All is to be Dared: Eros and Immortality in Sappho’s Fragment 31
My first paper of the semester, written for Queer Literary Traditions. Not my usual pop-culture offering, but given the influence that Sappho’s Fragment 31 has had on the Western world’s concept of erotic love, I’d like to think that my parsing of the poem possesses some cultural capital as well.
Anne Carson grants Sappho the distinction of being the first to characterize erotic desire as “bittersweet,” a contradictory and even paradoxical experience of simultaneous pleasure and pain. As Carson details in Eros: The Bittersweet, the influence of this classification famously reified in Sappho’s Fragment 31 has been prolific, surfacing in the works of poets, philosophers, psychologists, and literary critics for centuries. As a result, Sappho’s most recognizable poem has become a proverbial one-hit wonder, an aphoristic expression of the concomitantly vexing and inexorable desire humans feel for each other. While this perspective on the poem has and continues to accrue scholarly interest, it has also inevitably narrowed the lens with which we view the fragment to the point of virtually obscuring its final line: “But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty” (If Not, Winter 63). While the disjointedness of this thought – both in its own right and in the larger context of the poem – certainly raises interpretative challenges, to treat these words as atrophied or even absent fails to capture the full intent of Sappho’s work and consequently produces an incomplete understanding of the triangulated nature of eros that Carson proposes. Explicating the meaning of this concluding phrase and its relationship to the whole of the poem not only affirms the tripartite structure of erotic desire but also elucidates Sappho’s philosophical understanding of eros’ function in her time and place.
Critical to but outside the direct scope of Carson’s discussion of the triangulated vectors of desire in the poem is her exposition of the poem’s location. Initially, she tells us “[t]he action has no location” (Eros: The Bittersweet 13), only to suggest a few pages later that “it takes place entirely within [Sappho’s] own mind” (16). Predicated on the phrases bracketing the main body of the poem (“He seems to me…I seem to me”), Carson’s proposal accounts for the emotional space of the action[1] but neglects the psychological one[2] within which it is situated: in the two periodic sentences that form the body of the poem, Sappho articulates an experience that might be described as a moment of individual liminality. This is to suggest that the episode she describes takes place in a liminal space within which she faces a period of separation from an established structure, a process of reorganization of that structure, and a moment of reassimilation to said structure. The emotional space created by the verb “seem” and identified by Carson accounts for the first of these criteria: the distance from her beloved that Sappho imagines represents a disconnect from the normal experience of their relationship. The emotional trauma of this separation catalyzes the process of reorganization, which begins in line eight.
The process of reorganization in a liminal experience can be and often is a psychologically traumatic one in that it forces the individual to consider a worldview different from or even in contrast to that which has been familiar; both of these elements – the trauma and the cultivation of a new worldview – are present in the descriptions of Fragment 31. As to the former, the catalog of physical sensations that Sappho describes beginning in line nine[3] all represent corruptions of the senses, suggesting they are psychosomatic. In other words, the ills she experiences are reflections of the psychological stress induced by the separation from her beloved. As the means by which the external world interacts and intersects with the internal, the senses call particular attention to eros as a psycho-emotional experience; by identifying each of the feelings she catalogs in the poem with a different sense (taste, sight, hearing, and touch) rather than focusing on one or another, Sappho underscores the totality and intensity of this sensual experience. On the other hand, however intense these sensations may be for Sappho, they are ephemeral: at the end of the two sentences, she is no closer to her beloved, but the sensations have ceased – she is “dead.”
It is in this death that Sappho captures the experience of having cultivated a new worldview with regard to her beloved (or perhaps more accurately, her relationship to her beloved). The completion of the process of reorganization in an individual moment of liminality is itself a metaphorical death, a fading away of a previously held understanding of one’s relation to the world. In this case, the poem suggests that prior to the liminal experience Sappho had only conceived of her beloved in relationship to herself; there was not a lack (of closeness, of affection, of attention, etc.) that would have created the distance described in the opening lines of the poem. When Sappho introduces the man into the relationship, there is an immediate and even violent shift in her orientation to the beloved that creates a lack across several levels of awareness and thereby creates the reorganized worldview. For this new worldview to be realized, it is immaterial whether “that man” is a purely cognitive construction (as Carson argues) or a tangible presence in the beloved’s life (as many scholars have suggested); his role in the individual moment of liminality is to create the psychic distance between Sappho and her beloved. Having said that, in order for Sappho to experience the reassimilation to the structure from which she had been separated, he must exist as Carson proposes: “a cognitive and intentional necessity” (16).
The “ruse of the triangle” (16), which allows for the completion of Sappho’s individual moment of liminality, might also well be called the crux of Carson’s argument throughout the whole of Eros: The Bittersweet; for this reason, a more detailed explication of the concept as it relates to Fragment 31 is in order before moving on to discuss Sappho’s reassimilation into the structure of her relationship with the beloved. Carson conceives of the three players in the poem (Sappho, her beloved, and the man) not as individuals but as a “geometrical figure formed by their perception of each other, and the gaps in that perception” (13). This image, she suggests, expresses the distance between the three or, put another way, the separation that catalyzes Sappho’s moment of liminality. The integrity of this shape is maintained by several vector lines of perception: a line of sound extending from the beloved to the man and two lines of sight extending from Sappho: one fixed toward the beloved and one situated on the man. Expressed in these admittedly simplified terms, Carson’s predominant theory about the poem becomes clear: “Sappho’s subject is eros as it appears to her” (16). In other words, more important than any of the players or any of the physical space within which this episode might take place is the erotic desire that develops in Sappho as a result of the two lines of sight. This poem is about her cognitive experience.
A common albeit reductive reading of the poem suggests that it is an expression of jealousy on Sappho’s part, and given the potential for it to complicate Carson’s argument, she addresses it in conjunction with the introduction of the triangle. In an explanation so succinct and seemingly accurate that it bears repeating here, she explains why her conception of the triangulated desire cannot be one of jealousy:
The jealous lover fears that his beloved prefers someone else, and resents any relationship between the beloved and another. This is an emotion concerned with placement and displacement. The jealous lover covets a particular place in their beloved’s affection and is full of anxiety that another will take it” (14)
Inherent in the idea of jealousy is the notion of movement: the jealous lover desires to inhabit the place of another person in the triangle. In Fragment 31, Sappho does not express a desire to change places with the man nor does she express the characteristic fear that he might usurp her position. Carson then underscores this point even further and writes, “[w]ere she to change positions with the man who listens closely, it seems likely she would be entirely destroyed” (14). Unfortunately, she leaves this thought suspended in the middle of the jealousy discussion; she never does offer an explanation as to why Sappho might be “entirely destroyed” by a change in position.
The answer to why movement within the triangle could prove so destructive to Sappho might fall outside the scope of Carson’s reading of the poem, but fortunately, it lies at the heart of why the Sappho of the fragment needs a moment of liminality. Up until this point, this reading has assumed the liminal space of the poem to be a direct result of the “He seems…I seem” statements that bracket the main body of the fragment and while this still holds true, in order to fully conceptualize the idea of reassimilation and its necessity, I now propose that we extend our consideration of these delineating phrases to include the prepositional phrase proceeding each “seem” statement: “to me.” The addition of this element to our reading of the poem not only affirms the existence of a unique psychological space existing within the main body of the fragment, it also elucidates the degree to which the action of the poem takes place entirely within Sappho’s own mind.
As to the former, although the state of “seeming” within which Carson identifies the poem as taking place invites and perhaps even compels the psychological reading, the added “to me” lens personalizes the space. To wit, this underscores Carson’s suggestion that “[w]e may recognize [Sappho’s] symptoms from personal memory but it is impossible to believe she is representing herself as an ordinary lover” (15); this poem represents an intensely personal understanding of eros and while it may have resonance for the reader, the triangle Sappho constructs is her own.
At the same time, considered in the context of the other ways in which this fragment is set entirely within Sappho’s mind, framing the main body of the poem with “to me” suggests a certain narcissism in Sappho’s tone, a narcissism that necessitates the moment of liminality. This is to say that the fragment represents more than just eros as it appears to Sappho – Fragment 31 represents eros as it appears to her ego. Ultimately pleasure-seeking, the ego possessed by eros conceptualizes the beloved as an object, a means to sexual gratification. The insertion of the man into the equation of eros creates a counterbalance for that object-oriented perspective: he “listens closely” to the beloved; he, as conceived by Sappho’s mind, represents a position of deobjectification that encompasses the interpersonal aspects we associate with feelings of love (altruism, empathy, etc.). This opposing perspective creates the equilateral vectors of perception and thus the metaphorical distance that heightens Sappho’s desire to the point of breaking. To change places with him, then, would mean inheriting his perspective, thus folding his vector of perception into the pleasure-seeking one. Doing so would eliminate the triangle conceived by the ego and force it to perform an impossible task: perceive the beloved as both object and person. The psyche would be “entirely destroyed” by such a task.
Worth noting here is that in Carson’s model of desire, the triangle itself must be equilateral: the vectors of perception between Sappho and the beloved, Sappho and the man, and the beloved and the man exert equivalent psychic pressure on the structure, thereby maintaining both the metaphorical distance between the characters and the resulting balance in Sappho’s own psyche. The intensity of the desire recounted in Fragment 31 is – to borrow Carson’s words – a result of “identifying it as a three-part structure” (16). To wit, this poem describes the initial stage of erotic attraction, the this-is-the-most-beautiful-human-being-I-have-ever-seen moment at which the ego most desperately wants to possess the beloved. By organizing her desire into the equilateral triangle, Sappho creates a psychological lack that sublimates the ego’s purely physical desire into the psychosomatic experience of simultaneous pleasure and pain that she catalogs in the main body of the poem. The intensity of these feelings stemming from the psyche’s construction of the equilateral triangle ultimately leads to the metaphorical death that characterizes the end of the reorganization phase of the moment of liminality.
Consequently, at the end of the two periodic sentences, there is a definite, even stark change in the tone of the poem. Not only do the psychosomatic manifestations of eros subside but the entire train of erotic thought derails at line seventeen. Carson, in an endnote that exudes skepticism, writes of this change, “if the seventeenth verse is authentic it must represent an entirely new thought” (If Not, Winter 364). And it is new, but not entirely – it is her moment of reassimilation from the moment of liminality. In this final line of the fragment, Sappho’s reassimilation into her relationship with and to the beloved causes a shift in the structure of the triangle. To be sure, this is not change in the way that jealousy would have altered her position; rather, Sappho’s perspective shifts, moving her closer to the beloved and the man to the periphery of her psychic vision. The triangle is now isosceles.
As the relationship progresses beyond the moment of initial moment erotic attraction that catalyzes the construction of the equilateral triangle and the metaphorical death, the ego-driven pursuit of eros begins to fade and thereby allows Sappho and the beloved to engage in what might be called a conventional relationship. Again, unlike jealousy, which would find the players switching positions within the triangle, this shift that results from Sappho’s reassimilation the climax of the moment of liminality maintains the integrity of the shape, the vectors of perception, and most importantly the sense of “touch not touching” (16). By reassimilating the lover’s erotic desire into the relationship by means of this structure of an isosceles triangle, the relationship can continue to grow into perpetuity while also sustaining the tension of eros: the lover still possesses the two perspectives (toward the beloved and toward the man) in equal measure, but the distance between the beloved and the man decreases asymptotically. Nevertheless, the theoretical and geometrical understanding of the process of reassimilation still leaves us with the question of how the final line of the fragment fits with and even expands upon the notion of eros present in the main body of the poem.
As a means of extending the erotic tension of the relationship, the isosceles model of eros that forms at the end of the two periodic sentences sets up the final line to reveal the product of the relationship: the poem itself. Giving voice to an idea Socrates would articulate some two-hundred years later in The Symposium, the stanza that Sappho begins with the final line – “But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty” – proposes the fruit of homoerotic desire to be artistic creation. And like the offspring of a heterosexual union, this creation becomes a form of immorality for Sappho, a means of passing on the wisdom she has accumulated and extending her influence beyond her physiological existence. As such, the image of eros that Sappho conveys in Fragment 31 is not just that of a “bittersweet” emotion or madness or a tripartite structure but a means to immortality.
In fairness to Carson’s analysis, to fully unpack the meaning of the final line involves turning to Catullus’s adaptation of the fragment, which has survived mostly intact as his Poem 51. Although Catullus’s version of the poem is necessarily not an exact translation of Sappho’s because of the different time and place from which he is writing,[4] the degree to which he is faithful to her language in the main body of the poem compellingly suggests that his final stanza is reflective of the idea expressed in Fragment 31. His final stanza reads,
Idleness, Catullus, is troublesome to you.
You exalt too much in leisure and exploits;
in the past, idleness has ruined both
kings and happy cities.[5]
In the same way that Carson seems skeptical if not dismissive of the final line in Sappho’s version, there has been much debate about how or even if this stanza fits into Catullus’s poem. Here again, the difference in tone and theme is more of a shift than a change. The primary rhetorical move Catullus makes here is to shift the voice of the poem from first to third person, thus making it a direct address to himself. Doing this allows him to speak from a position outside the triangle of eros, removed from the madness and irrationality associated with the psychological state of erotic desire. By distancing himself from that state, Catullus underscores the seriousness with which this stanza should be read. These sentences are not just the musings of a man possessed by eros.
Rather, Catullus is making the significant point – to himself and the reader – that unchecked eros is destructive to the psyche; in order for eros to be socially viable and valuable, something must come of it. That said, the “idleness” Catullus writes of here is not some abstract or unrelated idea (as some scholars have suggested), but rather idleness in eros: he is elucidating the importance of the shift from the equilateral to the isosceles model of eros. To be sure, there are political undertones present in this stanza as well that would not have existed in Sappho’s version, but even with that being the case, Catullus still manages to convey the same message as her in the tongue-firmly-in-cheek manner their poetry shares. To wit, the implication of Catullus’s stanza is that he has already avoided the troublesome idleness by producing the poem itself. In other words, by channeling (sublimating, perhaps?) his experience of eros into the writing of Poem 51, Catullus is not simply exalting in the bittersweetness of the moment of desire but using it as a means to a productive end.
In Sappho’s version of this would-be second stanza, the phrase “all is to be dared” acknowledges the degree to which she recognizes the potentially damaging or at least stunting effect of eros; while it might be a risk to indulge in the moment of eros, the potential payoff of the experience is worth it. Similarly, the second phrase of the line – “because even a person of poverty” – makes the all-important suggestion that there is a universality in the procreative potential of eros. Sappho here positions herself outside the triangle of eros and its associated madness and irrationality in the same manner as Catullus does. Although the shift from first to third person is not present in the line, the shift in tone is evident in the way that Sappho here employs an indefinite article (“a person”), which creates a contrast with the intensely personal frame set up by the prepositional phrase (“to me”) in the main body of the fragment. Given these close similarities to Catullus’s adaptation, Sappho seemingly intended to make the same tongue-in-cheek maneuver of presenting the poem itself as the bulwark to idleness, the would-be product of the relationship. With this said, then, the final task toward unpacking the relationship between the two periodic sentences and the second stanza is understanding why these ideas would matter especially or at all to “a person of poverty.”
Fragment 31 is representative of all Sappho’s surviving fragments in the sense that its content focuses on the relationship between homoerotic attraction and art/wisdom.[6] This is to say that although many of her poems express homosexual attraction, descriptions of actual sex acts are entirely absent from the surviving fragments. Like Socrates centuries later, eros for Sappho is a social tool, a means of bettering one’s character and position. As such, for her and those who would have been reading her work, all of the destructive potential is outweighed by its ability to reveal truer and purer forms of beauty and wisdom. By then cultivating the relationship through the experience of an individual moment of liminality, the lover grows closer to the beloved – and a greater awareness of beauty – in pursuit of the only procreative consummation their love can know: art. The eros Sappho describes, in contrast to the notion of it proposed in The Symposium, does not exist only in certain classes or among certain people; the eros she chronicles, like the women who gathered around her, is available to whoever is lucky enough to find it. To wit, eros becomes the means by which any person can produce something more eternal than her physiological self.
[1] i.e. the perspective from which Sappho composes these thoughts
[2] i.e. the frame of mind with which she crafts these thoughts
[3] All selections from and line references to Fragment 31 are from Anne Carson’s translation in If Not, Winter.
[4] Whereas Sappho often seems to be wrestling with the role and understanding of eros through her poetry, Catullus has an underlying interest in politics, particularly the corruption he believes Caesar and Pompey to be perpetrating. Consequently, readings of his adaptation, especially the final stanza, often focus on the potential political implications of his language. Although the degree to which Catullus remains faithful to Sappho’s themes deserves mention here, it lies outside the scope of this discussion.
[5] This is an original translation in agreement with previously published versions but using vocabulary more contemporary with Carson’s translation of Fragment 31.
[6] The conflation of these terms here is intentional and itself representative of a similar maneuver by Sappho. Most prominently occurring in Fragment 56, her poems often blur or even eschew a distinction between wisdom and art.
