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[druidsquirrel.livejournal.com]

You know the place: then

Leave Crete and come to us
waiting where the grove is
pleasantest, by precincts

sacred to you; incense
smokes on the altar, cold
streams murmur through the

apple branches, a young
rose thicket shades the ground
and quivering leaves pour

down deep sleep; in meadows
where horses have grown sleek
among spring flowers, dill

scents the air. Queen! Cyprian!
Fill our gold cups with love
stirred into clear nectar

--
by Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard

I suppose poetry "technology" and sophistication have come a long way in the past 2600 years, but I still find this prayer to Aphrodite to be exceptionally lyrically beautiful.

Comments

[zoheret.livejournal.com]

Wow! I read selected this Sappho poem to analyze in a Women's Lit class last year...I remember the translation that I had as being quite different. I will have to try to find it once I get back to school. The poem has gorgeous imagery.

[druidsquirrel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, translating poetry is always a balancing act between being faithful to the what the original author said, and producing something that seems like poetry in the new language. In Sappho's case the problem is made even worse by the fact that the original texts of many of her poems are in doubt (and of course 99% of her work is lost forever).

Here's another translation of the same fragment, translated by Paul Roche:

The place is calling you, Aphrodite

Come to us here from Crete --to this holy
Temple: place of your own most pleasing
Apple groves and altars smoking
Sweet with incense.

Here where the waters trickle coolly
Through apple boughs, and ground is shady
With roses, down from the leaves that shiver
Sleep drops slowly.

Here is a meadow, horses feeding;
Spring profuse with flowers, and breezes
Gently seeping.

Here then Cyprian goddess bring your
Lovable person; into golden
Goblets stir your nectar, mingling
with our feasting.

===
And here's one more, by Sasha Newborn:

Leave Crete, and come to me here,
Come to your sweet apple grove and the altar
where the smoke of incense curls,

where a cold brook murmurs through the branches,
Roses shade the ground, and drowsiness falls
from trembling leaves.

Sleek horses graze among the flowers, and
dill is in the wind.
Here, Aphrodite, serve us gold cups of nectar
mixed neatly with pleasure.