On Sappho
As a lesbian, it felt appropriate to start a blog on queer history by paying respect to a real ‘founding mother’ of both historical and contemporary lesbian culture.
In a way, I have somewhat of a personal connection to the Ancient Greek poet, having gifted my butch an annotated copy of ‘Fragments by Sappho’ on our second date, complete with lipstick stains littering the title pages. Lesbians… we move so fast. The book in question is now on a shelf in the one bedroom apartment we share; ourselves and our perfect son, a short-haired cat.
Sappho was a poet from Ancient Greece, whose poetry was, and still is, widely influential and acclaimed. Her writing is beautiful, with a lilting lyrical quality that makes it uniquely hers and melodious. Her writing was also incredibly queer.
When I refer to Sappho’s writing as queer, I mean it like this: Sappho wrote poetry from a uniquely feminine perspective that spoke on love and desire for other women. This same-sex desire is showcased through poems such as Fragment 1, known as the ‘Ode to Aphrodite’, in which the character in the poem laments her unrequited love and erotic desire for another woman to the Goddess Aprhodite. To me, this is queer poetry, showcasing a uniquely queer point of view of the world, and the experience of love.
This is my own perspective, putting my own views and experiences of lesbian identity onto a figure who did not have such words to express her possible same sex desires. As said by Joan DeJean in her book ‘Fictions of Sappho’, ‘Fictions of Sappho are, at least in part, a projection of the critic’s/writer’s desires onto the corpus, the fictive body, of the original female writer.’ 1
To some extent, I agree with this idea that we project our contemporary understandings of sexuality and gender upon historical figures. In another vein, I think that to read Sappho’s poetry is to understand her desire for other women, and as such, to deny her sexuality is to an erasure of her experience.
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During Sappho’s time, the Ancient Greek’s ‘did not conceptualise their sexual acts in terms of their partners gender, whether this was the same or different to their own.’2 Instead, Ancient Greeks focused more on ‘whether [an individual] took the active or passive role during sex.’3 Due to this fact, many argue that, although Sappho may be considered a lesbian or bisexual by todays standards, to categorise her as such is inaccurate, as this was not the viewpoint of the time, and not how Sappho would have likely regarded herself. However, it seems to be perfectly acceptable to pick a historical figure and label them as ‘straight’ or ‘heterosexual’, even though this language similarly did not exist. There is a double standard here: a need to prove queerness from a strongly asserted idea of heterosexuality being the norm. Why is it that we seem so attached to the idea of historical figures being queer? Why do so many seem insulted by the suggestion, even when it is simply the logical conclusion from the collection of facts we have?
Ultimately, does it really matter if Sappho was a lesbian? Yes and no.
Yes, because it matters that Sappho’s poetry was, and is, queer. Her poetry describes sexual and romantic attraction between members of the same sex, an undoubtedly queer experience. Further, her poetry is used still today as an important aspect of queer identity, especially for lesbian and bisexual women and non-binary people. We cannot deny the evident queerness of her work, ignoring a fundamental aspect of her prose.
No, because the author and the poetry are seperate. To me, it is undeniable, as I have said, that she wrote queer poetry. Whether or not this was a reflection on her as a person, we technically can’t say for sure. And, it truly doesn’t matter.
At the end of the day, we technically don’t know if Sappho was homosexual. But her writing was, and always will be, queer. And I know that for me, if in the future a historian found a poem I wrote about loving women and deemed me a straight woman who liked to write ‘outside the box’, I would be outraged!
1 Joan DeJean, “Fictions of Sappho, 1546–1937,” Google Books, 2026, https://books.google.com.au/bookshl=en&lr=&id=C1QpWiDwqBEC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=sappho&ots=yh3OUcvAl&sig=RUI_Qh4yISjErOYzTYdCRBxbzE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sappho&f=false.
2 Melissa Mueller, “The Cambridge Companion to Sappho,” Google Books, 2021, https://books.google.com.au/bookshl=en&lr=&id=53AjEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA36&dq=sappho&ots=NxsgmZO8f6&sig=zsVIcB5IeJbVzvUH7UHFed1zk0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sappho&f=false.
3Author Spencer McDaniel, “Was Sappho Really a Lesbian?,” Tales of Times Forgotten, August 14, 2021, https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2021/08/14/was-sappho-really-a-lesbian/.
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