Sappho's Leap

FOR MOLLY & KEN

Once all our storytelling was imaginative, was myth and legend and parable and fable, for that is how we told stories to and about each other.

—D
ORIS
L
ESSING

Walking in the Shade

Sappho was born on the Greek island of Lesbos and flourished circa 600 BCE. One complete song and approximately two hundred fragments of her work remain. On the strength of those fragments—most of which describe erotic love—she has inspired lovers and poets for 2,600 years. The music of her songs has not survived.

Many of the facts of her life are disputed. But her metaphors have never ceased to live in the minds of those who came after. Plato called her the “tenth muse,” already predicting the way her fragments would inspire future generations. The most famous of many dubious legends about Sappho describes her jumping off a cliff on the island of Leucas because of unrequited love for a beautiful young ferryman called Phaon.

In my dreams I paint

Like Vermeer van Delft

I speak fluent Greek

And not only with the living.

—W
ISŁAWA
S
ZYMBORSKA

“In Praise of Dreams”

arcano è tutto

fuor che il nostro dolor.

All is hidden

except our pain.

—G
IACOMO
L
EOPARDI

“Ultimo canto di Saffo”

I am become a name:

For always roaming with a hungry heart.

—A
LFRED
, L
ORD
T
ENNYSON

“Ulysses”

PROLOGUE:
On the Cliff

1:
Legends of Aphrodite

2:
The Groom Comes

3:
Walking Through Fire

4:
Gold Flower

5:
The Priestess of Isis

6:
Messages from the Barbarians

7:
Gold, a Shipwreck, and a Dream

8:
At the Navel of the Earth

9:
Aesop at the Orgy

10:
The Pharaoh's Slave

11:
At Sea

12:
Among the Amazons

13:
The Amazoniad

14:
The Coming of Pegasus

15:
Ghosts

16:
After Hades' Realm

17:
Demeter and Osiris

18:
Sirens

19:
Air, Fire, and Water

20:
Of Love and Serpents

21:
Among the Centaurs

22:
The Eye of Horus

23:
Home

24:
After Timas

25:
The Binding of the Babe

26:
The Curse of Beautiful Men

27:
Sacrifice, A Prayer, A Ring

28:
Kinship

29:
The Great White Rock

EPILOGUE

Author's Afterword

Talking to Aphrodite

A Biography of Erica Jong

The future

Will remember us.

—
SAPPHO

W
HERE TO BEGIN MY
story? The minstrels counsel us to begin in the midst of things where excitement is at its peak. Well, then, imagine me, trudging in a whipping, cold wind to the top of the Leucadian cliff where the sanctuary of Apollo still stands. It is said they practiced human sacrifice here in ancient times. The place still has that air, the old odor of blood. All the magic places on earth have that smell.

There are little clumps of stunted pine trees along my way and these golden sandals I wear are no match for the rocks that roll and skitter under my feet as I climb. More than once I have twisted my ankle and fallen. My knees are as raw as when I was a climbing girl.

I have been at sea for many days and, climbing to the top of the white cliff, I still feel the rocking of the ship under my feet.

I am unimaginably old—fifty. Only witches live to be fifty! Good women die in childbirth at seventeen as I nearly did. By fifty I should be dead or a crone—with my dark looks and my somewhat crooked spine—which I have always disguised with capes of multicolored silk. My youth is gone, but my vanity is not. How can I still dream of love at fifty? I must be mad!

My black hair, which used to glisten like wet violets on an ebony altar, is now a steely gray. I have stopped letting my slaves dye it. I do not like to look at my reflection these days. Even the thickest paint cannot disguise the wrinkles. Yet I have my wiles, my perfumes, my potions, my magic salves as much as Aphrodite has hers. I can still make someone love me—if only for a little while.

In the past it was the charm of youth I conjured with. Now it is the charm of fame. And I am skilled with my lips, my hands, my voice. I know the perfumed secrets of the courtesans of Naucratis, the clandestine rituals of the dancing girls of Syracuse, the obscene melodies of the flute girls of Lesbos.

So many stories about me. My legend confused with the legends of Aphrodite. Did I leap to my death for the love of a handsome young ferryman? Did I love women or men? Does love even have a sex? I doubt it. If you are lucky enough to love, who cares what decorative flesh your lover sports? The divine delta, that juicy fig, the powerful phallus, that scepter of state—each is only an aspect of Aphrodite, after all. We are all hermaphrodites at heart—aren't we? The delta is soft as Aphrodite, the phallus stiff as Ares' spear. And no one wears anything for long but a coat of dust. Only the songs of passion linger.

The beautiful ferry boy liked my fame. Like all beautiful ferry boys, he dreamed of being a famous singer. He would make up songs as he rowed. So what if his songs were banal? So what if he borrowed from me and every other minstrel back to Homer? He was beautiful and his voice was black honey. His ringlets were ebony. His eyes were agates. His chin had a beguiling cleft.

The islanders probably think I am desolate because some lover abandoned me. What rot! I toyed with him more than he toyed with me. He was the plaything of a week. My real despair came because Aphrodite withdrew her favors. Aphrodite needs nothing from me. She always has new singers to celebrate her. So what if they are my students, acolytes, and imitators? So what if they learned everything they know from me? The goddess of love favors the young. She always has.

Forever fresh-faced, forever nubile, how can Aphrodite know what it means to lose beauty and youth, inspiration and passion? The gods are cold. They never experience the loss of beauty, so they laugh at our sorrows. I used to love Aphrodite as she loved me. Now I find her love as hard as these rocks beneath my feet. She has turned her beautiful young face away from me.

Age seizes my skin

And turns my hair

From black to white:

My legs no longer carry me

Lightly, nimbly

Dancing like young fawns.

What can I do?

I am not eternal

Though my songs may be.

Can pink-armed Dawn,

Who could not save her love

Erase these harbingers of age?

My youth is gone.

Still I adore

The sun.

Up, up, up. The air gets thinner and the sea churns. From the sea, the cliff looks like a large loaf of barley bread torn off jaggedly—as if by Poseidon's huge blue hand. Around the base of the promontory, the sea roils azure, gray, green, and savage white like the teeth of wild animals. But as you trudge up the cliff with the rock rising before you and your heart pounding in your throat, all you see is the white dust under your feet, the scraggly bushes tilting at the wind, and the little animals darting away with their little lives—lizards, rabbits, feral cats. Often you see the bones of animals and bits of their fur. Nature is not kind.

The boat that brought me here is anchored on the other side of the island. I think of all those I have loved—my difficult daughter, Cleis; my difficult mother, for whom I named her; my honey-voiced
hetairai
; Alcaeus, my first and last love; Praxinoa, my beloved slave-girl, whom I freed to become an amazon; Charaxus, my foolish lovesick brother; Larichus, my other surviving brother, who sold himself into slavery because of a whore's tricks; Eurygius, my dead baby brother, whose tiny hand I almost touched in the Land of the Dead; my late drunken husband Cercylas; my lovely golden Egyptian priestess Isis; Aesop, my philosophy tutor; Necho, the Egyptian pharaoh who set me free to discover my life; Penthesilea and Antiope, my amazon guides; Phaon, my most recent conquest and would-be muse—and nothing seems worth living for. I will grow old and people will turn away from me in disgust. Nobody likes the smell of an old woman—not even other old women.

All my songs have been released into the air. They are sung far and wide—from Lesbos to Egypt, from Syracuse to Ephesus, from Delphi to Epidaurus. The frenzy that predicts the conception of a song will never be mine again. I am barren and naked as this cliff I climb.

When I reach the top of the promontory where the wind flails my cheeks and the gulls shriek and glide, I stand for a moment balanced between life and death. The ghostly rows of white islands in the distance seem to beckon to me from Erebus. I can imagine the icy waters of Acheron lapping at my toes. I tease the gods and myself by leaning, stepping back, and then leaning forward again. My revenge on the gods will be to take command of my own death, to cut the strands the spinners believe only they can cut, to reweave my destiny as if I were Penelope.

But Penelope lived to see her Odysseus once more. Will I ever see my love again? Where is he? Alcaeus of the golden words and golden hair. Alcaeus, who could make me laugh like no one else. (Of course, the one who can make you laugh will also make you cry. That must never be forgotten.) If Alcaeus came back to me now, I would not have to jump! Or am I lying to myself? I know that love is no cure, but rather the disease itself.

I lean over the cliff till the backs of my scraped and bloody knees tingle. I wish I were a kingfisher flying over the flowering foam. My limbs are loosened as if by love and I sway on the edge of the abyss. My beloved students Atthis and Anactoria are with me. My late mother Cleis is here, as is Cleis, my living daughter. She always found a legendary mother to be a heavy load. Perhaps she will be lighter without me. Alcaeus' shieldlike chest rises before my eyes. I will pretend I am jumping into his strong arms! I will conquer death by embracing death.

When a woman is standing on a cliff about to jump into the wine-dark sea, her life does tend to flash before her. But the times get all mixed up. The boat I sailed with Alcaeus when I was sixteen fades imperceptibly into the boat I sailed with Phaon when I was fifty. It is all the same boat on the same ocean. The ocean is called time.

My feet slip, my heart pounds. I start to teeter over the edge. For a moment, I am not so sure about this final leap. I need feathers, I need wax, like Icarus. My knees are weak. My head spins. The dead are waving at the end of a long, torchlit corridor. My father, my grandparents, my mother. I feel myself being carried inexorably back to my childhood on my native isle of Lesbos.

Since at every moment of our lives we stand on the brink of eternity, this is as good a place as any to start the story of my life.

Brightness. With luck we'll shelter in

The harbor, solid ground

For our storm-tossed ships.

—S
APPHO