Blackwell Reference Online

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Although only two poems of Catullus, 11 and 51, are specifically written in the Sapphic stanza, the figure of Sappho and the love lyric tradition he inherits from her occupy a privileged status within Catullus' body of work. Ever since she composed her poems on the island of Lesbos at the end of the seventh century bc , the life and lyrics of Sappho have haunted the western imagination. Indeed, Sappho's provocative images of homoerotic desire have disturbed readers through the ages, and have given rise to a multitude of fantasies, fictions, and myths about both her poetics and her persona . Not only is Sappho the earliest surviving woman writer in the West, but she is also one of the few and certainly one of the earliest woman writers before the twentieth century to express overtly in verse the (erotic) desire of one woman for another. Even in poems that do not deal explicitly with love, Sappho often depicts herself as part of a world in which the emotional and/or erotic bonds between women take center stage. Since ancient Greek society was largely male-dominated, Sappho's ostensible focus on a “woman-centered” world in her poetry has, at least in part, made her a fascinating yet vexing subject of speculation and fantasy. In Latin texts, the Sapphic tradition becomes reconfigured as a vehicle for expression of heterosexual love. As a number of scholars have shown, this heterosexualization ... log in or subscribe to read full text