On the other hand, early editions of the Greek,
such as Edmonds’ Sappho, contain large-scale
reconstruction. Edmonds fills in whole passages
missing in the extant texts of Sappho; he even
composes entire poems from a few fragments.
More recent editions of Sappho, by Lobel and
Page and Voigt, provide texts free from these resto-
rations. Translations based on poorer editions,
therefore, are an additional stage removed from
the Greek. Translations not based on the latest
findings or the most accurate scholarship are mis-
translations rather than over-translations.
The justification given for over-translation is
that fragmentary poetry should be completed by
the translator to provide the reader with the closest
possible experience of the original. The problem, of
course, is that the translator cannot know what the
poet originally wrote, and that translators always
interpret through their own biases. For example, in
Sappho [‘‘16’’], lines 13–14 are missing:
She had no
memory of her child or dear parents,
since she was led astray
[by Aphrodite]...... lightly
... reminding me now of Anaktoria
being gone,
I would rather see her lovely step
and the radiant sparkle of her face
than all the war-chariots in Lydia
and soldiers battling in shining bronze.
Richmond Lattimore’s translation adds this
for the missing lines:
Since young brides have hearts that can be
persuaded
easily, light things, palpitant to passion/as
I am.
This addition completely transforms the tone
and purpose of the poem. Sappho’s poem argues
that ‘‘whatever one loves’’ (line 4)—the parapher-
nalia of war or an individual person—appears
most desirable, not that women are particularly
excitable and irrational. The lines Lattimore adds
to to fill the gap are symptomatic of changes
throughout his translations of Sappho; earlier
in [‘‘16’’] he changes the neuter ‘‘whatever one
loves’’ to ‘‘she whom one loves best.’’
While over-translatedpoems second-guess the
author, under-translatedpoems tend to leave out
even more text than is available in their fragmen-
tary form. Should the translator trim more off a
poem already pruned by time?
... Translators need to be particularly aware
of their biases or assumptions when translating
women’s poetry to avoid distorting the message,
or closing off interpretive possibilities available
in the source text. Over-translations, such as Lat-
timore’s of Sappho [‘‘16’’], fill in the fragment
gaps with inappropriate or trivializing phrases.
While fragments lend themselves to that sort of
misrepresentation, whole poems also are subject
to distorted or censored renderings. Obvious
examples include translations that switch pro-
nouns or even the subject from female to male.
Nineteenth-century translations of Sappho [‘‘1’’]
changed from female to male the object of the
(female) speaker’s desire:
For if she flees, soon she’ll pursue,
she doesn’t accept gifts, but she’ll give,
if not now loving, soon she’ll love
even against her will.
Fragments that are excerpts from lost longer
poems frequently lack a context for interpreta-
tion. In these short fragments, it is sometimes
difficult to determine the gender from the Greek
verb. For example, in [‘‘15.’’ 4] the Greek could
be ‘‘he came’’ or ‘‘she came’’:
... Kypris,
may she find you very bitter
and may Doricha not boast, saying
how she came the second time
to longed-for love.
Nothing in the poem suggests a masculine
pronoun, since the only person mentioned is
female. Yet the poem generally has been trans-
lated ‘‘he came,’’ which shifts the focus of the
poem to an unidentified man. This has been justi-
fied by an unreliable biographical tradition that
associates Doricha with a prostitute with whom
Sappho’s brother fell in love. Even if we accept
that the rest of the poem dealt with that story,
nothing hinders Doricha from being portrayed
as the active one... Whether words or context
are missing, fragments illustrate the need to be
sensitive to tone and potential meaning of the
poetry translated.
Yet without ‘‘completing’’ the poem, how does
one make a wounded poem live in the new lan-
guage? Gaps in poems can be bridged by loosely
linking sense or images, so that the poem reads
well, without being deceptive. The translator’s job
is to make the absences work as part of the poetry
without being distracting: to evoke connections,
enticing the reader to bridge the gap.
Fragment 2