Sarah Elizabeth Needham (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
In this paper I examine the ways in which Sappho constructs space in fr. 16 in order to provide a better understanding of how we engage with and are affected by the imagined spaces of Sappho’s poetry. Although space as it relates to performance context has been a common focus of scholarship, Heirman (2012: 14) rightly points out that “the role of space within the poems has largely been neglected”; few aside from Stehle (2009) and D’Alessio (2018) give much attention to the space within Sappho’s poetry. I argue that space in Sappho can be broadly divided into three types: purely fictional spaces, which create novel experiences; memory spaces, which bring previous experiences into the present; and mythic spaces, which bring myth into the present as a collective memory. All three types of space can be found in fr. 16, making it the best suited to demonstrate the similarities and differences between them.
In fr. 16, the fictional space of the speaker’s present transitions smoothly into the mythic space of Helen, which in turn reminds the speaker of Anaktoria and a memory space is constructed. The speaker, Helen, and Anaktoria exist in their own spaces and times, and yet are inextricably tied to one another and to the time and space of the performance. Both the mythic and memory spaces are imaginings of a past time, but Helen’s is less personal, a well-known story. The space of Anaktoria, on the other hand, is clearly marked as a memory by the verb ἀναμιμνήσκω (15: . . ]με νῦν Ἀνακτορί[ας ὀ]νέμναις᾿). These two spaces, though flowing into one another, are clearly separated, particularly by the juxtaposition of forgetting in Helen’s space (10–11: κωὐδὲ παῖδος οὐδὲ φίλων τοκήων / πάμπαν ἐμνάσθη) and remembering in Anaktoria’s. Listeners must adapt quickly in order to move between these spaces, modifying the space they have imagined to fit the speaker’s descriptions and filling in what gaps are left.
My theoretical framework for interrogating space follows a phenomenological approach that is primarily concerned with the human experience of landscapes—past, present, and future—through the imagination. To perceive is to imagine, as Janowski and Ingold (2012) argue, and so our perception of the imagined space within poetry is a very real thing in which we are active participants. Integral to the construction and experience of space in Sappho is deixis, specifically imagination-oriented deixis. As Felson (2004: 254) points out, all deixis has “the pragmatic effect of making audiences work”; the use of deictic markers pushes us to engage the imagination and construct a space as it is described. The frequent shift in Sappho between here and now and then and there encourages listeners to constantly reimagine spaces. In fr. 16 we can see the ways in which past events and the events of myth are reproduced in the present performance by the construction of memory and mythic spaces and how the production of novel elements enhances these other spaces and helps to form purely fictional ones.