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Please post your comments, and any other versions you come across that you find compelling.

Some versions try to carry over elements of that form. The feet are a combination of trochees and dactyls:/- /- /- – /- /- for the first three lines, a dactyl sandwiched between two trochees on either side the third is a dactyl followed by a trochee.

Ancient Greek measured length of syllables rather than stress, which is very difficult for us to hear, so long and short are converted into stressed and unstressed in English. The first three lines have 11 syllables, and the 4th 5 syllables. Sappho’s poems were composed (not written) in 4-line stanzas, now called sapphics. This is where I found versions of fragment #32 by William Carlos Williams and Robert Lowell. She includes a wide range of translations over time and interesting contemporary examples. I also highly recommend the book I mentioned last time, The Sappho Companion, by Margaret Reynolds. Other contemporary translators of some Sappho fragments include Guy Davenport and Richmond Lattimore–I’ve included one of Lattimore’s here. But this volume doesn’t include the original Greek, as Carson’s does. And once again, more have been found since then, including two substantial ones–all included in Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works, by Diane Rayor, published in 2014. But I think her translations are indeed a gift.īarnard translated a hundred, but since then more have been found–Carson’s If Not, Winter, published in 2002, includes 192 fragments. I find that unnecessary and intrusive, and one of them (you’ll see) is cringe-worthy. The only caveat I have is that she’s added first lines not in the text that serve as titles/ context. Barnard’s are the ones I first knew, and I still find them very readable and moving. There seems to be wide agreement that Mary Barnard’s were a revelation when they came out in 1958–clean and simple, without the flowery ornamentation, accretions, and completely unsupported elaborations of earlier versions. I’ve included her three versions of the almost complete fragment #1, along with several others, translated by Carson, Barnard, and others.

As promised, this week’s post continues our discussion of Sappho.