THE REFLECTION IN MOVEMENTS FROM MYSTHICAL TO RATIONAL THOUGHT AND FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY IN THE TRANSITIONAL SOCIETY OF MYTILENE AT THE END OF THE ARCHAIC PERIOD (8th-5th CENTURY B.C) A study on Sappho’s “Ode to Anaktoria”(fragment 16)
Abstract
This article discusses Sappho’s “Ode to Anaktoria” (fragment 16) poem as a ‘marginal’ product of an aristocratic intellectual in the transitional society of Mytilene at the end of the Archaic Period (8th-5th century B.C.). Sappho (born 610 ¾ died 570 B.C. app) a renowned Greek lyric poetess and musician who is greatly admired in all ages for the beauty of her writing style. Plato’s 16th epigram dedicated to her reads “Some say there are nine Muses; but they should stop to think. Look at Sappho of Lesbos; she makes a tenth”. Sappho is additionally ranked among the Nine Lyric Poets esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria as worthy of critical study. “Ode to Anaktoria” is read through the historic-political concept of hegemony as suggested by Gramsci. In this view, the moment of “hegemony” or of cultural leadership is systematically upgraded precisely in opposition to the mechanistic and fatalistic concepts of economism. Sappho’s fragment 16 doesn’t only indicate defiance to androcentric (epic) categories; she suggests nonnormative, thus new, ways of contemplating life (lyric).
Moraref