In her extant poetry, Sappho uses fourteen female personal names, four of which are not attested elsewhere. The essay is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of all of them. The results challenge the opinion, still prevailing in scholarship today, that Sappho’s companions were adolescent girls forming an educational or initiatory group, led by the poetess, that prepared them for respectable marriages. As a matter of fact, the female proper names in Sappho belong to four categories: ethnics, abstract (...) nouns, nicknames and mythological names. According to the onomastic conventions of ancient Greece, names of all these categories typically denote females as slaves and courtesans, at least until the Hellenistic period. Thus it is argued that Sappho’s nomenclature creates a ‘reality effect’, implying furthermore that her use of the term hetairai - and likewise of kalai and philai - could also point to the status of courtesans in the technical sense. This best fits the emphasis put on female beauty, seductiveness and musical skills, but also on invective and rivalry. Under the auspices of Aphrodite and from a female perspective, Sappho’s poems feature erotic experiences with lovers of both sexes as well as the reflection of those loves’ vicissitudes. The world imagined and displayed in her songs would therefore be mainly related to the symposion as the dominating realm of archaic poetry. This is how Sappho’s work was actually received in antiquity. (shrink)

The concept of inspiration occupies a central position in the realm of Proust’s self-reflexive evaluation of artistic production (as can be demonstrated by an analysis of passages bothfrom the last part of Proust’s ›Recherche‹ and from the context of ›Jean Santeuil‹ and ›Contre SainteBeuve‹). Yet by evaluating inspiration as something that could not do without intellectual work, Proust undermines anti-intellectualistic platonizing poetics. In addition, this implies that Proust declares the gap between artists and non-artists as unbridgeable. For Proust, inspiration is (...) enchanting because it is time regained, but takes shape only in the process of poetic creation. (shrink)

The characterization of the poetic act as a state of irrationality and ecstasis does not, as Plato pretends (followed by many interpreters until today), correspond to the oldest ancient Greek tradition – allegedly documented by the earlier poets as well –, but is Plato’s invention. As part of this invention Plato identifies for the first time in history poetical inspiration with divine possession. Plato’s subversive invention of the mad poet is the basis for his model of the philosopher who himself (...) shall dispose of enthusiasm, as the poet does, but who shall moreover dispose of intellectuality. (shrink)