Sappho's Journal Read online

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  FROM THE COVER OF SAPPHO’S JOURNAL:

  In Sappho’s Journal, the author brings the famous Greek poet Sapphoback to life in a finely crafted novel that reveals her sense ofbeauty, her loves, her reflections, her inner world. Based on a carefulstudy of ancient Greece and Sappho’s surviving fragments of poetry,Bartlett recreates Sappho in a lyrical account of the life, passion,fears, and faith of this remarkable woman whose intimate journal takesus back to 642 B.C. The book includes a Foreword by the well-knownSappho scholar and translator Willis Barnstone.

  Bartlett’s writing has been praised by many leading authors,reviewers, and critics, among them:

  JAMES MICHENER, novelist: “I am much taken with Bartlett’s work andcommend it highly.”

  CHARLES POORE in The New York Times: “...believable characters whoare stirred by intensely personal concerns.”

  GRACE FLANDRAU, author and historian: “...Characters and scenes areso right and living...it is so beautifully done, one findsoneself feeling it is not fiction but actually experiencedfact.”

  JAMES PURDY, novelist: “An important writer... I find greatpleasure in his work. Really beautiful and distinguished.”

  ALICE S. MORRIS in Harper’s Bazaar: “He tells a haunting andbeautiful story and manages to telescope, in a brilliantlyleisurely way, a lifetime, a full and eventful lifetime.”

  RUSSELL KIRK, novelist: “The scenes are drawn with power. Bartlettis an accomplished writer.”

  PAUL ENGLE in The Chicago Tribune: “...articulate, believable ...charms with an expert knowledge of place and people.”

  MICHAEL FRAENKEL, novelist and poet: “His is the authenticity ofthe true and original creator. Bartlett is essentially awriter of mood.”

  WILLIS BARNSTONE, Sappho scholar and translator: “A mature artist,Bartlett writes with ease and taste.”

  J. DONALD ADAMS in The New York Times: “...the freshest, mostvital writing I have seen for some time.”

  PEARL S. BUCK, Nobel Laureate in Literature: “He is an excellentwriter.”

  HERBERT GORMAN, novelist and biographer: “He possesses asensitivity in description and an acuteness in the delineationof character.”

  FORD MADOX FORD, English novelist, about Bartlett: “...a writer ofvery considerable merit.”

  LON TINKLE in the Dallas Morning News: “Vivid, impressive, highlypictorial.”

  JOE KNOEFLER in the L.A. Times: “...an American writer giftedwith...perception and sensitivity.”

  FRANK TANNENBAUM, historian: “...written with great sensibility”

  Worchester Telegram: “Between realism and poetry...brilliant,colorful.”

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  The press was established in 1975. Over the years Autograph Editionshas published a variety of distinguished and widely commended books offiction and poetry. Our most recent publication is the remarkablequintet, Voices from the Past, by bestselling author Paul AlexanderBartlett, whose novel, When the Owl Cries, has been widely acclaimed bymany authors, reviewers, and critics, among them James Michener, PearlS. Buck, Ford Madox Ford, Charles Poore, James Purdy, Russell Kirk,Michael Fraenkel, and many others.

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  SAPPHO’S JOURNAL

  BOOKS BY

  PAUL ALEXANDER BARTLETT

  NOVELS

  VOICES FROM THE PAST:

  Sappho’s Journal ? Christ’s Journal ? Leonardo da Vinci’s Journal

  Shakespeare’s Journal ? Lincoln’s Journal

  When the Owl Cries

  Adiós Mi México

  Forward, Children!

  POETRY

  Wherehill

  Spokes for Memory

  NONFICTION

  The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist’s Record

  SAPPHO’S JOURNAL

  by

  PAUL ALEXANDER BARTLETT

  and

  Illustrated by the Author

  Edited by

  STEVEN JAMES BARTLETT

  with a FOREWORD by

  WILLIS BARNSTONE

  “Violet-haired, pure

  honey-smiling Sappho”

  – Alcaeus

  AUTOGRAPH EDITIONS

  Salem, Oregon

  AUTOGRAPH EDITIONS

  P. O. Box 6141 ? Salem, Oregon 97304

  ? Established 1975 ?

  This book is protected by copyright. No part

  may be reproduced in any manner without

  written permission from the publisher.

  Copyright © 2007 by Steven James Bartlett

  First Edition

  ISBN 978-0-6151-5646-0

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006025662

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Bartlett, Paul Alexander.

  Sappho's journal / by Paul Alexander Bartlett and illustrated bythe author ; edited by Steven James Bartlett ; with a foreword by WillisBarnstone. -- 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: "A historical novel that recounts the life, thought, andtimes of the Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos, based on a study of ancient Greece and Sappho's surviving fragments of poetry"--Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-6151-5646-0

  1. Sappho--Fiction. I. Bartlett, Steven J. II. Title.

  PS3602.A8396S27 2006

  813'.6--dc22

  2006025662

 

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD by Willis Barnstonexi

  PREFACE by Steven James Bartlettxiii

  SAPPHO’S JOURNAL1

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR151

  COLOPHON153

  FOREWORD

  Willis
Barnstone

  Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature

  Indiana University

  P

  aul Alexander Bartlett’s journal of Sappho is a masterful work. I hadrecently completed a translation of the extant lines of Sappho and amfamiliar with his problems. He was faced with the almost impossibletask of reconstructing the personality of Sappho and her background inancient Lesbos. To my happy surprise he did so, in a work which is atonce poetic, dramatic and powerful. In Sappho’s Journal he does morethan create a vague illusion of the past. He conveys the character ofreal people, their interior life and outer world. A mature artist, hewrites with ease and taste.

  PREFACE

  Steven James Bartlett

  Senior Research Professor of Philosophy, Oregon State University

  and

  Visiting Scholar in Psychology & Philosophy, Willamette University

  S

  appho’s Journal is one of five independent works of fiction whichtogether make up Voices from the Past, a quintet of novels that de-scribe the inner lives of five extraordinary people. Progressingthrough time from the most distant to the most recent they are: Sapphoof Lesbos, the famous Greek poet; Jesus; Leonardo da Vinci; Shakes-peare; and Abraham Lincoln. For the most part, little is known aboutthe inward realities of these people, about their personal thoughts,reflections, and the quality and nature of their feelings. For thisreason they have become no more than voices from the past: Thecontributions they have left us remain, but little remains of eachperson, of his or her personality, of the loves, fears, pleasures,hatreds, beliefs, and thoughts each had.

  Voices from the Past was written by Paul Alexander Bartlett over aperiod of several decades. After his death in an automobile accident in1990, the manuscripts of the five novels were discovered among his asyet unpublished papers. He had been at work adding the finishingtouches to the manuscripts. Now, more than a decade and a half afterhis death, the publication of Voices from the Past is overdue.

  Bartlett is known for his fiction, including When the Owl Cries andAdiós Mi México, historical novels set during the Mexican Revolution of1910 and descriptive of hacienda life, Forward, Children!, a powerfulantiwar novel, and numerous short stories. He was also the author ofbooks of poetry, including Spokes for Memory and Wherehill, thenonfiction work, The Haciendas of Mexico: An Artist’s Record, the firstextensive artistic and photographic study of haciendas throughoutMexico, and numerous articles about the Mexican haciendas. Bartlett wasalso an artist whose paintings, illustrations, and drawings have beenexhibited in more than 40 one-man shows in leading museums in the U.S.and Mexico. Archives of his work and literary correspondence have nowbeen established at the American Heritage Center of the University ofWyoming, the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of theUniversity of Texas, and the Rare Books Collection of the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles.

  Paul Alexander Bartlett’s life was lived with a single value alwayscentral: a sustained dedication to beauty, which he believed was themost vital value of living and his reason for his life as a writer andan artist. Voices from the Past reflects this commitment, for hebelieved that these five voices, in their different ways, express apassion for life, for the creative spirit, and ultimately for beauty ina variety of its forms—poetic and natural (Sappho), spiritual (Jesus),scientific and artistic (da Vinci), literary (Shakespeare), andhumanitarian (Lincoln). In this work, he has sought, as faithfully aspossible, to relay across time a renewed lyrical meaning of theseremarkable individuals, lending them his own voice, with a mood,simplicity, depth of feeling, and love of beauty that were his, and, hebelieved, also theirs.

  The journal form has been used only rarely in works of fiction.Bartlett believed that as a form of literature the journal offers themost effective way to bring back to life the life-worlds ofsignificant, unique, highly individual, and important creators. In eachof the novels that make up Voices from the Past, his interest is toportray the inner experience of exceptional and special people, aboutwhom there is scant knowledge on this level. During the many years ofresearch he devoted to a study of the lives and thoughts of Sappho,Jesus, Leonardo, Shakespeare, and Lincoln, he sought to base thejournals on what is known and what can be surmised about the personbehind each voice, and he wove into each journal passages from theirwritings and the substance of the testimony of others. Yet the fivenovels are fiction: They re-express in an author’s creation lives nowburied by the passage of centuries.

  I am deeply grateful to my wife, Karen Bartlett, for her faithful,patient, and perceptive help with this long project.

  ?

  For my father,

  Paul Alexander Bartlett,

  whose kindness, love of beauty and of place

  will always be greatly missed.

 

  Sappho’s poetry, quoted throughout this novel, is includedwith the translator’s permission. The poems appeared inSappho, Lyrics in the Original Greek, with translations byWillis Barnstone, Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1965.

  For clarity, the calendar used by Sappho has beentranslated into our modern calendar.

 

  SAPPHO’S JOURNAL

 

  Sappho, walking on her island beach,

  pauses by a broken amphora:

  With one foot, she nudges the terra cotta and black jar,

  its painted chariot, charioteer and horses:

  The charioteer wears a laurel wreath.

  Sappho, about 30 years old,

  her hair braided around her head,

  naked, sandaled, saunters along the Mediterranean,

  gulls and pelicans flying, surf and gull sounds in earlymorning yellow.

  Villa Poseidon, Mytilene

  642 B.C.

  T

  he great storm beats across the island, rattling the olive and thecypress, piling the surf on the beach, hissing the rain across my roof.It is cold and the light of my terra cotta lamp is cold. Some say thata storm will wash away our island, but I do not believe it. Our islandwill be here long after I have gone, and so will our town, my dearMytilene, so wrong, so right.

  Alcaeus would revel in this gale and go out in it and let the rainlash him and then he would come and take me in his arms.

  The storm will rage all night and the gutters spew, and I will rageat my solitude, a solitude that grows and grows.