Sappho of Lesbos: The Poet Who Turned Desire Into Eternal Fire

Paulo Pereira de Araujo
há 2 dias
3 min de leitura

Artistic portrait of Sappho of Lesbos, ancient Greek poetess, symbol of love between women and poetic freedom. — Artistic portrait of **Sappho of Lesbos**, ancient Greek poetess, symbol of love between women and poetic freedom.

Sappho, The Incendiary of Lesbos

Ah, Sappho of Lesbos! She understood love, passion, poetry, and scandal. The woman wrote poetry as one who burns, as one consumed by flames of desire, and still smiles in the face of the ashes. Not with that clean, predictable Instagram rhyme, but with a soul wet with longing and the scent of Aegean salt ingrained in her hair.

While the grown men of the time beat their chests with their endless epics about wars and gods betraying their wives with mortals, Sappho sang of her friend’s legs, her lover’s hair, the absence that cuts like a blunt knife, and the jealousy that burns like a fever. And she did this without asking permission, neither from men nor from gods.

They said she was a teacher of young women (yes, right!) and that she lived surrounded by beautiful girls, all sighing between lyre lessons and whispering secrets at dusk. Moralists call this school. Poets, paradise.

And anyone who has ever fallen in love knows: the line between teaching and enchantment is much thinner than common sense tolerates. Sappho taught how to play the lyre, but also how to touch the invisible, which vibrates between two souls that recognize each other.

Censorship With the Scent of Male Sweat

But then came the historical patrol, donned the robe of morality, and tried to silence her voice. They cut her verses, burned her papyri. Prudish translators embellished what they did not understand. Too late.

Sappho’s words had already burned into eternity. They call her a lesbian, not by chance: Lesbos became a noun. And every time a woman loves another woman without fear, her name breathes again.

Of course, centuries of silence followed: embarrassed priests, scholars trying to "correct" what they called excess, as if desire were a grammatical error. But a single verse from Sapphic poetry is enough to dismantle all that prudishness: “That man who sits before you seems like a god to me…” and that’s it, the heart melts, the body understands, time stops. In just a few lines, Sappho

transforms jealousy into art and desire into philosophy.

She was a scandal with meter, an orgasm in dactyls. A dactyl is nothing more than a metrical foot in poetry: a strong syllable followed by two weak ones. Like a drum that beats “tum-ta-ta.” The Greeks used this like breathing, and Sappho made the verse groan in this rhythm. She didn’t just write poetry; she embodied it. Each of her words is body, sound, and fever.

And in the end, Sappho of Lesbos is living proof, or rather, eternally living proof that love doesn’t need to be heterosexual, contained, or explained. It only needs to be said and felt, even if it hurts, even if it scandalizes. Preferably, with poetry. Because poetry, when it’s true, doesn’t ask for permission to exist. It invades, kisses, wounds, and heals.