Welcome to the Isle of Lesbos. Guess That is a very real place and it's exactly what you want it to be. Because it is the birthplace of Sappho, the ancient Greek poet whose celebration of queer love changed history forever. I'm Alisha Rai. And I'm Sarah Wendell. Welcome to lovestruck daily where we bring true love stories to your eardrums each weekday.
I'm in love with you I'm in love with you. Do you like poetry? Alicia?
I do like poetry I think I think it's especially like love poems. I'm very into them. I was an English major in college. And Roger that me too. Yeah. And I had a focus in mediaeval like English, mediaeval literature and, and it was all about love poetry. Oh, yeah. Coded love poetry and put my vote. Oh, yes. I'm excited. This is we're doing a two part series about love poetry, and this is the first part tune in tomorrow for the second part. We're very excited for that. We're gonna have our own new resident poet. lovestruck poet. Yes. Who is very lovely. So yeah, it's you know, if you like poetry, definitely listen to these two. Absolutely. And we actually have a quiz today. I love buzzfeed quizzes. I could live on buzzfeed quizzes. And this genius BuzzFeed staffer made a quiz to see what colour a poet would describe you as Oh, so I'm going to administer it to you Sarah. Let's see what colour a poet would describe you. First of all, what colour what colour? Do you think of how it would describe wise? chartreuse? Okay, that's a very specific shade. I mean, I think I'd be crimson. Yep, absolutely. That's my my. And also I was always Scarlet include clue. So I think I think that would be let's let's go through this. Let's see exactly what the experts at BuzzFeed believe is correct. So what is your morning routine? Coffee or tea? Snooze? Shower? Who what routine which I know immediately is not
that is not the answer. But like, I do all of the above. I get up I work out. I shower. I have coffee. So I guess the first one I do is shower.
Okay, good. Okay, favourite time of day. Dawn. Night sunset whenever I happened to be awake.
I love sunset. I love a good sense of
introvert or extrovert. extrovert now over?
extrovert not. I would say you're an ambivert. I am deeply introverted deeply. Oh, yes. So remember you are one of the people I know best. So being around you is not draining. But if I am around people, it drains my battery so fast. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So I am deeply an
introvert. favourite social media. I know this one's tough for you. Instagram, Snapchat, tick tock or Facebook.
I mean, okay, so it's absolutely not Facebook.
I think Instagram for you only because it's the only one you graduate.
I think you're right. It has to be that one. Okay, let's
do that. Okay, finally. What's your go to dinner? Pasta takeout? Something baked something healthy.
Oh, always. I love pasta. I could eat pasta every day. I mean, I shouldn't but I do love pasta.
Oh, okay. So your colour is yellow. fun and playful sour yet sweet. immature but endearing. The colour of sunflowers and spring their buds blooming. I agree with that. I do agree with that.
All right. I mean, I can't wear yellow yellow makes me turn green. This is the this is the secret of having white skin. Did you know this? When I turned green in yellow, it's not a good colour on me otherwise, but I do like yellow so Okay, I will go with yellow sunflowers.
Let's do it. I love it. I think that's a great colour. Thank you. Maybe not to wear but as a description of you. I think you are very yellow. Well,
thank you. Yeah,
I appreciate that. And I would take immature to be like,
okay, that I okay now like I accept like
young young at heart. You know, I do agree with that.
I accept that my kids will tell you I'm immature. That's why you don't bring me places. Don't put me on a task force. It'd be a disaster. Well, let us turn to love poetry. Yeah. Now that we have assigned me a poetic colour. Have you heard of the term sapphic?
I have? Yeah.
Well, usually today it is an adjective that refers to lesbian In or women loving women, but do you know that the word comes from an actual person?
I do? Yes. I'm sure there's people who don't
ancient Greek poet Sappho. And she is a legend in more ways than one. Imagine going back in time, and then learning to speak ancient Greek, and then finding Sappho and saying, listen, and like lots of 100 years, your name is going to be synonymous with a whole thing. Yeah, I would be honoured. I would like to think so. So we are, of course talking about legendary Greek poet Sappho, whose name became synonymous with sapphic or female relationships, same sex, female relationships. She was one of those rare poets who was actually celebrated in her time, which is awesome, because that means she got mementos of adoration in her lifetime, like statues and pottery. And upon her death, she got her own coin. That's a cool thing to happen when you're done is a really cool thing. Yeah. So for context, she was born in 630 BCE. During this time, we have the Neo Assyrian Empire in the Near East, the Jo Dynasty in China, Egypt was entering its 26th dynasty, but Sappho Sefo is chilling. In Greece, Homer had composed the Iliad 200 years before her. And there's still 100 years to go until democracy begins in Athens. So all of that to say, way back in the day, long time ago, ancient past. So here's a sample of one of her works, in which she writes about a couple at a banquet. So tell me what you think. He seems to me to be the equal to the gods. Whoever sits opposite you and listens to you talking sweetly and laughing desirably which makes the heart in my breast fly. For whenever I look upon you for an instant, I can no longer find a single word, but my tongue is broken, and instantly delicate fire runs beneath my skin. And I see nothing with my eyes, my heart pounds, a cold sweat covers me, trembling grabs my all I am paler than grass. And I think I am a little short of dying, but everything can be ventured. Wow. That's beautiful. And I know that feeling to Yeah, like if she's writing that about a couple at a banquet, and it's a man and a woman and she is writing to the woman. That's a really lovely description of a big hug and crush. A very small fraction of Sappho, his body of work has survived despite prolific writing. So we have people saying that she wrote a lot, but only a small portion of what she wrote has survived to the present
day. So sad.
Some historians think that this might be because of its homosexual nature, despite her work, and her life being celebrated while she was living it. It also could have simply been because she was a woman, and therefore she was not afforded the same preservation as like, you know, Homer or some bunch of other dudes. Moreover, her work was written in dialectic, Greek, which was harder for Latin writers to translate. So basically, she wrote a language that everybody spoke. Yeah, but it wasn't the formal language of literature at the time, right. I just want to read verbatim what our researcher has noted here. Despite this, strangeness, cough, cough, laziness, around translating her poetry, Jessie, you're hilarious. Sappho is reputation and work. We're so regularly quoted by other poets and writers that we now have a very good idea of her influence and her impact. Speaking of words that come from other places, she was born on the Isle of Lesbos in Greece, which, you guessed it is where we get the name lesbian. This woman has had a historic impact. May we all have such an impact?
We'll be back after this short break.
Historian Wendy Slatkin has said oh Sophos upbringing and her cultural context, considering the severe restrictions on women's lives their inability to move freely in society, conduct business or require any type of non domestic training. It is not surprising to find that no names of important female artists have come down to us from the classical era. Only the poet Sappho has received high praise from the Greeks. Significantly she came not from Athens or Sparta but from Lesbos, an island whose culture included a high regard for women So I like to think that if we go back in time to hang out with Sappho, she's gonna be like, Listen, come hang out with me on Lesbos. It's awesome here. Historians have found evidence that she ran a school in which she instructed other wealthy intellectual girls and poetry to make them more marriageable. She herself came from a wealthy intellectual family in which her talents as a writer were encouraged and could flourish, and she was supported that way. There's also evidence that she was exiled twice for her political views. Regarding her work, historians and biographers have different views. Some say her poetry is in fact biography delineating her own romantic relationships with women. Others advised that it'd be read as a poet speaking on behalf of a subject, as poets have done throughout history. But the depth of feeling and clarity conveyed in these poems suggests that she was in fact a lesbian, even though right now it is still debated, and obviously, we can't go back and ask her Yeah, some rando named Plato never heard of him. Now, we don't talk about him at all. But Plato says that he was influenced by her approach to same sex relationships in his own work. It's also important to note that heterosexual and homosexual are modern terms. In Greece at the time of her writing, the stigma from these words didn't exist. So her writing in such a way was not as countercultural as a modern lens might make it we talk a lot about the lens of who's interpreting this event and how they're applying that lens. And this is another example. Joshua Mark says, for example, while it's possible, then that Sappho was a lesbian, it's equally possible she wrote on many subjects and that her works expressing lesbian love are the ones that survive the most intact. These were possibly her most popular as they addressed romantic love, a subject popular among ancient Greeks as well as today, no lies detected. It is generally believed, though among most scholars that her work was so popular that the term lesbian in her time changed from someone from Lesbos to a woman who prefers her own sex. Hmm. One thing that is common in the surviving work of Sappho is that all of her poetry has an immediacy and an intimacy and the very recognisable feelings of present tense, falling in love, and that poem definitely does. There's also evidence she was married to a man and had children but she referred to her poetry in her lifetime as her immortal daughters, indicating that she herself knew her work would outlast her life. Oh, wow. I love that. I love thinking of your books as your immortal daughters.
Yeah, I'm gonna do that now.
Yeah, right. They're
my they're my immortal children. Yes.
Maybe forever be in print.
Yeah. Well, that's a little unrealistic. But yeah.
So do you have a favourite poet or poem?
I don't know if I have a favourite poet or poem. I feel like my tastes and poetry when I was an emo goth High School are the things that I loved as a serious English major in college and are probably not the things that I love. Now when I'm scrolling through Instagram, and, you know, checking out Instagram poets, so I don't think I have a favourite. I just like words. And I like when people arrange them in pretty ways. What about you?
I do have a favourite poem. I will share it with you in the next episode. Oh, a cliffhanger. Yes, a cliffhanger episode. But, like you, I love that feeling of resonant emotional stillness. When someone puts together words in a way that makes you go oh, I remember that feeling. Yeah, because one thing about English is there are a lot of words, if I remember correctly, from my history of the English language class in college. English has the largest lexicon of any spoken language right now. It has the most words, mostly Oh, because it stores from all the other languages. But you know, right. Yeah, yeah, we borrow heavily. English has a very, very large lexicon. But there are still words that don't exist and feel there aren't words for all the feelings that we have. So I think one of the ways in which poems are amazing is that you have this brief collection of words that isolate and identify a feeling by describing that feeling what's happening around it, definitely what Sappho did there. Well, Alicia, what is your love to go to this episode?
I think it is what Sappho referred to her bones as and it's to create some immortal children for the world to take with them, if that's what you desire. That's what your dream is. Yeah, I love the idea of something out lasting.
Maybe your name will go on to mean something much larger than just an individual.
I wonder what Alicia? That's a good question. That is a good question.
We have to think about that. listeners. I
want you to tell me what do you think Alicia will mean in the future. If someone is Alicia, 1000 years and 1000 years, what will Alicia come to me? Sarah can't mean anything because it's still one of those popular names for like 200 years. I'm gonna be somebody named Sarah because there's like nine of them and your kindergarten parents
eyeball you there Yeah.
When seriously when you're I was one to five Sarah's in a class it was a lot of Sarah's Oh perennially popular name but Alicia, what will Alicia mean in a failure? It was to be an Alicia. And what does your name mean? Who's your favourite poet? You should email us the answers to all of these questions at lovestruck Dalian frolic dot media. If you have a love story to share or you just want to tell us about your favourite poem, we want to hear about it. You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at lovestruck daily where we post adorable extra content and very beautiful photos of the different people who join us on the show. And if you leave us a review, we will most definitely squee about it on air. We will definitely read it and if you write it in poetry forum will attempt a dramatic reading as well. We love reviews they help people find us so we can spread love and happiness to everyone's eardrums each weekday. Our researcher is Jesse Epstein. Our editor is Jen Jacobs. We are produced by Abigail steckler and little Scorpion studios with executive producer frolic media. This is an iHeartRadio podcast. But above all, we wish you a very poetic and immortal happily ever after. I'm in love with you. Love with you. I'm in love with you
