Ancient ideas about Love: Eros, Ovid, and Sappho

“Energy, creation, movement and harmony, development, all happen under the aegis of love, in the domain of eros. Desire is the cause of all movement, and movement is the character of all being. The universe is a process, and its method is change.” — Germaine Greer

The ideas expressed by Greer in this quote reflect the ancient Greek perception of a cosmic dynamic of love and attraction, imagined as the god Eros. The notion of Eros is thousands of years old and yet still central, compelling, and meaningful. 

In this episode, we take a look at two ancient poets whose poetry about eros speak to us today. The Roman Ovid was fascinated with the psychology and effects of eros, passionate love. In his view, love is the catalyst for transformation and our passions are our folly. This is a mad, crazy world.

Ovid's work was innovative and yet he had an important predecessor in Sappho, a Greek lyric poet whose primary theme was also love. Her work was also ground-breaking and known to Ovid. He even included her in his Heroides, a collection of fictitious letters exchanged between lovers.

The work of these two poets, conceived centuries ago, illuminates some of the ways that ancient Greco-Roman ideas about eros influence our ideas about love and passion today.

Thanks for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive...

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Myth Matters an exploration at the intersection of mythology, creativity and consciousness. I’m your host Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide beautiful crazy world of ours, I’m glad that you decided to join me here today.

We've been investigating the ancient Roman poet Ovid and his masterwork The Metamorphoses. This is a long poem that weaves over two hundred Greek myths into a tale of passion and transformation in a constantly changing cosmos. 

In the last episode, we looked at a couple of more obscure myths involving the three daughters of Minyas. This created an opportunity to think about the fluidity of boundaries and categories in a world that is constantly in flux. Today, our focus is on Ovid's depiction of passionate love. In his stories, love or eros, is the catalyst of transformation. Together, these two experiences shape us and our world. We live in the tension between what is desired and what is possible.

The picture that Ovid paints of the influence of love and erotic passion on human beings and the gods is pretty intense. Crazy. Chaotic. According to Ovid, passion is generally obsessive and brings heartache, loss, and suffering. Our passions are our folly. They might motivate criminal behavior, and even if we're not driven quite that far, eros does violence to all men and women, gods and goddesses. Eros was imagined to be a god and yet, this god is a creative force present at whatever beginning of things there might have been, a god that gives rise to all of the others. A cosmic dynamic.

The passion inspired by eros is a catalyst for transformation, the value and meaning of which are ambiguous. Was the nymph Daphne, who figured in a myth we looked at a couple of episodes back, happy to be a laurel tree? Is that what she had in mind when she begged her father to rescue her from the god Apollo and his unwelcome affections? To be a tree for the rest of her life?

There's no definitive answer. I think Ovid is telling us stories about how things are, not painting a picture of how we'd like for things to be. He seems to be saying, "Look, there's a shared fantasy that true love brings peace and a serene sense of completion but hello--- not in this world--- and also, is that really, really, what you want? Don't you want to be knocked off your feet? Just a little? And it's not actually your decision...it's up to the gods." 

This is Ovid's perspective. Is he telling us a truth? What do you think? The answer seems to be "yes" given the popularity of his work, then and now. And we've no shortage of headlines about crimes of passion or desperate acts in the face of unrequited love or the death of a loved one. I think our cultural ideas about passion and love, (are they the same thing?), are worth thinking about. 

Ovid offers us a picture of Eros in the world, and as I've mentioned before, his telling of the old Greek myths has been influential for centuries. He's a skillful poet and his version of the myths is very juicy. Ovid fleshed out the characters and gave them motivations. He gave them personality, proclivities, and passion. This gave him the space to explore a wide range of emotion and get into the psychology. 

But of course, his characters and characterizations, and the meaning he attributed to their actions, reflect Ovid's subjectivity and the concepts and prejudices of his culture. By today’s standards, Ovid's poems are misogynist. Homophobic. Bigoted. Ageist. Etc.  His work conveys a host of prejudicial attitudes that have, unfortunately in my opinion, survived to this day. Hence the need for some conscious reflection.

If we live in an ever-changing world, a fluid world in which most if not all boundaries are illusions, is there or can there be anything fixed in human nature? Must we live in the world that Ovid describes?

But let me complicate the picture that I'm painting. Ovid's skillful articulation of passion contributed to the development of the code of chivalry in the late Medieval times, 12th and 13th century Europe. The code of chivalry reorganized the image of the warrior by establishing a new concept of knighthood. A chivalrous knight was virtuous, refined, brave, and in humble service to his king, queen, and community, a protector of the weak. He was supposed to be gallant and respectful toward women, and this gave rise to a new model and vision of romantic love. 

At that time, love and marriage often had little to do with each other, and the form of both was controlled first by the church, and secondly by the state. Under the code of chivalry, love was a state of passionate devotion with a spiritual quality, a romance that might or might not be sexually consummated, and the lovers chose each other out of love, not duty. This love elevated the character of both parties and was based in deep appreciation of the other rather than social obligations, a quest for security, or powerful allegiances. This new notion of love, as something private between two individuals who chose each other, was central to the development of today's image of an individual and the rights of an individual. 

Now, the lovers are inspired by eros to transform themselves and each other. This was and is today, a profound shift in cultural values. In On Love and Other Difficulties, the German Romantic poet Rilke writes,"Self-transformation is precisely what life is, and human relationships, which are an extract of life, are the most changeable of all, rising and falling from minute to minute, and lovers are those in whose relationship and contact no one moment resembles another." Here is the co-mingling of eros and transformation and difficulty in a more modern formulation. 

So, Ovid tells stories of a crazy and dangerous love, stories that limit possibilities in my view, by virtue of their prejudices--- and yet his telling of the myths also inspired the medieval troubadours and arguably played a role in the development of current belief that individuals have the right to love. That each of us has the right to love and be loved according to the logic of the heart, without the interference of church, state, or other outer authorities.

Our focus has been The Metamorphoses but this is only part of Ovid's ouevre. His other famous works also deal with myth and love and include a set of fictitious letters exchanged between mythical lovers, titled Heroides, i.e. Letters of the Heroines. Most of the letters are written by mythological heroines to absent lovers. Penelope writes to Odysseus, for example, wondering if some of the delays that he's experienced, like his long sojourns in the arms of Circe and Calypso, might not have been a bit shorter. Ariadne writes to Theseus after he abandons her on an island.

Through these letters, Ovid articulates the tension between what’s desired, and what is possible. The love and the lovers are always frustrated but in unique ways, depending on the circumstances and personality of the people involved. Ovid describes the complexities of human passion and the difficulties in truly loving another person altruistically. Another theme in many of these letters is a conflict between passion and ethics, obligations like marriage. He reveals the distance between public morality and private behavior that is so familiar to us today.

Is passion a mandate, he asks? What is or is not acceptable when one is possessed by intense desire for another?

The letter writing lovers are mythological so, I was surprised to find that letter 15 is an imagined communication written by Sappho to her lover Phaon, who has abandoned her. Sappho is a historical figure, a Greek lyric poet whose primary topic was also love. Let me tell you about her.

Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos in the 7th century BCE. Lesbos was a rather wealthy place and well known to the ancient Greeks as an artistic hotspot, with a rich tradition of poetry and song. Sappho was an important and well-regarded poet in her time, known for the clarity and directness of her poems, which were sung to music in either solo or choral arrangements. Hence the "lyric" poet. 

She wrote thousands of words but very few have survived and these primarily in fragments. Today, we have more references to her work and ideas about her than we do bits of her poetry, although new poems are still being discovered. A papyrus excavated in 2014, for example, included a poem attributed to her. 

Sappho was very well known to the Romans and Ovid was not the only poet to read her work and refer to her. Catallus and Virgil were also influenced by her. She was well known and she was already a subject of controversy, opinions, and myth. Ovid works with all of this material in the letter that he drafts, imagining himself as Sappho, writing to her lover, the boatman Phaon who has abandoned her. In his time, many believed this story to be true although that's no longer the case.

Phaon was said to be a hero of the island of Lesbos. He was a ferryman, old, poor, and not particularly good looking, until the day when he ferried the goddess Aphrodite. She was disguised as an old woman and he did not ask her for payment. The goddess rewarded his kind generosity with a vial of magical oil. Phaon rubbed himself with the oil every day and became very handsome. He was beloved of all the women on the island, especially Sappho. But he scorned her love and because she could not tolerate his rejection, Sappho threw herself into the waves from the Leucadian cliffs.  

Here is how the letter begins in the translation by Harold Isbell:  

 “When you saw these letters from my eager hand
could your eye recognize the sender
or did you fail to recognize their author 
until you could read my name, 'Sappho'? 
Since I am famous for the lyric do you 
wonder why my lines vary in length? 
But I weep and tears fit well the elegy--
 a lyre cannot bear the weight of tears. 
I am on fire and wasted like a burning
field with its grain turning to ashes
in the east wind's blast. The fields where you are now,
on the slopes of Typhoeos' Aetna,
Phaon, are far away but no less subject
than I to the flames that come by storm.
I do not make songs now for a well-tuned string,
for songs are the work of carefree minds."

The Sappho who writes the letter to Phaon, imagined by Ovid, is completely obsessed with a beautiful young man. She has been loved and left and the letter goes on to describe the effect that he has on her. She longs for him but her primary complaint is that now that she's had this incredible heterosexual relationship with him, she is no longer attracted to the young women in her company. And because she is no longer drawn to their beauty, she can no longer write her poetry, and has therefore lost her art, her reputation, and her success. He's ruined her life. 

But she wants him back.

This fictitious Sappho, fictitious and yet believable enough to Ovid's audience, alludes to another problem, which is that of the age difference between them. Although it is acceptable for an older man to possess a much younger woman, it is a challenge for this to work in the reverse. Sappho acknowledges this but it doesn't stop her from reminding him of her many assets. Ovid writes (Isbell trans):

"If nature denies me the gift of beauty,
let my name's measure be my stature.
If this my beauty does not dazzle your eyes,
then recall that dark Andromeda
was beautiful to Perseus though she was
dark with the hue of her native land.
What is more, white pigeons, often mate with birds
of a darker color and the black
turtle dove is loved by birds of green plumage. 
If no woman can be yours unless
her beauty is thought to be great enough, then
there is no woman who will be yours.
But my beauty seemed sufficient when you heard
me read my songs; you insisted then
that those words made me forever beautiful.
I would sing – I remember, for all 
lovers remember all-- and while I sang you
were busy stealing kisses from me.
You even praised my kisses. I must have pleased
you in all things but especially when
we toiled at the task of love. Then, I recall,
my playful abandon delighted
you more than you had known before: a quick joke,
a sudden embrace to spice our game;
and when our joys were at last one joy, the deep
weariness that filled our spent bodies.
But now you seek new quarry-- Sicilian maids..."

In other words, she had artistry and skill, and he enjoyed being in her experienced hands at the time. But now he has left her for younger and more beautiful women in distant lands. Well, she goes on to say, you didn't even have the sympathy to say good bye to me properly. And I've suffered many losses over the years, am almost alone in the world, and I deserve some joy, and it's no wonder that I would be attracted to you. You are the one in my dreams. And if he can’t love her, can he then, at least, allow himself to be loved by her? Maybe it’s enough to have her endless devotion to his happiness?

After making these arguments, the abandoned Sappho despairs. Her prayers to the gods have been for naught. She closes her letter with a final plea that Phaon sail back to her island and to her. "If you do not," she tells him, "I will commit suicide." Ovid writes (Isbell trans.):

 "If it remains your plan to return to me,
but you are still delayed by the need
to fashion a gift to mount on the ship's stern,
why do you destroy me with delay?
Leave your anchorage. Venus was born out of
the sea and opens passages for
the lover. The wind will hurry you along
if you but leave your mooring. Cupid 
will be your pilot as he sits in the stern, 
with his delicate hands he himself
will open then fold the sails. But if you wish
to flee from Sappho – 
though you can find no reason for such flight – 
at least you must permit a letter
cruel though it must surely be to tell me this woe
and I will find my fate in Leucadia’s waves.

And so, Sappho's imagined letter to her lover ends. According to the myth, Phaon does not return and she commits suicide by throwing herself off a cliff. Our passions are our folly.

Sappho was celebrated and a bit of a mystery. The questions that surround her and her life have generated a range of responses since ancient times: unease, condemnation, and attempts to erase her possible? likely? lesbianism. Was she a lesbian? We’re not certain. Was she promiscuous? We're not sure. Or was she a passionate champion of love? What was perceived to be a hypersexuality-- most unseemly for a woman, made her a target of jokes during the later Hellenic period. The controversy continued with the Romans and Ovid made full use of it. 

He suggests there is something a bit shameful about a woman’s unabashed, erotic desire, a humiliation emphasized in his characterization of the age difference. Goddess forbid that an older woman would be with a younger man. There's the discomfort with homosexuality. Ovid's Sappho says that now that she’s had this incredible heterosexual relationship, she's seen the light. She can no longer be with women. And she can no longer make her art. Is this because, like her earlier liaisons, her poetry lacked real depth and is now revealed to be too little? Was her art a hobby that she can no longer pursue given her sole focus is on Phaon?

There's nothing in the actual information that we have about Sappho’s life to suggest that any of this is true, nor we can be certain about other biographical details that have been proposed over the centuries. Was Sappho a teacher at an academy for young women? The center of a poetry study group or artists community? Or a priestess in service to the goddess Aphrodite? Was she a lesbian? Did she marry and have a daughter? And how autobiographical are her poems?

The picture Ovid presents makes Sappho the image of attitudes about women, their passion, sexuality, and their art, that persist today. In any event, what does Sappho‘s poetry suggest about her understanding of love? If Ovid weaves fictions about the passionate follies of others and longings that often lead to self-debasement or violence, what is Sappho's perspective?

Here is one of Sappho's poems, "Ode to Aphrodite," as translated by Jon-David Hague. 

 Ode to Aphrodite 

 Flower-crowned deathless Aphrodite,
Zeus's child, weaver of deceits, I pray:
don't crush my heart with pain, my queen.
Just come here now like you've done before
when you heard me and left your father's
house of gold and came,
riding in your sparrow-drawn chariot,
their wings thick over the dark earth
from heaven down to me
in an instant they came and you,
happy, smiled your god smile and asked
why I was suffering again and why was I
calling you again
and what was it my wild heart wanted:
"Who do I again convince to return to your arms?
Who's done you wrong,
Sappho?
If she's avoiding you, soon she won't.
If she's not taking your gifts, she'll give them.
If she doesn't love you, soon she will,
whether she wants to or not."
Just come here now. Get rid of this pain.
Everything my heart wants, give me.
Be my ally in love.

"Be my ally in love," Sappho asks the goddess of love, sensuality, beauty, sexuality, and pleasure. Aphrodite, who brings out the beauty in everyone and everything she loves and yet is not faithful, but rather retains her sovereignty and the right to bestow her blessings according to her own designs. This is a relationship to the goddess in pre-Hellenic times when her cult and that of other goddesses retained a measure of autonomy and authority later claimed by Zeus and the rise of the city states governed by men.

Sappho also writes poetry to the god Eros. Here is a defining fragment (translation by Diane Rayor, Sappho, A New Translation of the Complete Works).

 "Once again Love
that loosener of limbs, 
seizes me sweetbitter and inescapable, 
crawling thing"

 In this poem, Sappho expresses the ancient Greek view of the god Eros and captures the complex mix of pleasure and suffering that he brings. Sappho was the first to call love "sweetbitter," or as we say today, "bittersweet." The ancient Greeks called Eros "the limb loosener." Love was a mingling in which bodily boundaries and self-concepts were dissolved. A blend of ecstasy and terror. 

Sappho and Socrates explained desire as a triangulation between the lover, the beloved, and what exists between them. Desire, they said, is a function of the lack, of the gap. This creates movement. We want to close the gap. Or perhaps lengthen it. Chase and catch, chase or escape. This is the nature of eros. If you don’t understand, that desire is motivated by lack, and if the bitter is perceived to be a mistake because only the sweet is good and normal, can you love?

Sappho also wrote about her aging and love. Ovid may have been aware of this poem when he sat down to craft his letter in her voice. Here's a poem known today as "Old Age Poem."  

"Old Age Poem" translated by Diane Rayor, Sappho, A New Translation of the Complete Works

[I bring] the beautiful gifts of the violet
Muses, girls,
and [I love] that song lover, the
sweet-toned lyre.
My skin was [delicate] before, but now
old age
[claims it]; my hair has turned from black [to
white].
My spirit has grown heavy; knees buckle
that once could dance light as fawns.
I often groan, but what can I do?
Impossible for humans not to age.
For they say that rosy-armed Dawn in
love
went to the ends of the earth holding
Tithonos,
beautiful and young, but in time gray old
age
seized even him with an immortal wife.
Yet I love the finer things... this and
passion
for the light of life have granted me
brilliance and beauty.

Sappho writes about changes to the body and yet, I don't hear the note of humiliation or even protest against the march of years. She references a myth about love between the goddess of Dawn and a mortal man and notes that even he aged and died because this is natural. I have the sense that her willing devotion to love continues to enhance her life. How does this poem land with you?

I want to draw your attention to one other important characteristic of Sappho's poetry, something that was radical in her time-- she wrote in the first person. Sappho wrote “I" and is among the first poets in recorded history to do so. She's not claiming to channel the muse or recording stories about other people as an omniscient narrator. She's not describing a passion that she observes in others or passing judgment on it. Sappho writes "I love." "I long for you."

The passions that she expresses, whether fulfilled or unrequited, are felt by her and her descriptions of the experience are firsthand. The prayers that she raises to the goddess Aphrodite, to the god Eros, and occasionally to the god Hermes, are a communication between her and the deity. Sappho writes about herself. Or is it a fictional self? We can’t be sure but her use of the first person "I" lends her poems an immediacy and intimacy that belongs to the love experience and feels respectful, I think, of the intensely personal nature of our desires.

I want to mention a couple of opportunities this month, to engage with me and the ideas we work with together here. 

First, the next Stewarding the Emergent gathering is the evening of Wednesday July 15th. Our question: is what is the role of creativity and imagination in stewarding the emergent possibilities of this time? Join Jennessee Rosenberg, Rohini Walker, and me for a conversation on this question. This is an opportunity to share your thoughts and learn from others in a respectful community space. We believe that gathering with others and exchanging perspectives is essential to creative receptivity in this time of collective transformation. The moment is bigger than the mainstream dialogues suggest. 

So, if you have thoughts about the role of creativity and imagination in stewarding the emergent possibilities in this time or are curious, show up on July 15th. This is a free, online gathering. You do need to register to receive the zoom info. I'll drop the link in this transcript or visit mythicmojo.com for details.

Second, I have a new offering for you. It's called  (A) Living Myth. You're probably listening to this podcast because you know that a myth can provide useful context for the twists and turns in life. Maybe you're curious about how a story can help you make meaning from your life experiences.

But when was the last time you reflected on your mythology? Do you have "a" myth, a living myth that dictates the way you organize your life? We don't have --or at least I don't have-- many opportunities to explore what this means and find an answer to that question. Do you feel that (a) living myth is possible today, in a technological, post-modern, "myth-less" society? Does such a thing really matter in these times?

Join me for this 2-part exploration of the nature of (a) living myth and these questions.  The first online meeting is the evening of July 29th and registration is open now. Click the link in the transcript to this episode or visit mythicmojo.com for additional details and registration. 

This is an opportunity to reflect on the deeper influences myth has in your life. To spend a little time in the company of others drawn to these questions. To experiment. To share your thoughts and experiences, and refresh your spirit. 

A big welcome to new email subscribers:  Marie, Monique, Maureen, Anne Cathrine, Jennifer, Amanda, Pam  Julie, Diane, Bill, Carmel, and Gretchen. Welcome to Myth Matters!

If you're new to Myth Matters, I invite you to head over to the Mythic Mojo website. You'll find information about offerings like Stewarding the Emergent and (A) Living Myth, and the mythic mentorship and creativity coaching that I offer. You can also join the email list if you'd like to receive links to new Myth Matters episodes in your inbox.

A great huge thank you to new patreon patrons Robin and Stella-- thank you! If you're finding something of value in this podcast and can afford to send a few dollars a month my way, I hope you will consider doing that. The financial support I receive from my amazing Patreon patrons and supporters on Bandcamp is so important. The link to details is in this transcript and at mythicmojo.com. Thank you so much for your support of Myth Matters in whatever form makes sense for you. 

I want to share a poem with you before we part ways, one that contains desire and lack, the eroticism of inspiration, and the muse. I think we'll talk about the nine Greek Muses in the next episode. Did you know the Greeks imagined a muse of the expression of love and love poetry? We'll get into that next time. This poem is titled "Invocation" and the poet is Frank T. Rios.

“Invocation “ by Frank T. Rios.

My muse burns
A holy candle
To the nite
As She lies quiet
In the other room
The space
Between us
A mystery
Like walking
On air
What I know
Fits
In my closed hand
The rest
A vision
And my muse
Guiding me

"The space between us a mystery" --- here is desire, the attractive power of eros, in a phrase. Thank you for joining me in this long meander through some old ideas about love and transformation from the ancient Greco-Roman world. Ideas we still entertain and that still shape cultural views. I hope conscious reflection deepens your understanding of any enduring truths and aid us in our love-fueled transformations. 

If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just, and life-centered, life-embracing world.  

And that's it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.