The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

The English Sappho 147

which is a formal triangulation itself. Just as the male Phaon is the

conduit for the feeling expressed, so is Petrarch’s masculine form the

conduit for that expression.

Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon normalizes the sexuality of the

pre- eminent woman poet through the legitimacy of the sonnet.^20

Robinson means to restore the lyric voice that the heroic epistle

form denies, but does so only through the most masculine of all lyric

forms—the Petrarchan sonnet. Robinson’s sequence shows the poet

mediating Sappho’s voice through an aggressively masculine poetics

until it becomes only the faintest echo, if it sounds at all. The other

sonnet that engages Sappho’s poetry, Sonnet XXXIV, “Sappho’s

Prayer to Venus,” only generally alludes to the Greek poet’s “Ode to

Aphrodite,” which Philips and Fawkes both translate as “Hymn to

Venus.” As Joan DeJean points out, seventeenth- century commen-

tators supposed Sappho to have composed this poem as a plea for

the goddess’s intercession in returning Phaon to her (140). Fawkes’s

translation even inserts Phaon’s name, although it does not appear

in the original. In Sappho’s poem, Venus/Aphrodite promises to

grant her wish. In Robinson’s sonnet, Sappho addresses the goddess

credentialed as her devoted poet, having earned her favor as “the

Lesbian Muse” (1: 341; 1). Although Sappho climactically and fatally

dedicates herself to love, eschewing reason, the goddess here does

not reply; instead, the next sonnet, Sonnet XXXV, only confirms

Phaon’s rejection of her and thus re- engages the tragic Ovidian nar-

rative. Moreover, Sappho’s prayer to Venus closes with the image of

Sappho surrendering her laurel wreath to Love, who is “immortal as

the Nine!” and thus replaces them, the nine muses, with love (14).

Sappho has made her choice and thus, in Robinson’s version, undoes

her claim as “the Tenth Muse.” With this gesture, Sappho rejects

Petrarchan transcendence, and Robinson’s disapprobation resounds.

Predictably perhaps, Sappho and Phaon concludes with Robinson’s

promotion of herself ahead of Sappho, to whose name she has been

bound. The entire work is a gesture of self- canonization. As the

sequence affirms throughout, Sappho’s weakness disqualifies her

from achieving the Petrarchan laurel. And thus Robinson’s masculine

assertions of poetic legitimacy, fortitude, and judgment reverberate

particularly at the end. Where the Ovidian Sappho hesitates, awaiting

a reply from Phaon, Robinson’s Sappho is a confirmed and unrepen-

tant suicide. Before she receives the vision of the Leucadian rock,

Robinson’s Sappho imagines the muse of lyric poetry, Erato, confer-

ring his blessing upon her, restoring at her death her immortal fame.

But even this aspiration degenerates at the end of Sonnet XXXIX to

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1479780230100251_05_ch03.indd 147 12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM

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

Cop

yright material fr

om www

.palgra

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

sitetsbib

lioteket i

Tr

omso - P

algra

veConnect - 2011-04-13