Sappho of Lesbos

Originally written on July 10, 2008. Revisiting my old blog account, when I found this entry of mine:

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If it wasn't for my two friends, whose giggles were already spreading like wildfire, my professor wouldn't be battling against the noise of our class, shouting, pleading for us to put our interest back into the discussion.

I was reclusive in my own world, in breathing silence, lest I would be dragged by the seeming immaturity of my two seatmates should I join their own way of saying "I missed you, slut," after one of my friends' hiatus. I was at the brink of ennui, when suddenly, one of the class discussants on Longinus' Sublimity, recited words from the greatest female poet of antiquity, Sappho, to embody how words should be organized.

As she made the text alive, I slightly bent my neck to peek at the board; I was intrigued. I turned to my own handouts and looked where that passage was. After few paper rustles, I found it and in my privacy, I read it...consumed it...finally, I melted. 


                               To me he seems a peer of the gods, the man who sits facing
                            you and hears your sweet voice
                               and lovely laughter; it flutters my heart in my breast. When I see you
                            only for a moment, I cannot speak;
                               my tongue is broken, a subtle fire runs under my skin; my eyes cannot
                            see, my ears hum;
                                cold sweat pours off me; shivering grips me all over; I am paler than
                            grass; I seem near to dying;
                                but all must be endured . . .




Finally, an end to the ineffable stir of emotions.

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Certainly, I do not have an object of jealousy nowadays, but certainly too, I miss entering in a trance.