 Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book with the word "leap" in the title.
Sappho's Leap, by Erica Jong. This book mixes historical novel, mythology, and poetry. It starts with the legendary poet at age 50, contemplating jumping off a cliff (but not, she assures us, for the reasons we'd think). We then go back to the beginning of her life, and at first it reads like a straightforward history. But once she sets sail away from Lesbos, it becomes a reimagined Odyssey, with amazons, centaurs, sirens, enchanted islands, and even a visit to the Land of the Dead. I lost count of the shipwrecks. Given that Sappho's love poems to women are what gave us the word lesbian, I was surprised that she spent much of the story pining for a man. She's convinced that Alcaeus is the great love of her life, despite years apart and innumerable hookups with both men and women. Early in the book, Sappho complains to her mother about being forced into a marriage without her consent. Her mother responds that being raped (she actually uses that word) is women's lot in life. Yet the issue of consent is glossed over in Sappho's relationship with her female slave, and later with her own teenage music students. It was jarring precisely because the issue of consent had been discussed earlier. Also, trigger warning for an utterly horrifying scene of infant sacrifice. I'm not entirely sure why it's in the book. Throughout the book, Sappho's guide and inspiration is the Goddess Aphrodite, the source of Sappho's songs. Fragments of Sappho's poetry (Jong's translations) are interspersed throughout the book, and Jong includes her own series of Sappho/Aphrodite poems at the end. "Just one more tumble into ecstasy," you tease. "Who knows what hymns to my glory you will write now, at the peak of your powers? What are the lives of poets but offerings to the goddess they adore? Do you think such worship is a choice? Even immortals obey her capricious laws."
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |