The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

The English Sappho 145

That melting ev’ry thought to fond desire,

Bade sweet delirium o’er thy senses roll? (XXV; 337; 1–4)

Again, in this sonnet as in others, the subordination of her poetic

talents to her erotic desires in the service of winning her lover only

diminishes her status as a poet, a destiny she foresees figured in “A

blighted laurel, and a mould’ring tomb” (338; 14). To make mat-

ters worse for her Sappho, Robinson adds a plot point not located in

the original Ovidian source but from Verri’s novel, The Adventures

of Sappho, which portrays Sappho as a desperate stalker: inf lamed

by jealousy and desire, Sappho decides to follow Phaon to Sicily

(XXIX; 339). She bids farewell to Lesbos: “Lesbos, these eyes shall

meet thy sands no more: / I f ly, to seek my Lover, or my Grave!”

(XXX; 339; 14).

Only toward the end of the sequence does Robinson attempt to

engage Sappho’s actual poetry, preferring to deal instead with the

mythos surrounding the poet. Sonnets XXXII and XXXIV are the

only sonnets in Robinson’s sequence that allude to Sappho’s poems.

As Robinson’s footnote, “Vide Sappho’s Ode,” points out, the first

of these two sonnets directly refers to the poem that has most dis-

concerted attempts to normalize the erotic ethos of Sappho’s poetry.

Sonnet XXXII describes Robinson’s Sappho, on her journey to Sicily,

dreaming of finding there a rival for Phaon’s love. Opening with a

paraphrase of Ambrose Philips’ translation, the sonnet addresses the

imagined rival:

BLEST as the Gods! Sicilian Maid is he,

The youth whose soul thy yielding graces charm;

Who bound, O! thraldom sweet! by beauty’s arm,

In idle dalliance fondly sports with thee!

Blest as the Gods! that iv’ry throne to see,

Throbbing with transports, tender, timid, warm!

While round thy fragrant lips zephyrs swarm!

As op’ning buds attract the wand’ring Bee! (1: 340; 1–8)^19

Robinson must adapt Sappho’s poem to her heteroerotic plot. Sappho’s

original ode famously describes her almost debilitating envy combined

with sexual arousal at observing the female object of desire in the com-

pany of that woman’s male lover. In his discussion of Sappho’s ode,

Addison is clearly made uncomfortable by its content; presenting Philips’

translation, he awkwardly offers the following advice: “Whatever might

have been the Occasion of this Ode, the English Reader will enter into

the Beauties of it, if he supposes it to have been written in the Person

of a Lover sitting by his Mistress.” Clearly demarcating the parameters

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1459780230100251_05_ch03.indd 145 12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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