In some cases the right-hand page shows brackets where there are characters visible on the opposite page: tantalizing hints at words that are not entirely gone but cannot be reconstructed with any certainty.Īs Carson writes in her brief but erudite introduction, Single brackets are used to mark the missing passages, and facing pages show the original Greek, printed in crimson ink. In it, the author and poet Anne Carson translates all of Sappho’s work, beginning with the single complete poem (“Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind…”), continuing with fragments long and short, then short passages quoted by other authors of the time, and concluding with single words saved from bits of crumbling papyrus: channel, dawn, downrushing, danger, honeyvoiced, mythweaver.
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho is a handsomely produced book published by Knopf in 2002. Yet she is remembered more than two millennia later. Of all this work, only one poem has survived intact. The Greek poet Sappho, who lived on the island of Lesbos from around 630 BC, was a singer and songwriter who wrote nine volumes of verse lyrics.
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