MDMD Sappho's Frag

[jbor]

One of the scenarios for the "odd behavior" all around the world is "out of
Bed-chamber windows, close together in the naked sunlight whilst the Wife
minds the Beats of the Clock" (97.4), and I suspect that it is such a
situation that the opening exchange refers to. I can't hear either Mason or
Dixon referring to the other as "Dear". That "[s]omebody, somewhere in the
World" is deliberately indeterminate, however, a favourite trope of
Pynchon's. A lot of loyal, subservient, intelligent women standing beside,
or behind, their astronomer-husbands I guess.

best

btw Otto, offlist mail to your address is still bouncing back



on 25/10/01 9:04 PM, Otto at o.sell at telda.net wrote:

> Terrance:
>> 
>> 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
> 
> 
> Strange, didn't occur to me. I had the slight suspect that it could have
> been Dixon corrected by Mason.
> But as I've learned these days that Sappho's poems have been burned by early
> Christians your idea maybe is the better solution and does indeed make some
> sense to me:
> 
> "Sappho's books were burned by Christians in the year 380 A.D. at the
> instigation of Pope Gregory Nazianzen. Another book burning in the year 1073
> A.D. by Pope Gregory VII may have wiped out any remaining trace of her
> works. It should be remembered that in antiquity books were copied by hand
> and comparatively rare. There may have only been a few copies of her
> complete works. The bonfires of the Church destroyed many things, but among
> the most tragic of their victims were the poems of Sappho."
> J.B. Hare at:
> http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sappho/index.htm
> 
> That poetry of this kind can be perceived as a threat I never will
> understand:
> -------------------------------------
> "...the lovely times we.shared."
> 
> "I simply wish to die."
> Weeping she left me
> and said this too:
> "We've suffered terribly
> Sappho I leave you against my will."
> I answered, go happily
> and remember me,
> you know how we cared for you,
> if not, let me remind you
> ...the lovely times we.shared.
> -------------------------------------
> 
> additional Sappho-links.
> 
> "The Sappho Companion" by Margaret Reynolds,
> http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/08/01/lesbos/
> including an William Carlos Williams translation of one poem:
> Complaints that Phaon no longer "clap'd my Buttocks, o're and o're agen"
> http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/08/01/lesbos/index1.html
> 
> Sappho's Legacy: an essay
> http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/classes/JLSp.html
> Poems
> http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~ahmad/sappho.html
> 
> Otto
> 
>