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The ten thousand things and the one true only.

by Kip Manley

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Things to keep in mind:
The secret of integument.

But now she is conspicuous among Lydian women
    as sometimes at sunset
        the rosyfingered moon

surpasses all the stars. And her light
    stretches over salt sea
        equally and flowerdeep fields.

And the beautiful dew is poured out
    and roses bloom and frail
        chervil and flowering sweetclover.

96.7 “rosyfingered”: an adjective used habitually by Homer to designate the red look of Dawn. I think Sappho means to be startling, but I don’t know how startling, when she moves the epithet to a nocturnal sky. Also startling is the fecundity of sea, field and memory which appears to flow from this uncanny moon and fill the nightworld of the poem—swung from a thread of “as sometimes” in verse 7. Homer too liked to extend a simile this way, creating a parallel surface of such tangibility it rivals the main story for a minute. Homer is more concerned than Sappho to keep the borders of the two surfaces intact; epic arguably differs from lyric precisely in the way it manages such rivalry.

Anne Carson

—posted 2925 days ago


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