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]
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
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.