Sappho's Reception: Use and Misuse of her Work

In “Ventriloquizing Sappho, or the Lesbian Muse”, Elizabeth Harvey defines “transvestite ventriloquism” as “the male author’s appropriation of the feminine voice,” and “its implications for silencing of women’s speech and writing” were vast and lasting (82). In Sappho’s case, this began with the Ovidian epistle where Sappho leaps to her death for Phaon’s love. Ovid’s appropriation, or rather, misappropriation silences Sappho’s original voice in her work because he writes in the voice of Sappho, with no inclination that this is a fiction work. This threatened Sappho’s entire reputation as female poetess because when it was retrieved many centuries later, scholars believed for a while that this was in fact a real letter from Sappho. The mistake was quickly realized upon closer inspection, the meter is not Sapphic and the voice is too masculine in its images and tone, but it was enough for people to believe the myth, it continues to be a part of her story today. Now I should there is no text saying that she didn’t fall in love with a man name Phaon, so there’s no telling where Ovid heard this claim or if he made it up.

In the text, Ovid diminishes Sappho of her voice and poetic skill. The pseudo-Sappho voice goes “on in the text to say that old power for poetry does not come at Sappho’s call and sorrow has hushed her lyre,” all because Phaon does not love her back (Harvey, 85). Ovid’s even claims in the epistle that Sappho was only capable of writing poetry when she first saw Phaon’s beauty. She was inspired by the sight of Phaon to write her poems and was relinquished of her power when he left. The male beauty as the reason for the existence of Sappho’s work, according to Harvey, “denies the possibility for authentic female speech”...

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...: University of California Press, 1996. Print.

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Prins, Yopie. “Sappho’s Afterlife in Translation.” Re-reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission. Ed. Ellen Greene. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Print.

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Winkler, Jack. “Gardens of Nymphs: Public and Private in Sappho’s lyrics.” Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches. Ed. Ellen Greene. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Print.