The English Sappho 141Robinson would have found a fair share of supposedly deviant sexual-
ity in Pope’s translation. In other words, Robinson knew that Sappho
reputedly had sex with women. In her preface, she quotes at some length
from Barthélemy’s Anacharsis, in which the Abbé presents himself in
dialogue with a citizen of Mytilene who defends Sappho from “the
infamous manners with which she is privately reproached” (Barthélemy
2: 62). Robinson closes her “Account of Sappho” with the explana-
tion that, because of “the extreme sensibility” of the ancient Greeks,
“amongst them the most innocent connections often borrow the impas-
sioned language of love” (1: 326 –7; Bart hélemy 2: 63). Robinson’s quo-
tation omits, however, three sentences that compare Sappho’s passion for
girls to that of Socrates for his male pupils; she suppresses a comparison
that she perceived would be invidious to her subject and detrimental to
the success of her volume. Robinson also quotes Barthélemy’s citizen’s
imputation that other women envious of “her superiority” maliciously
used the “warmth in her expressions” against her and thus destroyed
her reputation. Robinson no doubt took some self- righteous pleasure
in quoting this view, as she herself felt similarly persecuted. Moreover,
even though Pope elides the original poem’s catalog of Sappho’s former
female lovers, his translation attributes Sappho’s lyrical prowess to her
homoerotic passion; in other words, in “Sapho to Phaon,” she can no
longer write lyric poetry because her heterosexual desire has incapaci-
tated those powers and so she writes this letter instead of a lyric poem.
Pope’s Sappho writes, “No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
/ Once the dear objects of my guilty love, All other loves are lost in
only thine” (17–9). Literally, the original of line 19 reads “what once
belonged to many girls is yours alone” (Knox 284). The Ovidian Sappho
repeatedly boasts of her poetic fame—“the wide world resounds with
Sapho’s praise” (32) —but she admits that, having forsaken her erotic
desire for other women in favor of a man, she no longer can write the
love poetry for which she is famous:Alas! the Muses now no more inspire,
Untun’d my lute, and silent is my lyre,
My languid numbers have forgot to f low,
And fancy sinks beneath a weight of woe.
Ye Lesbian virgins, and ye Lesbian dames,
Themes of my verse, and objects of my f lames,
No more your groves with my glad songs shall ring,
No more these hands shall touch the trembling string:
My Phaon’s f led, and I those arts resign,
(Wretch that I am, to call that Phaon mine!)9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1419780230100251_05_ch03.indd 141 12/28/2010 11:08:42 AM12/28/2010 11:08:42 AM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13