The Anactoria Poem

"Anactoria," perhaps Sappho's most famous poem, which describes the psychosomatic effects that love has on a person. It reads like a highly poeticized list of side effects to some heavy-duty medicine: dry mouth, chest pains, wandering thoughts — you get the picture. It's been 2,600 hundred years since Sappho wrote this poem to one of her students, and I'm not sure anyone has done a better job describing the physical herk and jerk of a massive crush.

"Anactoria" by Sappho
Adapted by Jack Murnighan from a ninteenth-century translation by Henry Wharton

He who sits in your presence,
Listening close to your sweet speech and laughter,
Is, in my esteem, yet luckier than the gods.
The thought makes my heart aflutter in my breast.
For even seeing you but briefly,
I lose what words I had;
My tongue finds not a sound;
My eyes fail to see, my ears set to ring;
A fire runs beneath my skin;
Sweat pours from me and a trembling takes my body whole.
I am paler than summer-burned grass, and, in my madness
I fear that I too may die.
And yet, I'll dare it. Just a little more!


Now this stolen from the Poem of the Week Site

Jim Powell’s beautiful translation of Sappho’s Anactoria poem. Her passion, as always, shines through.

The Anactoria Poem

Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of
sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what-
ever you love best.

And it's easy to make this understood by
everyone, for she who surpassed all human
kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her
husband--that best of

men--went sailing off to the shores of Troy and
never spent a thought on her child or loving
parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and
left her to wander,

she forgot them all, she could not remember
anything but longing, and lightly straying
aside, lost her way. But that reminds me
now: Anactória,

she's not here, and I'd rather see her lovely
step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on
all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and
glittering armor.