American Journal of Philology

Snyder’s aim in Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho is to make Sappho’s poetry “come alive for the modern reader” (ix), which is to say, for the Greekless reader. To this end, the author bases her discussions of Sappho’s poems on her own translations accompanied by transliterations of the Greek text. She also explains the system of inflection in Greek and Sappho’s lyric meters, discusses the meanings of Greek words, and lucidly summarizes some of the principal textual difficulties. The result is a far from unsophisticated introduction to Sappho’s poems and the complex issues of their interpretation. For the non-Greekless reader, Snyder reproduces Voigt’s text (with her own translations in parallel) in an appendix (163–218). Her notes (219–37) are scholarly but not pedantic and refer to most of the important recent and older scholarship on Sappho.

Snyder’s translations of Sappho are good: quite literal, simple, and elegant. Although it is possible to take issue with a few renderings here and there, it would be caviling to cite examples here; I should note, however, that she has [End Page 636] a tendency to translate supplements (found, e.g., in Campbell) which do not appear in Voigt’s text, and has been somewhat inconsistent about bracketing supplements in her own translations (particularly, e.g., in 17 V). The transliterations would probably have served their purpose just as effectively if used only for illustrative purposes rather than throughout the text; presumably Greekless readers will not be able to connect sense and sound except where their attention is drawn to a particular phrase or verse. The first appendix, “A Guide to the Transliteration,” could have been improved by a pronunciation guide; nowhere does the author note distinctions between long and short alpha, iota, and upsilon.

Snyder’s approach to interpreting Sappho’s lyrics is twofold. The author points out that her method “is inevitably that of the classical philologist” and that she is “heavily influenced by the assumptions of New Criticism and the tradition of close textual analysis” (ix). She intentionally steers clear of the subject of Sappho’s historical and social context (1), believing that “Sappho’s text—even in its battered state—has the power to stand alone, with the benefit of very little ancient social context to help explain the author’s purpose or intention” (79). At the same time Snyder identifies herself as a “feminist scholar” whose approach has been “significantly colored by the questions raised through the influence of women’s studies, gay and lesbian studies, and postmodernism” (ix). Thus she wishes “to read what is left of [Sappho’s] songs for what they can say to women (and men who are willing to abandon a masculinist frame of reference) who hear her words today” (1).

Chapter 1, “Sappho and Aphrodite,” focuses on the Hymn to Aphrodite (1 V). After a close reading of the poem, with attention to Sappho’s themes and techniques of composition, Snyder advances the view that it “subverts the traditional system of female subordination by creating a female authorial self that is of key importance in this song” (16); the powerful goddess featured here also contrasts with “the helpless, girlish whiner of the Iliad” (10). She concludes that the poem “offers us a clear paradigm for a woman-centered perspective on the universe, one in which the goddess and the relationships between women take center stage” (24). This movement from close, text-based readings to more general assertions sets the pattern for chapters 1–4. In a discussion of 2 V Snyder asserts that the temple and grove are “encoded as female space” (19) but does not demonstrate how the description differs substantively from other passages describing idyllic settings in archaic lyric (e.g., Ibycus 286 PMG). The chapter concludes with a summary treatment of other fragments involving Eros or Aphrodite.

Chapter 2, “The Construction of Desire,” focuses on 31 V . Properly dismissing interpretations based on “the disease...