15th March 2025

specialagentartemis:

slips-of-sappho:

dog-girls-balls:

i got this book of sappho’s poetry only to find out it has translations that paint sappho as straight. like this absolute classic that every dyke knows by heart

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istg i hate cishet academics so much.

There’s a lot of very interesting meta analysis around the translation of Fragment 102!

The Anne Carson translation also uses ‘boy’ (Fortunately she translates MANY poems as very Sapphic, still) The back of the book includes in-depth analysis of many of her translation choices. I don’t personally prefer with this one, but the reasoning

When looking into it, the word Sappho used for the object of her longing is παῖδος, paîdos, which is most commonly translated as “youth” because it’s not gendered. It can mean either a boy or a girl.
(There are reasons besides heteronormative assumptions for translating it as “boy”—though the word is not gendered, it’s cognate with a lot of words like puer that mean “son” so may have had a more masculine-as-default assumption (like a lot of European languages do), and when Sappho wrote about young women, the word she commonly used was παρθένος parthénos “young woman, maiden, virgin.” But paîs/paîdos it is not a gendered word and could be translated either way!) 

Read more from @specialagentartemis

Ahh, thanks for the shout-out!

Yeah, this fragment is really intriguing in its ambiguity, and has been approached in different ways by different translators and classicists. It’s something I’m increasingly interested in, Sappho’s use of the word “pais” (and its genitive form “paidos”) throughout her work. For example, in another poem, she uses “pais” to refer to her own daughter! So it’s far from cut-and-dry. Someday I will either find an article about that or write it myself, but for now, I can say about fragment 102 in particular, that a lot of ink has been spilled about these two little lines by different analysts from different backgrounds. And I think the popularization of one particular translation, the one by Diane Rayor that goes “slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl,” does a disservice to the ambiguity of the lines as well as the statement Rayor is making with her translation choice!

I happen to have two books about Sappho on hand, and this is what they say about it:

A photo of a page in a book. The text:  A seventh-century Greek might assume that erotic desire takes many forms, but it is unlikely a Greek thought in terms of fixed categories that can be neatly translated into modern terms such as "lesbian," "bisexual," or "heterosexual." Thus it is not surprising that some of Sappho's lyrics are ambiguous about the gender of the object of desire; it is also not surprising that the ambiguity sometimes lurks quietly behind the verses. Fragment 36, for example, seems clear-cut in English:  Sweet mother, I can no longer work the loom. Slender Aphrodite has made me fall in love with a boy.  The word translated here as "boy" (pais) is likely to mean just that: a young male object of desire. But although pais is a very common word for "boy," it appears here with no gender-specific article or adjective. Thus it is just possible that Sappho's original poem was not so specific: our distracting boy might be a girl. Elsewhere we find similarly remarkable abstraction. Particular objects of desire and the response to the beloved's distinct and individual qualities emerge from Sappho's fragments with clarity and precision. When Sappho generalizes, however, the gender of the beloved disappears: "but I say / it is whatever you love" (fr. 31).ALT

Introduction by Pamela Gordon to Sappho: Poems and Fragments, translated by Stephen Lombardo and edited by Susan Warden, 2002, p. xix. (This book uses a different numbering system for the fragments for reasons I’m not fully clear on, ignore that.)

Photo of a different book. Text says:  Fragment 102 is a song that tells, in an uncomplicated fashion, of the debilitating effect that love for a boy has had upon the singer. Sweet mother, I cannot weave my web, desire for a boy has overcome me because of slender Aphrodite.ALT
Same book, next page. Text says: Aphrodite is to blame for the singer's temporary disability, and the adjective ‘bradinan’, and the word used to describe the effect of her influence, "dameisa' are words that recur in Sapphic contexts (frr. 1.3, 446.7 and 115.2). Sweetly ‘heterosexual’ and ‘feminine’ as it appears, the song is said to have originated not from the fertile territory of Sappho's imagination, but 'ultimately from popular tradition' and Bowra (1961: 134) categorises it as a chanson de toile, such as girls sang over the loom, lamenting their loves. Once again, within Sappho's songs, appears a fragment which apparently lingers from folk song, perhaps from a female tradition, and tells of the sorrows or loves of women via multiple voices. It presents a more impersonal and conventional statement of love than other Sapphic lyrics, one which slips uncontentiously into a framework of male poetry and/or morals. However, male poets tend not to compose songs about a young woman weaving a web who is overcome with a surprisingly gentle form of debilitation or spell-casting by a female god. Nor do they re-produce interactions between girls and mothers. The subduing of Sappho's young singer/weaver appears as a good-natured exchange between child and mother, or a young woman and a female god, that offers an excuse for a welcome escape from weaving, in addition to beginning the movement from childhood to the experience of eroticism.ALT

from Sappho’s Sweetbitter Songs: Configurations of Female and Male in Ancient Greek Lyric by Lyn Hatherly Wilson, 1996, pp. 118-119.

Two very different approaches to the fragment, but both use the assumption that “paidos” here should be translated as “boy.” Gordon problematizes Lombardo’s choice to do so; Wilson takes a different interpretation entirely. Simple heteronormative assumptions on the part of the translators almost certainly play a part, but it’s neither deliberate erasure nor complete obliviousness. However, many translations translate this word as “boy” in this fragment.

So Diane Rayor’s choice to translate “paidos” in the fragment as “girl” is extremely deliberate and pointed! She’s saying, you all are choosing to interpret the object of the speaker’s affections as a boy, but it is also equally correct to translate this word as 'girl.’ It’s pointed, it’s intentional, it’s a deliberate pushback against common translation practice to point out that the choice to say “boy” is making just as much of an assumption as the choice to say “girl.” And that point gets lost when the fragment is presented as an uncomplicatedly straightforward or objective reflection of what’s in Sappho’s original text - in either direction!

Reblogged from : saltedweather
15th March 2025

I am struggling on the toilet right now. Send encouragement!

Asked by Anonymous

wizardarchetypes:

emmrichgf:

wizardarchetypes:

the discord server i’m in with a bunch of my friends has a room called “IBS” and any time this is happening to someone they just post an emoji or something in there. no details. just a single, fleeting cry for help to those who truly care but who cannot save them.

might i offer this in these trying times?

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babes why is it so small

Reblogged from : likemmmcookies
14th March 2025

sandersstudies:

sandersstudies:

SOOOOO funny when you’re having a strong emotion and your logical brain KNOWS you’re overreacting but you literally can’t do anything about it.

Emotional brain: fire and rage and biting and biting and biting

Logical brain: That was an innocent mistake, and not anyone’s fault.

Emotional brain: you’re right… fire and rage and biting biting biting for one thousand years tho

Reblogged from : calamitys-child
14th March 2025

rubixpsyche:

fckmypssywtharakemom:

cleverclove:

You see, Perry the Platypus, when Vanessa was a little girl, she wanted to take estrogen. Of course, I said yes. And since then she’s always been my little girl. Well recently, Vanessa’s school deadnamed her on her reports! Can you believe that!? I mean we live in a fairly progressive area and—hey, isn’t that not allowed in public schools??

Anyway, that’s when I got the idea for THIS! The deadname-eraser-inator! That way, not only will Vanessa no longer be deadnamed, but EVERY OTHER TRANS PERSON IN THE TRI! STATE! AREA!

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Perry spends this episode fixing the wall he put a hole through on the way in

Reblogged from : calamitys-child