If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
by Sappho
Assigned by 3 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- c. 600 BCE
- Form
- Lyric poetry
- Language
- Greek
- Length
- Medium · 400 pp120 to 300 pages
- Difficulty
- Moderate2 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendIf Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, translated by Anne CarsonVintage, 2003Every fragment with the Greek facing, brackets marking what is lost; the edition most programs assign.
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What survives of the lyric poet of Lesbos, who wrote around 600 BCE for the lyre and was ranked by the ancients as the tenth Muse. Of nine books only one complete poem remains, the Hymn to Aphrodite, together with a few hundred fragments quoted by later writers or recovered from papyrus, some a line long, some a single word. The poems address Aphrodite, the girls of Sappho's circle, weddings, absent friends and old age, and fragment 31, on watching the woman she loves talk to a man, is among the most imitated poems in the world.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
