Best Of: Sappho

Published Sep 5, 2024, 7:00 AM

This back to school season, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. Today's Womanican is Sappho (c. 615 BC). She was an ancient Greek poet and an architect of the very words we use to talk about queer identity today.

This month, we’re heading back to school – and we’re taking you along with us! For all of September, we’ll be bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. You’ll hear me – and some talented guest hosts – share both iconic and under-appreciated stories. But there’s a twist... each week is dedicated to a different school subject. This week: Women you should be learning about in literature classes!

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Hannah Bottum, Lauren Willams, and Adrien Behn. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.

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Hey, listeners, it's Jenny. This month, we're heading back to school and we're taking you along with us. For all of September, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed. You'll hear me and some talented guest hosts share both iconic and underappreciated stories, and there's a twist. Each week is dedicated to a different school subject. This week, we're sharing women you should be learning about in literature classes. Their words created impactful stories, changed minds, and preserved cultures. And their stories go beyond the same people you remember from the standard literary canon. So onto the show.

Hello. I'm carmenborga Korea. I'm a producer at Wonder Media Network, and I'm so excited to guest host during this final week of Pride Month. We're celebrating Pride Month with icons supreme queen meanes of queer culture. Some are household names, others are a little more behind the scenes. All of them have defied social norms and influenced generations of people to be unapologetically themselves. Today we're talking about an icon of antiquity, a forerunner of queer language, an architect of the very words we use to talk about queer identity today. While her own sexuality has been a subject of debate for centuries, her influence on poetry and her role in giving a name to love between women is undoubted. Let's talk about Sapho. Sappho's personal history is shrouded in mystery. She was likely born around six fifteen BC to an aristocratic family on the Greek island of Lesbos. She probably had several brothers, and she probably married a wealthy man and had a daughter. She might have run an academy for unmarried young women. She might have been a priestess. She might have died young, throwing herself off a cliff after her heart was broken by a young sailor. Or she might have lived into old age, dying around five point fifty BC. What's for certain is that Sapho was a poet. Sappho dabbled in the popular epic form, in which poetry was narrated by the gods, but her most famous works were written in first person. Her poetry was vivid and emotional. She spoke about passion and jealousy, love and hatred. She often wrote poems to be accompanied by a liar, a harp like instrument. She also refined a lyric meter all her own, one so unique and influential it's still called Sapphok meter. And of course, Sappho also lent her name and that of her home island to two words of queer importance, sapphik, referring to the love between women and lesbian. Even if we get today's word lesbian from Sappho's influence, it's not fair to refer to Sappho herself as a lesbian. For one, the word and its context didn't exist in ancient Greece. And as for Sapho herself, there are so few sources on her biography that it's impossible to truly know any facts about her sexuality. But certainly in her poetry, Sappho does express fondness for male and female subjects. Regardless, people have been obsessed with Sappho for forever. Plato famously called her the tenth Muse, and even the earliest scholars of Sappho speculated about her sexuality. Three centuries after her death, writers of the New Comedy, a Greek satire of Athenian society, ridiculed her as an overly promiscuous lover of women. In ten seventy three, Pope Gregory reportedly burned her work for lifecentiousness. The Suda, the Byzantine encyclopedia where we get most of our information on Sapho, might be part of the problem. It lists Sappho's husband as Kirklius. It could be a legitimate name, or it could be a play on words, combining ancient Greek slang for man and penis, marrying the historically promiscuous Sapho off to a guy called dick of man, and likely recycling an old joke about Sappho's sexual appetite. Thanks to the passage of time and the persistence of rumors, very little of Sapho's poetry remains. Most are fragments quotations via other authors. Her longest surviving poem is twenty eight lines long. Asapho's poetry has revealed itself over hundreds of years, it's also been subject to the whims and values of those who find it and translate it, people who might want to come up with explanations and conditions today, and Sapho's love for other women. Mystery surround so much of Sappho's legend, but her poems even the few fragments that survive are simple, their earnest, and utterly human. Here's an excerpt from a well preserved piece translated, of course, where she seems to long to trade places with a young male suitor, like the very gods in my sight is he who sits where he can look into your eyes, who listens close to you, to hear the soft voice, its sweetness, murmur in love and laughter all for him. Regardless of how her poems might have been interpreted in her lifetime, and regardless of Sappho's own personal inclinations, one thing is clear. Sapho is an icon of poetry, of scandal and course of love.

Thanks for listening to this best of episode of Wimanica. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wimanica Podcast Special Thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co creator, join us tomorrow for another one of our favorite episodes, honoring the back to school season. Talk to you then,

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