Pain can be expressed in both sorrow and anger. Sappho creates great imagery in this fragmented poem by taking pain into natural moving actions. She expresses how her feelings change from hurt to anger and how heavy pain can really be. Sappho uses physical movement to express her emotions in different directions. She also emphasizes how she sees revenge is the ultimate goal in order to recover from that pain.
Throughout the fragmented poem, Sappho expresses how someone else’s degrading words affect her and how she handles that pain. She is quick to judge and takes action after being put down. With the descriptions of her pain in movements, she tells a story of what caused her pain.
Sappho first expresses her feelings about the cause of her “pain” (line 1) by granting how she wants to hurt the person who “blames” (line 3) her. She is describing how the movement of drips and winds are like the feelings of people. Each move at different speeds yet occurs so quickly from one another. Sappho’s feelings are described in natural disasters because they emphasize the severity of her feelings. Not only do they represent her feelings but express her process of revenge to recovery. Sappho uses imagery as a directional path to the process beginning downward with “pain”.
The feeling of “pain” (line 1) drags. Sappho makes a very simple scene of her misery with the word “drips” (line 1). She means pain is leaking out whether it blood from a wound or tears. The movement of the “drips” is slow as opposed to streaming because drips are more dramatic and fragile. Sappho purposely states it is simply leaking out of her, which allows her time to understand the magnitude of the “pain”. It is a clearer thought process instead of being appalled by a larg...
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... her feelings become solid and unmoving.
From this, Sappho shows that it may not be the best way but an affective way to handle pain in a vengeful manner. She expresses how she sees and handles pain in such a depressing way and from that pain comes motivation for revenge. Sappho is able to get the relief and satisfaction from causing the source of her pain an equal amount of suffering she has gone through. In this poem, Sappho is not asking for pity, but making a statement of how she gets over an emotional injury through physical movement. The title “In My Pain” explains how she speaks of her pain, but also what is behind it. With the help of revenge, she has the ability to move on and that is the ultimate goal.
Work Cited
Sappho. “In My Pain.” Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho: A New Translation. Trans
Willis Barnstone. Boston: Shambhala Press, 2006.
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