Sappho: the Brothers Poem

. . . .

Oh, not again – ‘Charaxos has arrived!
His ship was full!’ Well, that’s for Zeus
And all the other gods to know.
            Don’t think of that,

But tell me, ‘go and pour out many prayers
To Hera, and beseech the queen
That he should bring his ship back home
            Safely to port,

And find us sound and healthy.’ For the rest,
Let’s simply leave it to the gods:
Great stormy blasts go by and soon
            Give way to calm.

Sometimes a heavenly helper comes, if that’s
The way Zeus wills, and guides a person round
To safety: and then blessedness and wealth
            Become one’s lot.

And us? If Larichos would raise his head,
If only he might one day be a man,
The deep and dreary draggings of our soul
            We’d lift to joy.

--Translated by Christopher Pelling

The key word in the next to last line is Baruthumian, a rare, gong-sounding word for melancholy.

I got this translation from the February 7 TLS, where Dirk Obbink published an article laying out the key findings of his study of the new Sappho papyrus. He has an academic article coming out later this year, but the wheels of academic publishing grind so slowly, and rumors of the new poems have spread so far, that the Zeitshrift für Papyrologie allowed him to tell his side of the story before contrary opinions become the conventional wisdom. For example, some people think the papyrus is a forgery, but Obbink explains why he thinks it is not in a way I find compelling -- if this is a forgery it is one of the most elaborate in history.

As to what it means, well, notice first how much it resembles a prayer -- this is the case with most of Sappho's surviving fragments. Her art was clearly rooted in hymns and prayers. In this case she seems to be invoking the blessings of the gods on her family. Obbink:

One important implication does not concern Sappho at all -- but vindicates the historian Herodotus, who mentions a poem in which she criticized her brother Charaxos or his mistress. A trader in Lesbian wines, he conceived a passion for a notorious courtesan then a slave in Egypt, and ransomed her at a great price, at which Sappho gave vent to her indignation in a song. Although Herodotus' account is retold by several later authors, the very existence of Charaxos in Sappho's poetry has been doubted by many scholars. In "The Brothers Poem" a speaker addresses someone, criticizing this person for always chattering about "Charaxos" coming with a full ship, instead of leaving such things to the gods: and it closes by wishing that Larichos (whom we know from elsewhere as a brother of Sappho) might grow up to be a man, and so bring joy in place of sorrow. . . .

But how does the poem fit into Sappho's known work? What we seem to have is, like others in her oeuvre, a prayer (for the safe return of the merchant gone to sea) embedded in a song. It suggests performance on some ritual occasion. Here a prayer for the safe return expands to envisage what such a return would mean for the family. And there may be literary, Homeric, echoes, too: Charaxos might be seen as an Odysseus figure (with Larichos as a potential Telemachos) in a family drama with epic overtones: if so, then Sappho herself evokes the figure of Penelope.