Volume 52, Number 16 · October 20, 2005
The Beat Goes On
By Anne Carson
This translation of a poem by Sappho is based on a new text of fragment 58, made possible, as the article by Martin West in the TLS of June 24, 2005, put it, by 'the identification of a papyrus in the University of Cologne as part of a roll containing poems of Sappho. This text, recovered from Egyptian mummy cartonnage, is the earliest manuscript of her work so far known. It was copied early in the third century BC, not much more than 300 years after she wrote.' The second of the three fragments found 'had been partially known since 1922 from an Oxyrhynchus papyrus of the third century AD, and by combining the two texts we now attain an almost complete poem.' The TLS published the Greek text. My translation follows.
Feature, 830 words
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