MDMD Sappho's Frag

[Terrance]

Otto posted: 

The Mason & Dixon part opens very unspecified with "Somebody somewhere
in the world" (96.21) quoting a fragment of Sappho and being immediately
called to order with the remark that this is sunrise and not sunset:

"O Hesperus, -- you bring back all that the bright day scatter'd,
-- you bring in the sheep and the goat,
-- you bring the Child back to her mother."
(96.25-27)

There are a lot of different translations but none of them seems to be
the one Pynchon has used (see special post Sappho 2).

H. T. Wharton is close. 

"Evening, thou that bringest all that bright morning scattered; thou
bringest the sheep,  the goat, the child back to her mother." 

http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/sappho/sape08.htm

    

"Hesperus" as the evening star of course is only one "aspect" of Venus
and the Sappho-fragment only shows that in ancient times people were
unaware
about Hesperus and the morning star "Phosphorus" being the same
celestial
body. So from his "modern" 18th century point of view the one who quotes
Sappho isn't totally wrong.


I suspect that that the "somebody somewhere" is female. 
She is "corrected" and we never hear from her again. 
A theme perhaps, the subjugation of women, the patriarchal dominance, a 
transformation of Venus to matter, to fetish, to dynamo....
Venus

http://www.venus-transit.de/venus.html