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Monday, July 10, 2017 - 07:00
Velasco takes a deep look at how the historical facts of a specific individual are interpreted and rearranged to suit the entertainment and didactic purposes of later ages. From that angle, this book is strongly aligned with the underlying purpose of the LHMP: to consider how history can be used as a basis for fiction, without the fiction being constrained entirely by the history. This book is also a great example of how a focus on only the texts, histories, and creative works that are available in English can distort our picture, not only of what history was like, but of the rich tradition of interpretation of historical stories.
Fortunately for those of us who are primarily constrained to English language sources, Velasco has written another book on the subject of lesbian sexuality in early modern Spain, which we'll be tackling in the next several weeks.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Velasco, Sherry. 2000. The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire and Catalina de Erauso. University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-78746-4
Publication summary:
A study of how the story of Catalina de Erauso was interpreted and used in popular culture during the 17-20th centuries.
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
Velasco takes a deep look at how the historical facts of a specific individual are interpreted and rearranged to suit the entertainment and didactic purposes of later ages. From that angle, this book is strongly aligned with the underlying purpose of the LHMP: to consider how history can be used as a basis for fiction, without the fiction being constrained entirely by the history. This book is also a great example of how a focus on only the texts, histories, and creative works that are available in English can distort our picture, not only of what history was like, but of the rich tradition of interpretation of historical stories.
Fortunately for those of us who are primarily constrained to English language sources, Velasco has written another book on the subject of lesbian sexuality in early modern Spain, which we'll be tackling in the next several weeks.
# # #
Preface
This book looks at how Catalina de Erauso’s story has been “constructed, interpreted, marketed and consumed” in the 17-20th centuries. Velasco identifies Catalina as a “transgenderist” (that is, someone who engages in transgender performance without necessarily having transgender identity) and uses she/her pronouns as the book is examining how Catalina’s image was used (the image of a woman performing masculinity) rather than interpreting what Catalina’s own understanding might have been.
The book looks at the larger context of transgender narratives, and how private (real-life) experiences got turned into public spectacles that reflect cultural anxieties of the era doing the interpretation. Chapter 1 looks at the early modern Spanish context of lesbians, gender ambiguity, and crossdressing in life and art. All this fed into how Catalina’s story was constructed, and how that story in turn fed back into the cultural context. Chapter 2 considers the politics of Catalina’s life in Spain and the New World through the different versions offered in the early 17th century legal records, witness accounts, letters, popular news publications, and her memoir, as well as later renderings of her life in novels and on stage. In particular, 17th century versions framed Catalina as a lesbian, while later interpretations began to erase that aspect. The historic context allowed Catalina to simultaneously be a heroic virgin hero and a killer lesbian. Her desire for women enabled approval for her transgender performance, simultaneously framing her as virtuously non-heterosexually active, but excluding her from acceptable models for female behavior.
In chapter 3 we see how Catalina figures in 19th century works as a character in Spanish and Mexican novels and theatrical works, including an operetta. But lesbianism was no longer considered harmlessly eccentric, so her character was either pushed to demonization as a lesbian, or reconstructed as hetersexual or asexual. This parallels a general cultural shift to demonized lesbian sexuality. One anonymous Mexican novel is an exception in presenting her lesbianism as erotic entertainment. Chapter 4 concerns 20th century interpretations that “re-lesbianize” Catalina. For example, three films dating from 1944 to 1987 show shifting portrayals of her sexuality and the attitude toward it. Mid-20th century prose works leaned toward various takes on a transgender framing, based on her desire for women. Versions of her life in sequential comics focus on historic or action-adventure takes, but often overtly show her rejecting queer encounters.
Introduction
The book begins with a summary of the facts of Catalina de Erauso’s life. She lived in the early 17th century, born to a Basque noble family, and ran away from the convent where she was being “warehoused” at age 15 before taking vows. She passed as a man and went adventuring in the Spanish colonies in the New World where she lived a violent and unsettled life. She returned to Spain after revealing her physical sex and received a pension from the Spanish king as well as dispensation from the Pope to continue cross-dressing. She later returned to the New World and spent 20 years in Mexico as a mule-driver until her death.
In addition to later transcriptions of her autobiography, her life is recorded in letters, legal records, and testimony relating to her status and return to Spain. There is a detailed discussion of the textual transmission and editions of her memoir. Velasco considers the question of whether the sensational news accounts fed into the more sensational variants of her biography, or whether they simply reflected the “true” story, while the tamer variants were deliberately toned down. There is also a question whether Catalina counts as a “woman writer” of the era, due to questions regarding whether she was the author of her memoir or whether it was ghostwritten.
The translation by Steptoe and Steptoe (1996), although not the first rendering into English, brought Catalina’s story to the attention of Anglophone queer studies scholars and sparked conflicts over how Catalina’s gender should be understood and presented. For example, one scholar chose to alternate randomly between feminine and masculine pronouns in writing of Catalina in order to reject privileging either approach or associating gender with specific actions or contexts. Other authors have alternated based on context and presentation, or follow Leslie Feinberg’s example in referring to Catalina a “s/he” (a style that is now deprecated).
The early manuscripts themselves provide no clear guidance on the issue, rendering the adjectives Catalina uses to describe herself in both masculine and feminine grammatical forms. Different manuscripts distribute them differently but, for example, there is a tendency for masculine forms to be used in passages about courtship, flirtation, and romance as well as martial contexts, while feminine forms appear in neutral or unmarked contexts. Velasco sets out her reason for using feminine pronouns in the book: because it is studying the literary/cultural figure, not the real life historic individual, and that cultural figure is clearly understood to be a woman in male disguise. In trying to assess Catalina’s own position, it can’t be ignored that gender presentation had massive social and economic consequences. As a woman, Catalina had no option but life as a nun. As a man, Catalina had physical freedom, could travel, earn money, have adventures, and have as much control over her life as anyone of her class and context could. The only means Catalina knew of to be “not a nun” was to be a man.
In popular culture, Catalina has consistently been used to reflect the readers/viewer’s concerns: a transgender activist, a Basque patriot, a heroic colonial soldier, an adventurous lesbian. Velasco discusses the cultural contexts that drive each of these. Transgender narratives destabilize the idea of fixed categories, but also can be used to enforce gender difference. The introduction of Catalina’s romantic/erotic encounters with women can provide the reader or viewer with titillation while preserving the forms of heteronormativity. (Popular culture, alas, rarely allows a context for a same-sex romantic/erotic resolution.)
Chapter 1: Hybrid Spectacles
Catalina’s memoir includes a number of episodes with romantic and erotic encounters with women that remain short of any activity that would reveal her body. 16-17th century Spanish records (like everywhere else) have fewer examples of genital contact between women than between men but there is a long record on the topic in legal, religious, and philosophical discussion. Spain had a reputation for being the “specialists” in legal concerns about lesbianism. For example, a 1556 version of Las Siete Partidas argued that sodomy laws applied to women as well as men.
Velasco reviews all the usual arguments for and against using the word “lesbian” in discussing historic persons and activities. She chooses to use the terms “lesbian” and “transgender” to the extent that they can be associated with early modern frameworks. But she notes that Brantôme used the word “lesbian” in the 16th century for women who had sex with women, so supposed concerns about anachronism are overblown.
Sex between women in the early modern period was considered less sinful than heterosexual fornication, due to the presumed lack of penetration. In general, women’s sexual activities were not viewed as threatening in and of themselves. Velasco offers a survey of early modern Spanish depictions of female homoeroticism in literature, theater, songs, and pornography.
Within limits, female masculinity could be considered admirable, as masculinity was more highly valued. Studies of “hermaphrodites” considered it possible for spontaneous female-to-male transformation, but not the reverse, as nature would only spontaneously “improve” a body.
Neo-platonic love between women could be framed admirably even when a “masculine” woman was involved. But this was only because love between women could be considered “chaste”. In this context, Velasco presents an extensive discussion of same-sex love and “masculine” women in Alvaro Cubillo de Aragón’s play Añasco el de Talavera.
Female cross-dressers on the stage from the 16th century onward were always associated with at least the implication of female same-sex desire. Scholars differ on whether it was felt one must “be” a man to experience desire for women, or if the performance of masculinity made expression of desire between women more acceptable. Theatrical performances may have inspired some real-life “masculine women”.
Legal records suggest that the boundary of tolerance for female same-sex activity was the use of an instrument for penetration. But see also the Italian case of Benedetta Carlini where no instrument was involved. There is ample evidence for concern about same-sex love in convents. See also the case of Elena/Eleno de Céspedes.
These complex attitudes toward lesbian desire, cross-dressing, and masculine women help explain the variety of responses to Catalina de Erauso. Catalina allowed patriarchal authorities to define and control her identity after her revelation, and emphasized both her virginal status and the absence of penetrative or genital activities with women. She also allowed or encouraged interpretation of her life as a “spectacle”. This brought her life within the general fascination for “hybrid monsters”, including the concept of hermaphroditism and “monstrosity” in general. In the context of monstrosity, there were theories that “manly women” were a type of birth defect, a consequence of some prenatal experience by their mother. Other theories interpreted physiological ambiguity (which modern medicine would likely see as intersex conditions or hormonal issues) in terms of humoral imbalances.
The image of the warrior woman is found in an extensive tradition of women cross-dressing for military service, both in real life and in popular culture. These often explore the potential for same-sex romantic consequences. Cross-dressing on stage prompted censure from moralists and sometimes even official sanction. Stage presentations featured sexualization of cross-dressed women for the male gaze, especially as it revealed body parts (e.g., legs) typically concealed in that era.
Chapter 2: Celebrity and Scandal
This chapter looks at the symbolic use of Catalina in popular culture, as opposed to the true facts of her life. There were four general aspects to her image: criminal, lesbian, virgin, and hero. These are reflected with different emphasis in contemporary records, in sensational news pamphlets, in her memoir, and in later dramatic renderings. Of the four aspects, the lesbian theme undergoes the greatest change over the course of the 17th century.
The image of the hero is more relevant in her petitions for recognition and a pension, but also in her request to be allowed to continue to cross-dress. These focus on her vocation as a “defender of the faith and the Spanish crown.” The bare details of Catalina’s memoir are more aligned with the image of the criminal than the hero. The memoir could be compared to the genre of picaresque novel and other autobiographies of soldiers in the New World, with a focus on violent altercations and criminality, or at least episodic violence.
The lesbian element is most prominent in Juan Pérez de Montalbán’s 1626 play La Monja Alférez and in a letter from the bishop of Guamanga (to whom Catalina first told her story) that cites her attraction to other women. In two of the relaciones (tabloid new publications), her lesbianism is linked overtly to criminality. They emphasize how jealousy of her brother over a woman they both associated with led to his death. Catalina had three brushes with marriage that included flirtation and erotic activity though they are, in the end, more about exploitation than desire. In a third relacion, detailing an incident positioned well after the end of Catalina’s memoir, she falls in love with a young woman that she is escorting on a trip, but when the woman marries a man, despite Catalina’s persuasions, Catalina is violently jealous such that the new husband forbids her from visiting. Note that in this (almost certainly fictional) relacion Catalina’s sex is known openly at this point in the story. Various texts of Catalina’s life include episodes of affection shown to nuns (e.g., in Peru when she was waiting for the results of the inquiry into her status vis-a-vis final vows). These are presented in a positive light and framed as non-erotic, but in several later (20th century) dramatizations, this affection is portrayed as clearly sexual.
Velasco takes a close look at the portrayal of Catalina in de Montalbán’s play, which was first performed in 1626 at the height of her initial notoriety. The immediacy of the events meant de Montalbán was not entirely free to fictionalize Catalina’s life. He depicts her as very masculine but as a sympathetic figure, sacrificing her own interests to benefit her female love interest. De Montalbán’s audience was familiar with cross-dressing female stage roles. His work does not have a tragic ending but can’t be considered “happily ever after” as Catalina’s beloved ends up with a man. The play doesn’t focus on Catalina’s initial decision and transformation, but only on the “after” period. And in contrast to the lack of concern about discovery in Catalina’s memoir, de Montalbán’s character regularly denies challenges to her gender presentation. The play associates military performance with masculinity. The central plot is Catalina’s love for Ana (the love interest) and how Catalina tries to protect and secure Ana’s reputation after her honor is impugned. Although Catalina is portrayed as violent and impulsive, it’s always in a justifiable cause. Her erotic desire is framed as being in vain, and therefore non-threatening.
Though overt homoeroticism is absent from much of the documentary evidence, it was an inevitable implication of Catalina’s cross-dresing in the context of 17th century Spanish drama. Some modern analysis interprets Catalina’s homoerotic actions as a deliberate part of her male persona. However one interprets Catalina’s motivations, she is never portrayed as desiring or flirting with men.
Perhaps one of the more surprising depictions of Catalina is as “orthodox virgin”. Connections can be made with the “transvestite saint” motif of early Christian women who cross-dressed to preserve chastity and to prove religious devotion. One account of Catalina’s life by Fray Diego de Rosales does its best to portray her as driven by religious motivations. This included many outright inventions regarding her behavior and habits in order to make her conform to the image. At least one of the relaciones also created an image of devotion, especially at the end of Catalina’s life. Catalina’s “proof of virginity” is taken as balancing out her other transgressions.
Velasco discusses the complex image of the “hybrid spectacle” with a emphasis on the contrast of “lieutenant” and “nun” in Catalina’s nickname. Her story was treated as interesting specifically for this sensational aspect. De Montalbán’s character explicitly complains about being treated as a freak show and there is a semi-comical episode in the play when she is induced to wear a hybrid costume to meet an official, with themes of the restrictiveness of female fashion and her unfamiliarity with it. Catalina’s memoir also depicts her negative responses to celebrity.
Chapter 3: Melodrama and Reconstruction
Catalina’s story was not given much attention in the 18th century except for the transcription of her autobiography in the later part of the century. There was a revived interest in her (in part due to that transcription) in the 19th century, as an asexual or heterosexual figure. Catalina was seen as a cautionary tale, not a source of entertainment, that showed what happens when women are not educated in proper behavior. Ferrer’s publication of her memoir in Paris may have contributed in part to the stock image of the “exotic” aggressive transvestite lesbian in French literature.
The Romantic movement’s appreciation for spontaneity and adventure latched onto those aspects of Catalina’s life. But this sympathy required erasure of the sexual aspects of her story. Romantic renderings depict her as embarrassed by women’s erotic interest in her and compare her to Jeanne d’Arc. In contrast, Carlos Coello’s 1866 play of her life depicts Catalina as a sinister and savage animal, but desexualizes her and then redeems her by a heterosexual adaptation of the love triangle set up in de Montalbán’s play. Juan A. Mateo’s 1877 play La Monja Alférez largely abandons any previous version to create a Romantic heroine. Here she escapes the convent in pursuit of a man’s affections. The conflict is around her jealousy of the man’s intended marriage to another, which Catalina interferes with in male disguise.
An anonymous Mexican version of Catalina’s story in the 19th century works more from the original texts. She is coached on how to perform masculinity by a male friend, including the seduction of women as part of that performance. But these are framed specifically as disguise performances, and Catalina shows by interior monologue how conflicted she is about the whole masquerade. Once her physical sex is revealed, she is able to express true (but chaste) affection for a woman. Here the presumed impossibility of love between women is a shield for its expression.
A late 19th century Spanish historical novel based on Catalina’s life depicts her homoeroticism as pure disguise and the author overtly undermines the possibility of genuine lesbian desire.
Chapter 4: From Cinema to Comics
20th century media reintroduced a lesbian framing for Catalina’s life, but the specific portrayal depends on the media. In 1940s movies she was depicted as a heterosexual femme fatale, while 1980s movies took a lesbian approach ranging from tragic to hopeful. Text and visual media in the 20th century that were aimed at a younger female audience downplayed the same-sex attraction, while works aimed at older audiences were variable. Overall, most 20th century interpretations marketed Catalina as a “transvestite spectacle.”
Film versions tended to highlight the actress’s attributes, not those of the historic Catalina. The marketing of a sexualized masculine woman for the male gaze evokes the early modern sex appeal of cross-dressed actresses appearing on stage in form-fitting and revealing clothing. The actress María Félix (who starred in a 1944 film) adopted the clothing styles she wore for the role in everyday life afterward.
One consequence of this approach (of highlighting the traditionally feminine appearance of the actress) is that the movie viewer is never in doubt of the character’s underlying sex, even though the other characters are fooled. Comparisons are made with the Spanish obsession with the 17th century Queen Christina of Sweden, who cross-dressed and was almost certainly bisexual. Greta Garbo’s 1933 portrayal of Queen Christina was likely a major stylistic influence on the 1944 film about Catalina. Velasco discusses the differential treatment of male and female cross-dressing in cinema. Male cross-dressing is an occasion for laughter, female cross-dressing is an occasion for (male) desire.
In mid-century fascist Spain, Catalina was used as a model of female heroism for indoctrinating girls, somewhat in contradiction to the domestic ideal it purported to encourage. But this purpose required focusing on (masculine) bravery and erasing homoerotic implications. In addition to erasing issues of sexuality, fascist Spain also erased Catalina’s Basque identity and Basque nationalism, which played a major role in her memoir.
A Mexican graphic novel of 1991 presents homoerotic scenes in Catalina’s life as an unexpected and unwelcome consequence of her disguise. Operating in an entirely different context were works aimed squarely at the pornography market, such as two Chilean historical novels (of 1938 and 1972) that manipulate Catalina as an erotic spectacle in both heterosexual and homosexual contexts.
In post-Franco Spain, adaptation of Catalina’s story returned to the image of a lesbian military hero, for example in a theatrical version performed in 1993. It depicts Catalina’s erotic encounters with women as representing genuine desire, but the context is presenting a spectacle for the audience. This approach didn’t necessarily result in a postive portrayal, as in a 1986 Spanish film where Catalina comes to accept her desire for women, but is prevented from enjoying it.
Catalina’s life is treated overtly as a transgender/lesbian figure in the 1987 film She Must be Seeing Things, about two modern women obsessed with Catalina’s life.
Conclusion
Velasco concludes with a discussion of the popular reception of various of the works discussed and a summary of her thesis statements.
Event / person:
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Thursday, July 6, 2017 - 08:00
There is an expression—a phrase, an image, a verbal trope—that I am trying to eliminate from my critical writing: “Does not disappoint.” When I think about it, I’m a bit embarrassed that it took me so long to identify it as something I wanted to stop using, because I’d already examined a different model of the underlying issue from another angle and identified what it was that would eventually start bothering me about “does not disappoint.”
Here’s the thing. If I’m talking about a property (a book a movie, a meal, a performance) and describe an expectation I have for it, and then—having consumed the property—I observe that it “does not disappoint,” it seems to me that I’ve rejected the possibility of being surprised by joy. I’ve set the standard of my base-level neutral experience and determined that the property hasn’t fallen below that base level. It’s as if I’ve set up a job performance rating scale with only two options: “disappoints” and “does not disappoint”. Or, that if the rating scale includes “exceeds expectations,” I’m indicating that the experience didn’t exceed them.
And I don’t think that’s what I ever intended to convey when I used the expression. I don’t honestly believe that it’s what anyone else ever intends to convey when they use the expression. And yet, having seen it from that angle, it’s very difficult not to feel the gut-punch of, “So is that all I managed? I succeeded in not disappointing you?”
And here’s why I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to come to this point. Once upon a time, there was a couple in my social circle whom I’d had a chance to observe over an extended relationship arc. I listened to how Partner A talked about their expectations and interactions with Partner B, and it seemed to me that Partner A was operating on “disappoints/does not disappoint” performance rating. That—based on how their interactions were framed—the most that Partner B could hope to achieve was “does not disappoint.” It struck me as tragic. I felt strongly enough about it at the time that I spoke to Person A about my perception, no doubt being marked down as an obnoxious busybody as a result. And A and B are still together more than a decade later, so perhaps my perception was out of line. I don’t know.
But that’s why I’ve been trying to eliminate that phrase, in any of its forms. Because I want everything I consume to be allowed the possibility of surprising me with joy, not just failing to disappoint me.
Major category:
ThinkingMonday, July 3, 2017 - 07:00
In 16-17th century Spain, a fictional genre emerged called the "picaresque novel". It features the adventures of a roguish protagonist, generally of low social class, who lives by his wits in the midst of a corrupt or dystopian scoiety. These works are generally written in the form of an autobiographical narrative and are episodic in nature, featuring neither an over-arching plot nor significant change or development of the protagonist as a character.
One might be forgiven for considering the memoir of Catalina de Erauso, the "Lieutenant Nun" (Monja Alférez) as being suspiciously faithful to this fictional genre, and it isn't impossible that the flavor of her narrative was shaped by those literary expectations. But there is plentiful corroborating evidence for the truth of de Erauso's story, in its basic facts. And those basic facts present a fascinating picture of the ways in which a woman might escape the expectations for her life, as well as the practical realities and possibilities for gender disguise and performance.
One of the interesting features of her story is that there is no indication that she had any practical instruction in martial activites or masculine professions, and yet there never seems to have been any question of her relative success in performing them, nor does casual discovery of her physiological sex seem to have been an issue. However one views Catalina's life from a modern understanding of gender and sexuality, these practical aspects are of immense interest to writers who wish to tackle the practicalities of a passing or transgender protagonist.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Stepto, Michele & Gabriel Stepto (translators). Catalina de Erauso. Lieutenant Nun -- Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8070-7073-4
Publication summary:
A translation, with commentary, of the memoirs of a 17th century Basque woman who lived and adventured as a man in the Spanish colonies in South America.
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
In 16-17th century Spain, a fictional genre emerged called the "picaresque novel". It features the adventures of a roguish protagonist, generally of low social class, who lives by his wits in the midst of a corrupt or dystopian scoiety. These works are generally written in the form of an autobiographical narrative and are episodic in nature, featuring neither an over-arching plot nor significant change or development of the protagonist as a character.
One might be forgiven for considering the memoir of Catalina de Erauso, the "Lieutenant Nun" (Monja Alférez) as being suspiciously faithful to this fictional genre, and it isn't impossible that the flavor of her narrative was shaped by those literary expectations. But there is plentiful corroborating evidence for the truth of de Erauso's story, in its basic facts. And those basic facts present a fascinating picture of the ways in which a woman might escape the expectations for her life, as well as the practical realities and possibilities for gender disguise and performance.
One of the interesting features of her story is that there is no indication that she had any practical instruction in martial activites or masculine professions, and yet there never seems to have been any question of her relative success in performing them, nor does casual discovery of her physiological sex seem to have been an issue. However one views Catalina's life from a modern understanding of gender and sexuality, these practical aspects are of immense interest to writers who wish to tackle the practicalities of a passing or transgender protagonist.
# # #
[Note: within the context of current frameworks of gender and sexuality, there are equally strong cases for viewing de Erauso as a transgender man, or as a “passing woman” who used male disguise for the purpose of gaining economic and social independence, and who may have enjoyed erotic desires for women apart from performing heterosexuality as part of that disguise. There is an equally strong case to be made for considering both framings to be anachronistically meaningless in the context of early 17th century Spain. This topic is directly discussed in the book, however as the author defaults to referring to “Catalina” and using female pronouns, I will follow this usage in my summary.]
Foreword
This is a translation and discussion of the (possibly ghost-written) autobiography of a 17th century Basque named Catalina de Erauso who escaped a convent prior to taking final vows, and began living as a man, using various names at different times: Pedro de Orive, Francisco de Loyola, Alonso Diaz Ramirez de Guzman and--in later life after this history was made public--Antonio de Erauso. De Erauso, like many contemporaries, traveled to the Spanish colonial territories in South America and made a violent and turbulent living in a variety of military and civilian professions.
Many things can be read into Catalina’s story, which presents itself as a strict autobiography, though certainly ghost-written and probably embellished to follow contemporary narrative conventions. Certain events are too conveniently symbolic for literal truth (such as time-periods that can be seen as having biblical significance). At heart, this is a story of re-making the self, at a time when performance became the self rather than being “costume”. Catalina’s adoption of male clothing and a male profession was not simple masquerade, regardless of how she may have viewed her own gender.
The book’s introduction has a long discussion of the European social context in the 16th century and later of cross-dressing, both in theatrical performance and erotic play. Within the narrative itself, Catalina expresses little concern regarding casual disclosure of her physiological sex--including during extensive imprisonments and even when undergoing torture or medical treatment. Her concern for disclosure centers only around recognition by family members and people who knew her before she left the convent.
The first-person narrative does not clearly reveal any personal sexual desire (though, to be fair, it doesn’t involve much emotional introspection at all), but only anxiety about situations in which someone might expect her to perform desire. She evades the marriage plans of several women, but conversely expresses no erotic interest in her male companions. When her story is eventually made public, she requests medical examination and a great deal is made of the judgement that she is an “intact virgin”.
The fascination of society with examples such as Catalina indicate a “category crisis” that typically reflects greater social anxiety about categories. And Catalina’s avoidance of marriage is not strictly focused on issues of gender and desire, but is complicated by her attitudes toward race and class (e.g., rejecting the marriage proposal of a mixed-race woman using negative racialized language regarding the woman’s appearance). Attempts to adopt Catalina as some sort of progressive social radical must founder on the undeniable degree to which she participated in and benefitted from Spanish colonialist structures. An interesting related feature is the degree to which Catalina’s most crucial identity is her Basque origin, and she regularly evokes this to make common cause with other Basque individuals in South America to receive preferential treatment or to escape legal consequences.
One of the genres in which Catalina’s story must be positioned is that of “New World marvels." Another is that of “female soldiers”, who were sometimes given dispensation for gender transgression when their motivations could be framed as patriotic. In addition to this, Catalina can be seen as something of a pop culture celebrity, who was able to trade on being an entertaining “spectacle”.
Introduction
The text is presented as a “confession narrative” and therefore had specific functional purposes. Catalina made contradictory claims for herself to escape the consequences of her various actions, alternately identifying herself with the nobility, as a heretic and, on her eventual revelation, as a chaste virgin. The confession served its purpose, gaining her not only immediate physical safety, but eventually a pension from the Spanish crown, and later a dispensation from the Pope to continue wearing male clothing.
Catalina was born (most likely) in 1585) to a prosperous Basque family during the height of Spain’s conquest in the Americas. All four of her brothers became soldiers in the New World (and ended their days there). In contrast, the five de Erauso daughters were all sent to a convent for education and to protect their chastity, of which only one left the convent to marry, three lived out their lives in the convent, and Catalina escaped by more dramatic means. She describes how she remade her female clothing into a suit of male clothes, cut her hair short, and walked to the next town, where she presented herself in a changing series of roles until she eventually took ship for the New World as a ship’s boy. During this intial stage, she regularly interacted with people who were either blood relatives (the captain of the ship she traveled on was an uncle) or associates of her family. These interactions may have been part of the motivation for going overseas, but at this time becoming part of the colonial expansion was the easiest means for any young Spanish man to expand his horizons and seek a fortune.
On arriving in the New World in 1603, Catalina stole some of the silver her uncle was receiving for transport back to Spain and set out for adventure. Criminal activity (including targeting unwitting relatives or employers) was a common feature of her exploits, with the violent consequences of a hot temper being another regular feature.
At this time, Spain’s conquest of Peru and surrounding areas was solidly established and normalized. This wasn’t a frontier war zone, but a thriving colony, based on the coerced labor of the native population. At the same time, Spanish newcomers could expect wealth and status far above what was available back home. The resulting instability was a problem to manage, and newer arrivals who had no solid stake in the colonial strucure yet were often sent off on expeditions to subdue the frontiers. Some succeeded in becoming part of the very profitable colonial structure, others (in which category Catalina falls) led a boom-and-bust existence where short term gains were lost to robbers, rivals, or legal penalties.
Catalina spent 20 years as an itinerant soldier, mercantile agent, gambler, and troublemaker. And then, perhaps tired of the struggle to manage the consequences of her activities, she revealed her secret to a bishop and became something of a sensation. She spent three years in a Peruvian convent while her story was investigated. When it was confirmed that she had never taken final vows as a nun in Spain (if she'd taken final vows, she would have been held to them), she was released and returned to Spain. In 1625, she petitioned the Spanish king for a pension, essentially for being a celebrity, and indicated a desire to return to Peru. During this same period, she wrote or dictated her story, framing it in the tradition of the picaresque novel. Eventually, she traveled to Rome and received dispensation from the Pope to continue wearing male clothing. In 1630, she allowed her relatives to buy out her share of the familial estate and returned to Peru. There are later records of her living as a merchant and mule driver in Mexico (in 1639) using the name Antonio de Erauso and being referred to as one of several “brothers” of the de Erauso family. There is also an account dicated in 1693 by a man who met her in 1645 in Vera Cruz, Mexico. Her death is less directly documented, but is placed in 1650 near Vera Cruz.
Catalina’s story revolves primarily around action, travel, and detailed recitations of names and facts. It is not particularly introspective and makes no attempt at presenting her in a consistently heroic light, nor is there any imposition of an overall narrative plot.
Translator’s Note
The manuscript of Catalina’s story was copied some time in the 18th century and then re-copied with the names Hispanicized in 1784. This later version, with the Basque forms of the names restored, was printed in Paris in 1829. Neither the original, nor the first copy are known to still exist. The present translation is based on the 1784 version.
Given that the narrative is in the first person, the narrator’s presentation of gender is largely revealed in the grammatical inflections of adjectives. This aspect is, of course, lost in the English translation. Catalina uses both masculine and feminine grammatical forms for herself in the text, but not entirely randomly. In the majority of contexts--and especially when discussing martial matters--masculine forms are used, while feminine forms more typically appear in more reflective or neutral contexts.
The Text
After all the above discussion, my ambition fails at giving an overview summary of the text itself. The basic outline of Catalina’s life, as contained in the work, is decribed above. The rest is a random and episodic account of the details. I encourage those who are interested in the specifics to pick up a copy. It’s relatively short and quite readable.
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Monday, July 3, 2017 - 06:45
I've done the random drawing for the bonus book for Storybundle buyers. The lucky winners are: Louvelune, Kareina, LG, Andrea, and Abigail. I'll be contacting you by e-mail to confirm book and format for fulfillment. Thanks to everyone who partcipated, and to all the Storybundle buyers in general!
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PromotionFriday, June 30, 2017 - 08:48
So here's the deal: we sold over 1000 Storybundle packages (in fact, over 1000 at the bonus level). To celebrate and thank the buyers for their support, I'm going to give away five (5) Alpennia e-books to randomly-selected bundle purchasers who comment on this post. If The Mystic Marriage (in the bundle) is your first introduction to Alpennia, I'd strongly suggest you try book #1 in the series (Daughter of Mystery). If you already have that, then try book #3 (Mother of Souls).
This offer will run through the end of the weekend (i.e., until I wake up on Monday July 3) at which time I'll do the drawing and contact people.
This is limited Storybundle purchasers, but that's entirely on your honor. (Obvious spam will be excluded, so some sort of content in the comment that makes it clear you aren't a spammer will help.)
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PromotionTuesday, June 27, 2017 - 15:36
Yeah, it's been a while since I've done a writing progress update, isn't it? I confess I've gotten a little knocked off the tracks with respect to blogging in the past month and I keep reminding myself that one of my New Year's Irresolutions was not to beat myself up about that. (Poor Abiel LaForge is sitting there on the front lines waiting for the war to end.) So where are we...?
Looking at my revised chapter outline, I have two and a half chapters to go to complete my zeroeth draft of Floodtide. "Zeroeth draft" because there are still a bunch of placeholders and "expand this"s and "this needs to get moved elsewhere"s. But in two and a half chapters, I'll have written through to the end of the book. That's something.
When people ask me about my writing process, my usual response is, "I'll let you know when I've used the same one twice." And Floodtide is no exception. None of my previous first drafts were quite this chaotic, in part because I've usually broken my rule about "no re-writing until I'm done writing." For the two previous books, having a complete draft felt like I could predict fairly solidly how soon I'd be ready to present the manuscript to my publisher. This time, I haven't even sent off a formal proposal letter yet because I have no good estimate of how long it's going to take me to whip the story into shape.
Part of that is because I plan to go out and hire myself a developmental editor who knows something about what a good YA fantasy should look like to help me make Floodtide the best book it can be. And I don't know how long that process will take, either finding the right person or working through the revisions with them. It's a bit of an unsettled feeling, but since I want Floodtide to be a book that can be an independent introduction to Alpennia, I figure it's worth taking the time.
(Oh, and the river isn't actually still rising at this point. The waters have started to recede. But not the troubles.)
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Writing ProcessPublications:
FloodtideMonday, June 26, 2017 - 07:00
This month I’m getting my fill of a particular sort of academic study that brings together parallel examinations of several related subjects (or persons) to build a layered case for the author’s conclusions. There is often a tendency to throw in a section of random leftover topics somewhere toward the end. This sounds a bit more negative than I mean it to feel -- academic writing has some rules and structures that are quite different from a more popular approach to historic topics. But it can make it hard to recommend books like this to a general reader. And yet, if you are planning to set a piece of historic fiction in western Europe in the 17-19th centuries, you can find a wealth of intellectual background and social understandings and expectations in works like DeJean, Andreadis, and Vanita. This applies in particular if you mean to set your fiction in intellectual or literary circles.
This book, in a way, continues on from Andreadis’ examination of English uses of Sappho in the 17-18th centuries, focusing on similar topics and treatments during the Romantic and Victorian eras, but with a slightly broader focus on how Sappho (and the Virgin Mary) inspired considerations and understandings of non-normative sexuality in general, not just female homoeroticism.
And with this entry, I conclude my Pride Month Special focusing on topics relating to Sappho. Maybe I should start planning now for another special topic for next year's Pride Month. (Though, to some extent, for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, every month is Pride Month!) Do you have any suggestions for next year's focus?
I'd also like to add a teaser that the podcast sister-project (The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast) will be expanding in format in August, with additional content beyond my historic essays. Stay tuned for more details!
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LHMPLHMP #146 Vanita 1996 Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination
Full citation:
Vanita, Ruth. 1996. Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 0-231-10551-7
Publication summary:
A study of 19th century English writers working on homoerotic themes, with attention to how Sappho and the Virgin Mary feature as alternative models of female bonds and women’s creativity.
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
This month I’m getting my fill of a particular sort of academic study that brings together parallel examinations of several related subjects (or persons) to build a layered case for the author’s conclusions. There is often a tendency to throw in a section of random leftover topics somewhere toward the end. This sounds a bit more negative than I mean it to feel -- academic writing has some rules and structures that are quite different from a more popular approach to historic topics. But it can make it hard to recommend books like this to a general reader. And yet, if you are planning to set a piece of historic fiction in western Europe in the 17-19th centuries, you can find a wealth of intellectual background and social understandings and expectations in works like DeJean, Andreadis, and Vanita. This applies in particular if you mean to set your fiction in intellectual or literary circles.
This book, in a way, continues on from Andreadis’ examination of English uses of Sappho in the 17-18th centuries, focusing on similar topics and treatments during the Romantic and Victorian eras, but with a slightly broader focus on how Sappho (and the Virgin Mary) inspired considerations and understandings of non-normative sexuality in general, not just female homoeroticism.
# # #
Introduction: Imagined Ancestries
Vanita was inspired by looking at Virginia Woolf as a Sapphic writer in the contexts of the Aestheticists and Romantics to challenge the idea that Sapphic writers were isolated from mainstream literary traditions. [Note: This beginning point explains why such a significant amount of the later part of the book focuses on Woolf and her contemporaries.] She looks at love between women as a literary force for both female and male writers, in contradiction to post-Freudian views of writers as operating in a phallocentric universe. These forces manifest in several ways: women’s search for non-biological ancestry (and descent) as creators, an erotic aesthetic focused on joy rather than reproduction, and love between women in literary and mythological ancestors.
The Marian model of relationships between women focuses on a mother-daughter dynamic of nurturence and mentorship, while the Sapphic model focuses on a passionate dialog between women. Both involve female communities and the models are not exclusive. The models considered here are not specifically about sexuality, but do center on erotic and affective preferences. Vanita is less concerned with issues of class than gender and sexuality, considering class to be less stable.
Romanticism was concerned with a search for alternate non-biological forms of family and community--a search for intellectual and spiritual ancestors in contrast to society’s primacy of biological ancestry. Affective relationships show an overlap between the “mentor” and the “crush”. Non-biological kindred are linked to relationships between women by pinning immortality on textual survival, not on the production of children.
Victorian radical and feminist networks included important alliances of homosexually-inclined men and women, and these networks are particularly apparent in literary communities. Vanita wants to challenge the traditional view of gender segregation in these networks. She reviews various schools of thought regarding gender dynamics in history and argues they omit significant chunks of data that incorporate themes of bonds between women. For example, she examines the concept of Mary’s immaculate conception as a ret-conning [my label] of her “perpetual virginity” as a way of elevating the Virgin to an icon of autonomous creativity and women’s community. As another example of overlooking female communities and bonds, she points out that Foucault’s focus on the historic influence of gender segregation fails to consider the female side of gender-segregated societies, such as Sappho’s community. Further, she criticizes the tendency to gender sexual activity as inherently masculine and love as inherently feminine.
Chapter 1: The Marian Model
The cult and legend of the Virgin Mary developed on a foundation of very thin fact, but created alternative models of femaleness for women in pre-modern England. [Note: in fact, throughout Christian history, but this book is looking specifically at England, so the discussion is skewed in that direction.] Mary gave women a focus for empowerment and a basis for rebutting misogyny. After the Reformation, Mary worship became identified with Catholicism, which was problematic in England. Mariolatry became a focus for Protestant hatred and also a focus of anxiety in the Catholic hierarchy, where it was felt to be tinged with paganism.
Catholicism was a continual fascination among English intellectuals but was viewed negatively in English popular culture. Catholic clergy and nuns were often portrayed as sexually frustrated or perverted. But the cultural presence of Mary was not so easily stigmatized, due to her pervasive presence in art, everyday life, and popular culture, not least because of the omnipresence of the name “Mary” for historic reasons. In the 19th century, there was a shift from framing Mary as the “mother of God” to seeing her as an autonomous agent, acting on behalf of mankind. [Note: I’m assuming that Vanita is referring narrowly to post-Reformation English perceptions here, as the image of Mary as an autonomous intercessor goes much further back.]
Due to the exclusion of Mary from Protestant theology, Protestant writers were free to re-imagine her in new and transgressive ways. For example, discourse around the word “conception” was highly gendered. For a man, “conception” immediately evoked inspiration and intellectual pursuits, while for a woman it assumed biological children. Biological conception frames women as a passive recipient, while intellectual conception is framed as active. In contrast, images of the Annunciation depict Mary with signifiers of the intellectual framing of conception: she is alone, in contemplation (very often depicted as studying a book). She is shown “receiving” Christ in the way one would receive an idea, absent of biological functions. There is an absence of the imagery of heterosexual conception. God is symbolized as a a dove, or via the image of a genderless angel. Mary receives a “word”, the usual precursor to intellectual conception, not pregnancy.
Mary’s experience cannot be duplicated by ordinary women, but can inspire imitation. The state of virginity implies that one is safe, free, and autonomous (i.e., not under a husband). But if “sex” is defined entirely in terms of penetration, then virginity does not imply a non-erotic existence. The immaculate conception (i.e., Mary herself being born free of original sin) and virgin birth (of Christ) create an image of a non-biological (in the sense of non-heterosexual) lineage that focuses primarily on female antecedents. Mary also presents a model of marriage resistance in that legend attributes to her a refusal to marry until assured that her marriage to Joseph would be chaste.
Protestantism rejected the concept of celibate religions vocations, and the Puritan concept of “companionate marriage” could be seen as a similar rejection of celibacy. In this context, a woman’s refusal to marry made her suspect. Mary presented one of the few models for an alternative. Early Christian legends often associate marriage refusal with martyrdom (i.e., virgins who aspire to a life of chastity or simply refuse to marry a pagan are martyred in punishment for their resistance). Spiritual marriage to Christ was another way of framing marriage resistance. But in the secular realm, unmarried women--especially older women--were seen as a social “problem” and a disruptive force.
Another symbolic association of Mary is books and reading. She is commonly associated with female education, or with her role in the education of the young Jesus.
It is possible that one of the attractions of Catholicism for homosexuals was the practice of confession and absolution, and the framing of suffering as a positive experience, with Mary providing a compassionate and forgiving response. The cult of Mary was attractive to marginalized people in general, offering mercy as contrasted with the rigidity of the law. For that matter, legend suggested that Mary herself was accused of (hetero)sexual transgression due to her unmarried pregnancy.
Chapter 2: The Sapphic Sublime and Romantic Lyricism
Vanita suggests that the Sapphic ode is one of the foundational inspirations for English Romanticism. It is defined by an intensity of personal and emotional voice. Instead of making logical and rational arguments, the Romantic position is to be overpowered by emotion--an experience that is at the core of Sappho’s poetry. Like Sappho’s work, Romantic poetry frequently uses dialogues between women or feminized entities such as Nature. In Romanticism, models for relationships--even between men--elevate nurturing and tenderness. The Romantic movement challenges the perception that male writers have always ignored and trivialized women’s writing. Vanita discusses Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own as an example of this perception. There is a conflict between looking at academic writing about women versus imaginative writing about women. A Room of One’s Own focuses on the former but even Woolf notes the influence of women in men’s imaginative writing.
Vanita challenges the literary historians’ assumption that Sappho as an icon of love between women emerged only in the late 19th century (with the influence of the sexologists) and that previously the Phaon myth (framing Sappho as heterosexual, at least at the end) reigned. She traces the history of English familiarity with Sappho’s work, both in Greek and Latin and in translation, and traces the timeline of knowledge and discussions of Sappho’s homoerotic expressions. Although Anne Dacier’s French translation (17th century) largely elides Sappho’s lesbianism, she was an anomaly. Dacier’s father (Tanneguy LeFevre) published an edition of Sappho's works with commentary that confirmed her lesbian interests. In the 18th century, discussions of Sappho included reference to at least four specific women thought to have been her lovers. There are also poetic acknowledgements of Sappho’s homoerotic interests, such as in John Donne’s “Sappho to Philaenis” (1633).
The Romantic poets had a fascination for the icon of Sappho as a great poet and experimented with works in what they considered her characteristic meter and style. These works were associated with floral and pastoral imagery and with “clitoral eroticism”, and references to both the Marian and Sapphic models of women’s relationships. Mary is often depicted with floral imagery. Sappho’s poetry frequently makes reference to specific flowers and floral garlands. The imagery of flowers and gardens is prominent in Romantic poetry. The chapter concludes with discussion of some specific Romantic works on these themes, e.g., by Keats, in which the garden is presented as feminine and faces incursions and attacks from forces depicted as masculine.
Chapter 3: Ecstasy in Victorian Aestheticism
Vanita examines the writer Walter Pater and influences from medieval, Rennaisance, and Romantic models of love between women, focusing on the theme of “images of clitoral ecstasy”. Pater saw love between women as a crucial model for love in general, including male homoerotic love. There were two competing models of male homoeroticism at that time, one focusing on “manly comrades” with themes of militarism, the other with Romanticism’s appeal to the past.
There is a discussion of Victorian era alliances between male homosexual radicals and feminists. Pater’s critical study The Renaissance is discussed in detail [Note: Much of the rest of this book consists of focused studies of specific works and authors. These notes are going to skim them fairly lightly.]
In comparison to Pater, J.A. Symonds falls on the “manly homoeroticism” side, displacing the passionate/hedonistic attributes of homoerotics onto Sappho (discussed in his study of Greek poets) and collaborating with Havelock Ellis on theories of homosexuality. He saw female same-sex passion as “unfruitful” and indicating a lack of control, contrasting with a cultural ideal of manliness. He saw a connection between male homoerotic love and genius.
Also discussed is the painter Simeon Soloman, an associate of Pater, who produced many homoerotic images of both men and women, including depictions of Sappho. Criticisms of his work included accusations that it was “insufficiently manly.” The chapter concludes with discussions of several other poets, including Oscar Wilde, who included Marian themes of compassion for those in despair.
Chapter 4: Anarchist Feminism and the Homoerotic
The highlighted authors in this chapter are Wilde, Carpenter, and Shelly. Oscar Wilde viewed the ends of feminism not as helping women better fulfill stereotyped roles (e.g., “to be a better mother”) but in an anarchist context. He provides an example of Victorian homosexual men promoting women’s education to enable women to have greater freedom and creativity, rather than to become better wives and mothers. As editor of Women’s World, he promoted women’s opinions regarding their own needs, including non-European voices. There is a discussion of Shelly as being popular among late 19th century writers on same-sex friendship and love in a feminist context. The latter part of the chapter is a long detailed analysis of Shelly's familial verse drama The Cenci”.
Chapter 5: The Search for a “Likeness”
One of the continual conflicts in the philosophy of love is between whether similarity or difference is the driver of desire. This chapter looks at the trope of likeness or similarity in 19th century women’s writing as “forging mythologies of love between women”, especially in the work of Jane Austen, the circle of the Ladies of Llangollen, and “Michael Field” (the writing pseudonym of Katherine Harris Bradley and her neice and partner Edith Emma Cooper).
The mythology of similarity as an ideal offered space for resistance to marriage and parenthood. Romantics worked with two major paradigms of love as likeness: the concept of God creating man “in his image”, and Plato’s image of the beloved as reflecting the “likeness of the world above” on earth. Themes of women experiencing love based on similarity are sometimes criticized as mere narcissism.
Austen’s Emma is analyzed as an example of a woman attracted to the the possibility of creating a beloved in one’s own likeness. Emma is continually searching for connection with other women or mourning the loss of connection. She seeks to replace the lost mentor-sister relationship she had with her governess by becoming a mentor in turn, but this quest is somewhat abruptly replaced with a heterosexual resolution.
In contrast, the Ladies of Llangollen (two upper class Irish women who eloped together to Wales and spent the rest of their lives as a couple) created that relationship of perfect similarity, abetted by female allies. Contemporary poets celebrated their idyllic union and they referred to each other with language that emphasized likeness, such as “better half”. They challenged attempts to reframe their relationship as mimicking a heterosexual couple (with Eleanor Butler cast as “the man”). Though they habitually dressed in a somewhat masculine-influenced fashion (riding habits and top hats), the emphasis was always on their similarity.
Michael Field was the nom de plume of two women engaged in a literary and romantic partnership. When the alias was uncovered, they explained that it had been chosen to free them from the limits and preconceptions imposed on female authors. Use of the common name created a symbolic unity. They used the language of marriage to describe their relationship and referred to their common literary output as their children. Their work regularly included themes of how the joining of two people “of exactly the same nature” produced a stronger whole. Their use of classical allusions in poetry included references to Sappho.
Chapter 6: Sapphic Virgins: Mythmaking Around Love Between Women
This chapter looks at Romantic anarchism as a contrast to models of patriarchal violence. The scope is late Victorian and early 20th century writers that combine Romanticism with concepts of evolution. They use idealized relationships between women as an ideal toward which humanity evolves.
George Meredith’s Diana of the Crossroads posits a shift in evolution from the physical to the mental, symbolized by the heroic feminine. The protagonists are “new women” whose bond (disrupted by heterosexual imperatives) is the core of the story. It presents virginity, marriage resistance, and non-heterosexuality as evolved traits. The conclusion retains this focus, though not in a triumphant fashion.
E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End similarly disparages heterosexual marriage and elevates love between women, though not in an uncomplicated way.
Hope Mirrlees' Madeleine: One of Love’s Jansenists (the Jansenists were a theological movement emphasizing original sin and the necessity of divine grace) openly invokes both Sappho and Mary. The protagonist Madeleine fuses Sapphic and Marian myths and is overt in the erotic and sexual aspects of her yearning for her namesake, the (historical) novelist Madeleine de Scudéry. The story situates the character in the precieuse tradition that considers perfect friendship as only possible between two women. The protagonist sees her beloved as “the modern Sappho” and her lifelong attraction to women is traced. She prays to Mary to grant her friendship with her beloved and fantasizes declarations of love but fails to express them in person. When she finally meets the object of her desire, both are disappointed in the other. The story ends in madness and disappointment, but an epilogue to the work, supplied by Mirrlee’s partner Jane Harrison, frames the protagonist as a divinely-mad artist rather than a victim of despair.
Chapter 7: Biography as Homoerotic Fiction
Victorian biographies that framed “geniuses” of the past (Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare, DaVinci) as homoerotically inclined were a way of legitimizing those feelings by the biographers. If history is the biographies of great men, and great men can be linked to homoeroticism, then the course of Western Civilization can be seen as founded on homoerotic impulses. Vanita looks at the interface between homoerotically inclined academic histories by authors like Pater, and the works of sexologists like Freud who treated the same historical figures.
The majority of the chapter focuses on Virginia Woolf’s biographical fictions in a similar context of romanticizing homoerotic aspects of historical figures--both “great men” and ordinary people. The author looks at the experience and performance of homosexuality in the Bloomsbury group, combining a sublimated repression that was turned into artistic expression, alongside open eroticism and hedonism. Woolf intertwined her experience of alliances with male homosexual friends and her construction of love between women. The interplay of bonds of non-sexual friendship within the group created ambiguity when marriage might express an intellectual intimacy within a community of “outsiders” rather than being inspired by erotic love. In a context where works overtly addressing lesbianism (e.g., The Well of Loneliness) were banned, Woolf could use male homoeroticism as a dodge for considering her own homoerotic desires in writing.
Chapter 8: The Wilde-ness of Woolf
This chapter is a detailed analysis of Woolf’s Orlando and other works. It discusses how the intepersonal loves and conflicts among Woolf’s circle of female friends and lovers affected and appear in their writing.
Chapter 9: Dogs, Phoenixes, and Other Beasts
This chapter discusses the concept of difference as essential in (heterosexual) attraction, and of the developing concept of homosexuals as a “third gender”. It explores the use of non-human creatures to express this sense of otherness in homoerotic texts, through also drawing on the tradition of animal stand-ins in heterosexual love poetry. Vanita explores how the symbolism attached to the chosen animals expresses attitudes toward, and experiences of homoerotic desire. The detailed discussion revolves in particular around the works of Virginia Woolf.
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Saturday, June 24, 2017 - 15:05
You have just five more days to take advantage of this incredible Storybundle offer featuring speculative stories that feature and embrace LGBT+ characters by authors committed to good representation and solid storytelling. If you’ve already enjoyed even one of the featured books, it’s a good sign that you’ll like others. If you look at the list and spot even two that you’ve been meaning to read, then the bundle as a whole is already a bargain. And as a bonus, half the books in the bundle belong to multi-volume series, so you have a chance of discovering a whole vein of enjoyable books to mine.
Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman
A literally haunting love story that begins on a lonely highway when a boy meets the boy of his dreams...who happens to be dead.
Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
I’ve been following the Astreiant series since Point of Hopes first appeared in the mid 90s. I sometimes wonder what queer SFF would look like today if major publishers had remained committed to richly imagined worlds like this with strong writing and characters who just happen to fall outside the heterosexual default, rather than turning away from them for nearly twenty years. Despite the romantic arc that develops over several books (did I mention there are several books?) between the two male leads, this is primarily a secondary-world police procedural series with a roughly 16-17th century feel. If you enjoy this book, there are three more waiting for you!
Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold
Metaphysical detective work features in this series set in a Victorian London woven through with magic. Mathey and Lynes are one of those ad hoc investigative pairs who come together to solve a problem and find their skills--and personal lives--unexpectedly meshing. As with Point of Hopes we get the beginning stirrings of romantic interest, but this isn’t a genre romance plot, nor does it get sidetracked into erotic scenes. And if you like this one, you have A Death at the Dionysus Club waiting to follow it.
The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories by A.C. Wise
I haven’t had a chance to check out this collection yet, but It looks to have the same diverse array of genres and representations that I found so enjoyable in Lundoff’s collection in this Storybundle (see below). Look at it as a box of mixed chocolates with unknown centers, some of them involving gears and steam power.
The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal by KJ Charles
KJ Charles writes some of the most popular m/m historical/fantasy being published today, including several extensive series such as the one beginning with The Magpie Lord. This is a standalone collection of stories about a Victorian ghost-hunter and his chronicler/lover, tied together with a framing narrative. This work features a stonger romance/erotic presence than some of the other books in the Storybundle.
Wonder City Stories by Jude McLaughlin
A superhero ensemble adventure, with a wildly diverse cast and a touch of romance in the background. For readers who like a lot of complex moving pieces in their plots.
The Marshal's Lover by Jo Graham
Real Napoleonic history intertwines with the reincarnation of a band of companions across time, always appearing to support and follow their destined leader. Ideal for those who like their military history spiced up with bit of erotic romance. A different book in this series appeared in last year’s Historic Fantasy Storybundle, but the books can be read independently.
The Mystic Marriage by Heather Rose Jones
What can I say? Alchemy, palace intrigue, foreign spies, familial conflicts, and the slow transmutation of two women’s hearts into a greater whole. I can’t exactly be dispassionate about my own books. I am assured by those who have done so, that The Mystic Marriage can stand as your introduction to Alpennia.
Trafalgar and Boone in the Drowned Necropolis by Geonn Cannon
What if you mixed Indiana Jones with magic and made the central characters women? Trafalgar and Boone are now an established partnership in this second book of the series but the episodic nature of the adventures makes is stand independently. If you like kick-ass female protagonists with a touch of casual eroticism, this may be for you.
Riley Parra Season One by Geonn Cannon
Paranormal police procedural with a war between heaven and hell. As the “season one” label implies, this is structured as something of an episodic continuing series. (Soon to be an actual web video series from Tello Films!)
Silver Moon by Catherine Lundoff
When Becca Thornton thought about “the change of life” she never quite imagined this sort of change. Now she runs with Wolf Point’s pack of menopausal werewolves and is trying to juggle adapting to that experience, figuring out an unexpected crush on the woman next door, and facing the threat of werewolf hunters. For everyone who secretly suspected that older women have all the fun!
Out of This World by Catherine Lundoff
Since the Storybundle page uses my review for the blurb, I’ll just leave it here. "If I had to sum up Lundoff's collection Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories in a single word (which would be a totally unfair thing to require me to do) it would be ‘versatile.’ This volume touches base on a broad variety of genres and subgenres yet succeeds in being a unified stylistic whole. There is everything from steampunk horror to hard-boiled alien invasion to magical police procedural, each story both drawing lovingly from its literary inspirations and turning them upside down."
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The Mystic MarriageFriday, June 23, 2017 - 21:25
It's been a lot of fun doing a themed set of blogs and podcasts this month focusing on Sappho. The new episode is out, talking about the transmissiong of Sappho's body of work down the centuries, with examples of translations and works inspired by her poetry. I'm looking for other topics where I can coordinate publications and podcasts. And look for some changes coming to the LHMPodcast in August, with an expanded schedule and new types of content. Just as a hint: one of the new features will be interviews with authors of historically-based fiction featuring queer female characters. If there's an author you'd like to see us feature, let me know. (I can't promise anything specific, since I'm looking to create a balance of topics and representations, but I'm definitely looking for ideas.)
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(Transcript added on 2018/09/26)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 11 - Sappho: The Translations - transcript
(Originally aired 2017/06/24 - listen here)
One of the bright spots in the history of lesbian desire in history and literature is the ancient Greek poet Sappho. When you think about the erasure of women from history and the even greater erasure of queer sexuality, it’s so amazing that we have an icon like Sappho whose presence and genius were so powerful that they could only be dimmed and distorted and not entirely erased.
I like to try to do some sort of special feature in the Lesbian Historic Motif Project to celebrate Pride Month. This time I’ve been covering several books about Sappho from my to-do list, and have bracketed the month with two special podcasts.
The first one was about the historic Sappho and the beginnings of the myths that ancient Greek and Roman writers created about her.
This time we’ll look at the legacy of Sappho from the Middle Ages up through the 19th century. The various images people had of her. How people used her as a symbol. And the way those images affected how her poetry was translated into everyday languages, and how poets used her themes and imagery in their own work.
Sappho lived in the 7th century BC and it’s a testament to her reputation among other classical writers that we know anything about her at all. Early references to her works indicate that her poetry was collected into 8 volumes, representing perhaps 10 thousand lines of verse, of which 650 lines survive. That’s a small fraction, even considering that new fragments of her poetry are still being discovered today. One of the largest modern discoveries was on scraps of papyrus excavated from a rubbish dump in Oxyrhynchus Egypt at the end of the 19th century.
But for much of history before that, the only way that Sappho’s poems survived was when they were quoted by other authors--sometimes only a few words or a line, used to illustrate some point of poetics or grammar, or simply to gain the cachet of quoting the renowned poet. When literature was disseminated only by laboriously writing each copy out by hand, to cease to be re-copied was to be forgotten. And some time around the 6th or 7th century AD, the full collections of Sappho’s work stopped being of interest to copyists, and thus never made the transition from papyrus scrolls to parchment books, except second-hand when quoted by others.
Only one complete poem survives: her Ode to the goddess Aphrodite, where she begs Aphrodite to help her win the love of a woman who spurns her. But another nearly-complete song, known as “Fragment 31”, is the one that most caught the imagination of translators and imitators. The following translations are from Jane McIntosh Snyder’s book Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho and are literal renderings of the original meaning, rather than being works of poetry in themselves. They will serve as a foundation for the other versions I’ll be presenting. In fragment #1, known as the Ode to Aphrodite, Sappho names herself as the speaker and begs the goddess Aphrodite for aid in her romantic disappointment.
#1 Ode to Aphrodite
O immortal Aphrodite of the many-colored throne,
child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I beseech you,
do not overwhelm me in my heart
with anguish and pain, O Mistress
But come hither, if ever at another time
hearing my cries from afar
you heeded them, and leaving the home of your father
came, yoking your golden
Chariot: beautiful, swift sparrows
drew you above the black earth
whirling their wings thick and fast,
from heaven’s ether through mid-air.
Suddenly they had arrived; but you, O Blessed Lady,
with a smile on your immortal face,
asked what I had suffered again and
why I was calling again
And what I was most wanting to happen for me
in my frenzied heart: “Whom again shall I persuade
to come back into friendship with you? Who,
O Sappho, does you injustice?
“For if indeed she flees, soon will she pursue,
and though she receives not your gifts, she will give them,
and if she loves not now, soon she will love,
even against her will.”
Come to me now also, release me from
harsh cares; accomplish as many things as my heart desires
to accomplish; and you yourself
be my fellow soldier.
The second poem, fragment 31, is incomplete at the end, but enough survives that it has been a favorite for translation and imitation, expressing the physical experience of desire and jealousy.
#31 He seems as a god to me
He seems to me to be like the gods
--whatever man sits opposite you
and close by hears you
talking sweetly
And laughing charmingly; which
makes the heart within my breast take flight;
for the instant I look upon you, I cannot anymore
speak one word,
But in silence my tongue is broken, a fine
fire at once runs under my skin,
with my eyes I see not one thing, my ears
buzz,
Cold sweat covers me, trembling
seizes my whole body, I am more moist than grass;
I seem to be little short
of dying...
But all must be ventured...
To understand the context of how Sappho’s poetry was understood and translated, we need to have a sense of how Sappho herself was viewed in later ages.
Classical writers like Ovid and some medieval writers held Sappho up as a model of education and erudition. Giovanni Bocaccio (who is most famous for his Decameron) wrote a celebration of famous (and some infamous) women that included her. And Christine de Pisan includes Sappho among the intellectual women praised in her work The City of Ladies.
In parallel with her reputation as a poet, Sappho was also associated with sex between women, whether as an example of a woman with lesbian desires, or to refute that accusation.
The Italian writer Bartolommeo della Rocca, writing around 1500, uses Sappho as an example of “morally offensive lust” between women.
In the mid 16th century, Italian writer Agnolo Firenzuola, when writing of the love that women could have for each other said, “Some love each other’s beauty in purity and holiness, as the elegant Laudomia Forteguerra loves the most illustrious Margaret of Austria, some lasciviously, as in ancient times Sappho from Lesbos, and in our own times in Rome the great prostitute Cecilia Venetiana. This type of woman by nature spurns marriage and flees from intimate conversation with men.”
Around the same date, the Swiss encyclopedist Theodor Zwinger included a list of Sappho’s female lovers in his entry for “tribades”.
The French aristocratic gossip-monger Brantôme, writing around 1600, was more interested in Sappho as an early proponent of what he called “donna con donna” -- woman with woman--than as a poet. Citing Roman authors he notes, “It is said that Sappho of Lesbos was a very good mistress in this art. Indeed, they say she invented it, and that the ladies of Lesbos have imitated her in this since and continued down to today. As Lucian says, such women are women of Lesbos, who will not tolerate men, but approach other women as men themselves do.”
During the 16th and 17th centuries, an increasing desire to distinguish acceptable forms of romantic attraction between women, versus unacceptably physical forms, led to a divergence between the images of Sappho as romantic poet and Sappho as unnatural deviant. This conflict plays out repeatedly over the following centuries with Sappho’s admirers feeling they needed to de-sexualize her work and life, and her detractors using the example of her fabled sexuality to attack learned women of their own time as inherently deviant.
Both sides used the classical poem “Sappho to Phaon” --now associated with Ovid, but at the time considered to have been written by Sappho herself--as evidence either of her repudiating the love of women, or of the tragic fate of one who had previously dared to embrace it. Translations of this poem appeared somewhat earlier than those of Sappho’s own poetry, as in Thomas Heywood’s 1624 edition.
Some responded to the conflict between the poetic and sexual Sapphos by inventing a second Sappho, to whom the objectionable material could be attributed. Others dealt with the dilemma by interpreting her poems as being written from a fictional masculine point of view. Male poets sometimes used Sappho as an alter ego, expressing their own heterosexual desire for women through her voice.
It is in this context that the renewed interest in Sappho’s poetry (as opposed to her personal life) led to publication, translation, and imitation of her works. Sappho’s poetry itself had previously only accessible to those who could read the original Greek--as well as having access to the older manuscripts that included it. In the mid 16th century, her work began being collected up and published either in the original Greek or with Latin translations. Perhaps the earliest of these is the 1556 publication by Henri Estienne, which includes poems 1 and 31. Following soon after, were translations into everyday language. But even before vernacular translations appeared, poets were referencing Sappho’s works and loves in their own poetry.
English poet John Donne, in 1600, wrote an original poem in Sappho’s voice entitled “Sappho to Philaenis” which acknowledges her homoeroticism and treats it positively.
French poet Anne de Rohan was clearly familiar with Sappho’s homoerotic reputation, and in her 1617 poem “On a lady named beloved” makes direct allusion to fragment 31 in a work that is clearly a love poem from one woman to another. She would have had access to Sappho’s works via publications such as those mentioned. You can see the echoes of Sappho’s themes in this English translation of de Rohan’s poem, though it is not a direct counterpart to a specific poem:
Beauty, it would be a great wrong,
If, for your worthy graces,
I had been dealt the lover’s fate;
For anyone but you, my dear Beloved,
All the Olympic torches,
Illuminated in their course,
Are not lovelier ornaments
Than the eyes of my beautiful Beloved.
Cupid, delighted with those eyes,
His right hand armed with an arrow
Shot into my troubled heart
The ardent desire to love my Beloved.
I know not whether they be heavens or gods
Whose power from me is hidden
And compels me, both near and far,
To die so as to love my Beloved.
To see them, they seem like the heavens,
Of azure color are they,
But by their effects they’re like gods,
Forcing me yet to love that Beloved.
For me, then, they’re both heavens and gods,
Because of their hidden power
And luminous appearance,
For I hold nothing dearer than my Beloved.
Anne Dacier’s French edition of Sappho’s work published in 1681 was important for the spread of familiarity with Sappho’s work thoughout Europe. However Dacier considered the homoerotic interpretation of Sappho to be slander, in her edition, Sappho’s fragments are reinterpreted to create a virtual male figure around whom Sappho’s life revolves.
Slightly earlier than Dacier, in 1652, the English translator John Hall included a version of fragment 31 in his edition of the classical Greek poetic manual that it is quoted in. Perhaps it is this context that inspired his choice of poetic meter. Unlike many translations, he retains the final surviving line that shows the incomplete nature of what we have.
Fragment 31 (John Hall)
He that sits next to thee now and hears
Thy charming voice, to me appears
Beauteous as any deity
That rules the sky
How did his pleasing glances dart
Sweet langors to my ravish’d heart
At the first sight though so prevailed
That my voice fail’d
I’m speechles, fev’rish, fires assail
My fainting flesh, my sight doth fail
Whilst to my restless mind my ears
Still hum new fears.
Cold sweats and tremblings so invade
That like a wither’d flower I fade
So that my life being almost lost,
I seem a ghost
Yet since I’m wretched must I dare...
17th century English poet Katherine Phillips was compared to Sappho by her friends. Although the intention may have been simply to praise Phillips’ poetry, the two bodies of work share the characteristic of using the structures and tropes of heterosexual love poetry in contexts where both the lover and beloved are unmistakably female.
Alexander Pope, perhaps best known for his mock-heroic poem “The Rape of the Lock”, turned his translating talents in 1712, not to Sappho’s work itself, but to Ovid’s poem “Sappho to Phaon”. Unlike some other translations of this work, Pope’s version includes the acknowledgement that Sappho did originally love women--a topic that others had simply glossed over in translating the poem, turning Sappho entirely heterosexual.
The early 18th century English writer and politician Joseph Addison wrote a number of works inspired by classical authors. He wasn’t as proficient in Greek as Anne Dacier had been with her French edition. In 1735, Addison translated a number of Sappho’s works into rather forgettable rhymed couplets, including Fragment 31 “Happy as a god is he”. The first-person voice of the poem, combined with an absence of any specific reference to the person addressed (and the lack of grammatical gender markers in English) mean that little trace of homoerotic sentiment remains.
Fragment 31 (Joseph Addison)
Happy as a God is he,
That fond Youth, who plac’d by thee
Hears and sees thee sweetly gay,
Talk and smile his Soul away.
That it was alarm’d my breast,
And depriv’ed my heart of rest
For in speechless Raptures toss’d
While I gaz’d my voice was lost.
The soft Fire with flowing rein,
Glided swift through ev’ry vein
Darkness o’er my eyelids hung
In my ears faint murmurs rung
Chilling damps my limbs bedew’d
Gentle tremors thrill’d my blood
Life from my pale cheeks retir’d
Breathless, I almost expir’d
Some somewhat more poetic--if less faithful--versions were published by Ambrose Philips in 1748 including the Hymn to Aphrodite (Fragment 1), and Fragment 31. In The first, Philips had changed to gender of Sappho’s beloved to male.
Fragment 1 (Ambrose Philips)
O Venus, beauty of the skies,
To whom a thousand temples rise,
Gayly false in gentle smiles,
Full of love-perplexing wiles,
O goddess! from my heart remove
The wasting cares and pains of love.
If ever thou hast kindly hear'd
A song in soft distress prefer'd,
Propitious to my tuneful vow,
O gentle goddess! hear me now.
Descend thou bright, immortal, guest,
In all thy radiant charms confess'd.
Thou once didst leave almighty Jove,
And all the golden roofs above:
The car thy wanton sparrows drew;
Hov'ring in air they lightly flew;
As to my bower they wing'd their way,
I saw their quiv'ring pinions play.
The birds dismiss'd (while you remain)
Bore back their empty car again:
Then you, with looks divinely mild,
In ev'ry heav'nly feature smil'd,
And ask'd, what new complaints I made,
And why I call'd you to my aid?
What frenzy in my bosom rag'd,
And by what care to be asswag'd?
What gentle youth I would allure,
Whom in my artful toils secure?
Who does thy tender heart subdue,
Tell me, my Sappho, tell me who?
Tho now he shuns thy longing arms,
He soon shall court thy slighted charms;
Tho now thy offerings he despise,
He soon to thee shall sacrifice;
Tho now he freez, he soon shall burn,
And be thy victim in his turn.
Celestial visitant, once more
Thy needful presence I implore!
In pity come and ease my grief,
Bring my distemper'd soul relief:
Favour thy suppliant's hidden fires,
And give me all my heart desires.
In Philips’ translation of fragment 31, there is no need to make pronoun changes, but a subtle shift in the emphasis of the poem can make it appear that the speaker’s love-sickness is caused by the man referenced in the first line. Alternately, the absence of an identification for the poem’s speaker leaves one free to imagine it in the male translator’s voice.
Fragment 31 (Ambrose Philips)
Bless’d as the immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee all the while
Softly speak and sweetly smile.
'Twas this depriv'd my soul of rest,
And rais'd such tumults in my breast;
For while I gaz'd, in transport toss'd,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost.
My bosom glow'd; the subtle flame
Ran quick through all my vital frame;
O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung,
My ears with hollow murmurs rung.
In dewy damps my limbs were chill'd,
My blood with gentle horrors thrill'd;
My feeble pulse forgot to play,
I fainted, sunk, and dy'd away.
Despite the best efforts of these gender-swapped translations, knowledge about Sappho’s work and reputation provided a “conceptual community” for women who loved women in the 18th century. The terms “lesbian” and “sapphic” were coming into common use in a sexual sense, and even superficially innocent references to the poet could be used as a sort of secret password to refer to lesbian desire.
For intellectual and literary women of the time, there was a complication. In addition to her sexual reputation, Sappho stood in for the idea of intellectual and literary women in general. So it sometimes happened that female scholars, even more than male ones, found themselves straining to discount the “taint” of lesbianism for the most famous Lesbian.
Sappho’s mere existence entered into the tension between several framings of same-sex passions. One position othered lesbianism by placing it elsewhere in space or time: in ancient Greece, or in foreign countries. Another view saw lesbianism as a brand new decadent phenomenon. A sort of “kids these days” approach. The classical Sappho could be used to imply lesbianism was something of the past, no longer practiced, and perhaps conceptually divorced from affections between 18th century women. But those educated enough to have access to literature of the previous century, such as John Donne’s “Sapho to Philaenis” (1633) or Brantôme’s Lives of Gallant Ladies would find it harder to dismiss lesbianism as a longstanding tradition.
It was during this era that accusations of lesbianism became a regular part of social and political attacks on prominent women. Sappho was a useful symbol to use in such attacks that would carry a weight of symbolism with an economy of reference. An anonymous poet in 1735 wrote a long mock-heroic poem entitled “The Sappho-an” satirically attributing to Sappho the origin of lesbianism in general and certain sexual practices in particular.
In the 19th century, the academic approach to Sappho’s poetry might be summed up by the opinion of Henry Thornton Wharton, whose 1887 edition of Sappho’s work attempted to produce a comprehensive bibliography of published editions starting in the mid-16th century, as well as materials relating to her life. Wharton discusses the passion and skill of Sappho’s poetry, but almost entirely sidesteps the issue of her sexuality, even when citing works that address it. He concludes, “whether the pure think her emotion pure or impure, whether the impure appreciate it rightly, or misinterpret it, whether, finally, it was platonic or not, seems to me to matter nothing.”
The translations he collects reflect this insistent side-stepping. Although Wharton’s literal rendering of the Ode to Aphrodite is faithful to the gender of the original without comment: “Who wrongs thee, Sappho? For even if she flies she shall soon follow...and if she loves not shall soon love, however loth.”
Most of the metrical renderings he collects all turn the diffident beloved to “he”. Wharton’s version of fragment 31 is less problematic, given that the original lacks the same overt reference to Sappho as the speaker and clear reference to the gender of the beloved. Thus the metrical versions by male poets that he collects can be received as the jealousy of one man (the poet) for another over the woman they both desire. Rather than a direct translation, here’s a borrowing of the imagery for another context by Lord Tennyson in 1832:
I watch thy grace; and in its place
My heart a charmed slumber keeps,
While I muse upon thy face;
And a languid fire creeps
Through my veins to all my frame,
Dissolvingly and slowly: soon
From thy rose-red lips my name
Floweth; and then, as in a swoon,
With dinning sound my ears are rife,
My tremullous tongue faltereth,
I lose my color, I love my breath,
I drink the cup of a costly death
Brimmed with delicious draughts of warmest life.
I die with my delight, before
I hear what I would hear from thee.
In versions such as this, the male literary establishment claimed Sappho’s poetic legacy for their own and for heterosexual love, by appropriating Sappho’s words and removing them from the context of her own desires.
But while one 19th century movement straight-washed Sappho in order to claim her for Romanticism, Sappho’s transgressive sexuality was enthusiastically embraced by the decadent movement that sprang up in France, who saw in her in icon of everything they considered most outrageous to bourgeois sensibilities: an aggressive and predatory female sexuality that led inevitably to madness and death.
This movement evoked their version if the legendary Sappho in works like Charles Baudelaire’s “Lesbos” (in 1857), and Pierre Louÿs’s The Songs of Bilitis (in 1894)--a cycle of poems in the voice of a fictional member of Sappho’s community.
Rather than end on that note, I’d like to close with two works by the American poet, Mary Hewitt. Her translation of Sappho’s fragment 31 published in 1845 fails somewhat in terms of poetic merit but seems to carry an intensity of emotion that many other translations lack.
Fragment 31 (Mary Hewitt)
Blest as the immortal gods is he
On whom each day thy glances shine
Who hears thy voice of melody
And meets thy smile so all divine
Oh when I list thine accents low
How thrills my breast with tender pain
Fire seems through every vein to glow
And strange confusion whelms my brain
My sight grows dim beneath the glance
Whose ardent rays I may not meet
While swift and wild my pulses dance
Then cease all suddenly to beat
And o’er my cheek with rapid gush
I feel the burning life-tide dart
Then backward like a torrent rush
All icy cold upon my heart
And I am motionless and pale
And silent as an unstrung lyre
And feel, while thus each sense doth fail
Doomed in thy presence to expire
Hewitt was also inspired to write original poetry in the style of Sappho. The following work echoes many of the themes of fragment 31, but rewoven into a new work. If anything, this poem carries a stronger sense of homoeroticism than the original, for instead of simply recording the speaker’s physical reactions, it explicitly attributes those reactions to love. When I looked for further information on Hewitt, I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover her among the literary lifelong spinsters who formed the backbone of the Romantic Friendship phenomenon. Alas, Hewitt was twice married to men--so my fantasies were shattered--but then so were many of the women of this time who wrote of their strong emotional bonds to other women. This poem suggests that at the very least she would have understood such desires.
If to repeat thy name when none may hear me,
To find thy thought with all my thoughts inwove
To languish where thou’rt not -- to sigh when near thee
Oh! If this be to love thee, I do love!
If when thou utterest low words of greeting
To feel through every vein the torrent pour
Then back again the hot tide swift retreating
Leave me all powerless, silent as before
If to list breathless to thine accents failing
Almost to pain, upon my eager ear
And fondly when alone to be recalling
The words that I would die again to hear
If at thy glance my heart all strength forsaking
Pant in my breast as pants the frighted doves
If to think on thee ever, sleeping--waking--
Oh! If this be to love thee, I do love!
Show Notes
In this show we’ll look at the legacy of Sappho from the Middle Ages up through the 19th century: the various images people had of her, how people used her as a symbol, the way those images affected how her poetry was translated into everyday languages, and how poets used her themes and imagery in their own work.
In this episode we talk about:
- How much poetry did Sappho write, and how much survives? Why was it lost, and why were the bits we have preserved?
- What was the changing image of Sappho from the middle ages through the 19th century? How did people reconcile their admiration for Sappho’s poetry and their disapproval of homosexuality?
- Who translated Sappho’s works and how did their opinions of her affect those translations?
The show will include recitations of the following poems:
- Ode to Aphrodite & Fragment #31: Jane McIntosh Snyder from Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho (20th century)
- “On a Lady Named Beloved” inspired by fragment #31: Anne de Rohan (1617), translated from the French
- Fragment #31: John Hall (1652)
- Fragment #31: Joseph Addison (1735)
- Ode to Aphrodite & Fragment #31: Abrose Philips (1748)
- “Eleanore” inspired by Fragment #31: Lord Tennyson (1832)
- Fragment #31 & “Imitation of Sappho” inspired by Fragment #31: Mary Hewitt (1845)
Books used as source material
- Addison, Joseph. 1735. The Works of Anacreon, Translated into English Verse, with Notes Explanatory and Poetical. To which are added the Odes, Fragments, and Epigrams of Sappho. London.
- Castle, Terry (ed). 2003. The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 0-231-12510-0
- Hall, John. 1652. Sappho’s On the Sublime.
- Snyder, Jane. 1997. Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Wharton, Henry Thornton. 1887. Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation. London.
This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
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LHMPTuesday, June 20, 2017 - 21:07
I just got an acceptance letter from Lace and Blade 4, an anthology of...well, of stories that the words "lace and blade" conjure up, for "Gifts Tell Truth", a new Alpennia story about Vicomtesse Jeanne de Cherdillac in her wild 20s (and a French spy/opera singer). The anthology won't be coming out until 2018, so that's plenty of time for you to get excited about it.
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