounced SAFF-oh, IPA: /'sæfəʊ/.
Sappho - in Greek Σαπφώ - was a Greek poetess who lived in the sixth century B.C.E. on the island of Lesbos (or Mytilene) in the eastern Aegean Sea off the northwest coast of Turkey. Sappho was the leader of a religious community - or thiasos (θίασος) - devoted to the worship of the goddess Aphrodite and the Muses, and many of her surviving lyric poems express an intense affection.for the young girls who were members of this community.
- It may simply mean: connected with or related to the poetess Sappho.
- It may be used, either as an adjective or as a noun, to describe or refer to a female homosexual. This use of the word is not common nowadays, 'lesbian' being the word usually used to describe or refer to a woman who is sexually attracted to other women. In this use the word is written with a lower-case initial letter - sapphic.
- It may be used, either as an adjective or as a noun, to refer to the verse form in which Sappho wrote many of her lyric poems. This involves stanzas of four lines, of which the first three lines are trochaic pentameters with a dactyl in the place of a trochee in the third foot, and the fourth line is a dactyl followed by a spondee. The metrical scheme is therefore:
- — ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪
- — ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪
- — ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪ ∪ | — ∪ | — ∪
- — ∪ ∪ | — —
Sappho, like all Greek poets, wrote in quantitative metre, and the Sapphic stanza was imitated by many poets in the ancient world, most famously by the Roman poet Horace - Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 B.C.E.) in his Odes.
English poets have also sometimes written Sapphics, though employing stress metre rather than quantitative metre. Here is an example from Sapphics by the Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). (To help you with the metre the stressed syllables are printed in bold type, and the feet are divided by a vertical line.)
- All the | night sleep | came not up|on my | eyelids,
- Shed not | dew, nor | shook, nor un|clos'd a | feather,
- Yet with |lips shut | close and with | eyes of | iron
- Stood and be|held me.
(The whole poem may be read at the University of Toronto's Representative Poetry Online web resource [[1]] (June 2008).)
