Critical Appreciation Of Sappho Poem - 799 Words

Little is known about the Greek Poet Sappho, like her poems, pieces of her life have been lost over time. Here is what we know for sure. Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos around the turn on the seventh and six centuries BCE. She composed songs with a lyre accompaniment known as lyric poetry. These poems were collected into nine volumes and what has survived exist in fragments. (cite to come) Fragment 16 is a poem about love. This poem’s desires to answer the question what is beauty? Our Poem begins with the introduction of three groups of people; men on horses (cavalry), men on foot (infantry) and an army of ships (naval forces). The reader is told that men think that war is the most beautiful thing. However, our author does not†¦show more content†¦According to Britannica, Helen who in Greek Legend is the mortal daughter of Zeus and the most beautiful woman of Greece. Helen of Troy is also the indirect cause of the Trojan War. (cite coming) For she, Helen of Troy abandoned her husband, daughter and parents to be with the man she loved. Helen finding Paris the most beautiful. This implies that she was clouded by beauty which made her thoughtless she forgot who she loved and who loved her. One can view this and see that Sappho does not see The Iliad as a tale about war but a tale of broken hearts and how love is fickle. She chooses to pass over the combat, anger and even the long story of Helens seduction by Paris, who she does not even reference by name. Instead she focuses on the heart of the story which to Sappho is one of passion which divides love, rips a lovely wife from the arms of a good man, and steals parent from child. She utilizes Homer only what resonates as true in her life, the tragic passion of Helen and Menelaus and not the crashing battles which consume so much of his work. Line 15, reminded me not of Anaktoria, brings this poem to a personal level. We begin to get an inside look at what Sappho defines as beauty. She introduces us to Anaktoria. Anaktoria is believed to have been Sappho’s girlfriend â€Å"who has gone†. Keeping in mind what we had learned from the previous stanza one could assume that Anaktoria It was the same ero, which is Greek noun forShow MoreRelatedSummary of She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways11655 Words   |  47 PagesThe Lucy poems William Shuter, Portrait of William Wordsworth, 1798. Earliest known portrait of Wordsworth, painted in the year he wrote the first drafts of The Lucy poems[1] The Lucy poems are a series of five poems composed by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) between 1798 and 1801. All but one were first published during 1800 in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that was both Wordsworths first major