5. Sappho's Public Poetry

I have argued that three modes of performances can be detected in Sappho's poems, all public:

She sang while a chorus of young women danced (e.g., frs. 1, 5, 94, 95, 160?). The young women did both the singing and the dancing (most epithalamia, frs. 2, 16, 17, 31?, 96).

Exchanges between Sappho or another soloist and the group (frs. 21, 22, 58, 140a).

It is possible that, besides these more or less choral songs, there were genuine monodic songs, performed only by Sappho herself: after all, the Suda speaks of Sappho's monodies as well as lyric songs (above). If so, we must ask ourselves where these monodic songs were performed. We really know of only one occasion where more or less monodic poetry was performed in the archaic period: symposia.^[102] It could be that Sappho composed some songs for symposia, as did Praxilla (see below), but I can find no trace of them in the remaining fragments, with the exception perhaps of some poems that were composed for the wedding banquet.^[103]

[101] Cf. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus 85.

We may conclude that a monodic performance, by which I mean a single performer accompanying herself on the lyre and singing to a group, is not a likely option for Sappho's poetry. I have argued that Sappho's poems about young women do not fit the monodic mold any more than her wedding songs do or Alcman's partheneia. I have further argued that there are traces of a plural voice in these poems and many parallels with choral poetry (in particular Alcman). The testimonia and Sappho's own poems speak about a variety of performances but not about monodic performances (with the exception of the Suda , which mentions monodic songs in addition to nine books of other lyric songs). Finally, I disputed the idea that any archaic Greek poet, male or female, would have composed poetry for delivery to a group of young girls in the privacy of her own home, and I suggested that this view of Sappho, which is commonly accepted, first originated in the French salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

By arguing for a more public delivery of Sappho's poems, I do not want to deny the important differences in tone and subject matter between Sappho and most male poets,^[104] but instead of seeing this as a difference between a public (male) and a private (female) world (as do Stigers [Stehle], Winkler, and Snyder), I would like to suggest that this reflects a difference between two distinct public voices.^[105] Only in this way can we make sense of the many similarities between Alcman's partheneia and Sappho's poetry. I believe that

[104] Here recent scholarship that has adopted a feminist perspective has done much to further our understanding of Sappho's poetry: duBois, "Sappho and Helen," and Sowing the Body 26-27 (with an important caveat on p. 29); Stigers [Stehle], "Sappho's Private World"; Stehle, "Sappho's Gaze"; Winkler, "Double Consciousness"; Snyder, "Public Occasion and Private Passion"; and Greene, "Apostrophe and Women's Eratics." See also Lasserre, "Ornements érotiques" 30; Hallett, "Sappho and Her Social Context" 138; Burnett, Three Archaic Poets , esp. 225-26, 288; Svenbro, "La stratégie de l'amour"; and Race, "Sappho, Fr . 16." Skinner, "Woman and Language," in my opinion, goes too far in insisting on the independence of Sappho's poetry.

[105] These public voices appear to be gender-specific as far as contents and performance are concerned, but they are not necessarily composed by only men or only women. Alcman composed "maiden songs," as did Pindar (frs. 94a-104d Maehler), Simonides, and Bacchylides (Calame, Les chœurs 2:167-74), while Praxilla was credited with writing skolia (Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre 55-56), a genre that was closely associated with the male domain of the symposium.

in the future it will be fruitful to compare Sappho's poetry more closely with Alcman's partheneia,^[106] the poetry of other female poets,^[107] and the public voices of Greek women in general. Anthropological studies of women's public or poetic voices in other cultures may be illuminating as well.^[108] One of the public speech genres associated with women both in archaic and in rural Greece today was the lament.^[109] There are echoes of this speech genre in Sappho's hymns (fr. 140a), in her wedding songs (fr. 114), and in a series of songs that are preserved among her "other" poetry.^[110] No matter how one reads Sappho's songs, it is important to realize that most of them probably were intended to be performed in public with the help of choruses.

[106] For a beginning, see Calame, Les chœurs 1:361 ff., 2:94-97; Hallett, "Sappho and Her Social Context" 139-42; and Cavallini, Presenza di Saffo 17-20. The differences between Alcman's partheneia and Sappho's poetry to which Stehle ("Romantic Sensuality Poetic Sense" 147-49) and Skinner ("Woman and Language" 186-87) have pointed are noteworthy but do not measure up against the many similarities. See Lardinois, "Subject and Circumstance" 73 n. 59.

[107] Here Rauk's article, "Erinna's Distaff , "deserves special mention. He sees in Sappho fr. 94 and Erinna's Distaff a generic type of farewell addresses of women. We may also point out that Praxilla (fr. 747), like Sappho (fr. 140a), composed a hymn for Adonis, a typical women's cult (Burkert, Greek Relyion 177; Winkler, Constraints of Desire 188 f.), and that Telesilla (fr. 717), like Sappho (test. 21, 41; ft. 44a), composed a hymn to Artemis, a goddess presiding over various facets of women's lives including the initiation of young girls (Burkerr 151 and Calame, Les chœurs 1:174f.)

[108] For example, on Crete women can compete with men in witty, poetic responses (mandinadhes ), mostly of a sexual nature (Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood 142-46), not unlike the exchange found in Sappho fr. 137. On Madagascar, women are associated with direct, open expressions of anger (Keenan, "Norm-Makers, Norm-Breakers" 137-39); cf. Homer Il . 20.252-54 and, perhaps, some of Sappho's satirical poetry. Nagy, Poetry as Performance chap. 4, compares Sappho ft. 1 to female initiation songs of the Navajo and Apache.

[109] On archaic Greece, see Alexiou, The Ritual Lament , esp. 4-14, and Martin, Language of Heroes 87; on rural Greece today, see Alexiou, esp. 36-5^[1] , and Caraveli, "The Bitter Wounding:"