THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
THE latest addition to Messrs. Harrap's series, Our Debt to Greece and Rome, will be' useful, no doubt : but it is astonishingly loose in construction and naive in tone. It is a volume on Sappho and Her Influence, by Professor David-M. Robinson:
First we shall give it what praise we can. Obviously Professor Robinson is learned, and he has an enthusiasm for his subject.
Most of our " knowledge " about Sappho is abolished for us : Phaon, for example, has sunk into a myth ; there is no evidence that anyone actually flung herself down cliffs for. love of a man called PhRon ; and there is evidence that, if anyone did, it was some other Sappho. At least, that is what we gather from Professor Robinson. Most unfortunate of all, Sappho's reputation for beauty goes finally. From a papyrus recently discovered we learn :—
In shaPa she seems to have proved contemptible and ugly, for in complexion she was dark, and in stature she was very small.'
But the greatest value of the book is as an anthology of English translations. And, since Professor Robinson often gives
two or three versions of the same poem, we have an impressive lesson in the limitations of translation ; for the versions are nothing like each other in tone or movement. Perhaps it will please readers to have two versions to contrast : they are not as far apart as most. The first is Thomas Moore's (a creditable effort for him) :—
" Oh, my sweet mother, 'tis in vain,
I cannot weave, as once I wove, So wildered is my heart and brain With thinking of that youth I love."
Landor packs twice as much into his version :--
" Mother, I cannot mind my wheel, My fingers ache, my lips are dry, Oh if you felt the pain I feel !" But oh, who ever felt as I 2" Our complaint against the Professor's looseness and naiveté
shall be attested by quotation. " Plato," he remarks, " calls her beautiful, as does many another writer, though the epithet may refer, as Maximus of Tyre says, to the beauty of -her lyrics, one of which practically says long before Goldsmith, ' handsome is as handsome does.' " But the utmost magnifi- cence of strange reasoning comes when he is defending Sappho against the scandals which have been attached to her name. She cannot have been anything but pure and moral, he
asserts. :- " It would be practically impossible for a had woman to subject her expressions to the marvellous niceties of rhythm. accent, and meaning which Sappho everywhere exhibits. . . . Sappho's love for flowers, moreover, affords another luminous testimony. A bad woman as well as a pure woman might love roses, but a bad woman does not love the small and hidden wild flowers of the field."
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