Page "Sappho" Paragraph 33

David Campbell has briefly summarized some of the most arresting qualities of Sappho's poetry: Clarity of language and simplicity of thought are everywhere evident in our fragments ; wit and rhetoric, so common in English love-poetry and not quite absent from Catullus ' love poems, are nowhere to be found.

Her images are sharp — the sparrows that draw Aphrodite's chariot, the full moon in a starry sky, the solitary red apple at the tree-top — and she sometimes lingers over them to elaborate them for their own sake.

She quotes the direct words of conversations real or imaginary and so gains immediacy.

When the subject is the turbulence of her emotions, she displays a cool control in their expression.

Above all, her words are chosen for their sheer melody: the skill with which she placed her vowels and consonants, admired by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, is evidenced by almost any stanza ; the music to which she sang them has gone, but the spoken sounds may still enchant.