Though they were written thousands of years apart, Sappho’s “Fragment 16” and Edgar Allen Poe’s “Bridal Ballad” each show how infatuation can often be mistaken for true love. In order to do this, each author depicts a character who is tormented by regret. In “Fragment 16”, Sappho points out that power can often become synonymous with beauty. Sappho is quick to disagree with this notion, instead arguing that love trumps power every time when it comes to beauty. To prove her point, Sappho uses the story of Helen to show how a desire for true love can lead Helen to abandon all that she knows. Similarly, “Bridal Ballad” depicts a woman who has made the fatal mistake of assuming that love should come with marriage, not the other way around. By contrasting this woman’s husband with the man she …show more content…
For centuries, mankind has strived to not only attain power, but to be around it whenever possible. In “Fragment 16” Sappho notes that “Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot/ and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing/ on the black earth” (Sappho 1-3). By opening her poem with three very masculine descriptions of beauty, Sappho shows her readers the basis of thinking of her time – namely, that with great power comes great beauty. Beauty, however, is subjective and although many people are attracted by power, Sappho believes that beauty stems from “what you love” (Sappho 4). To show her point, Sappho tells how Helen – thought to be the physical representation of ideal beauty – abandons her family and sails to Troy. Sappho’s full words may be lost to history, but her message is clear – even with absolute beauty, Helen is still led astray by the power of love. Sappho does not mention why Helen sails to Troy because this is not the point of the poem. The message that Sappho is trying to convey here is that too often beauty is mistaken for love, a notion that can lead only to
In one of Shakespeare’s most masterful pieces, he depicts a tragic love story in which love conquers all…but at what cost? The truth is in this play, love is the victor, but with horrible consequences. Love lives on, love survives, but only at the loss of life. Not only in this play, but in many other Shakespearean works, the constant theme stands that any kind of marriage or deep emotional bond which is solely based on love ends tragically. Othello’s passionate love for Desdemona is the same passion that causes him to end her life. Antony, under the suspicion that Cleopatra has died, tries to commit suicide to only find out soon after that she is alive and in hiding, but all in vain for the fatal wound has already pricked it’s victim. Shakespeare constantly relates love with tragedy, stating that love is in fact fleeting and impermanent. The only way for love to live forever is if it dies young.
Cassandra Clare, author of the best-selling novel City of Bones, once wrote, “To love is to destroy, and to be loved is to be the one destroyed”. As an author of a series of young adult books, Clare wishes to send a message to adolescent readers regarding the destruction that young, passionate love can lead to. A similar theme is explored in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where two adolescents from feuding families fall in love with one another. When they first see each other on the night of the Capulet party, they quickly fall in love and are soon married by Romeo’s friend and mentor, Friar Lawrence. Their love, being full of passion in its quick course, faces many trials such as Romeo’s banishment from their hometown of Verona, as well as Juliet being forced to marry Paris, kinsman of the Prince. The affection they feel for one another, being all consuming, often leads them to want to sacrifice everything for each other, including their own lives. Their self-destructive, rushed love ends with their deaths, occurring just a multiple days after they first met. In William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, many characters such as Friar Lawrence, Romeo, and Juliet illustrate that young, passionate love is a powerful force that leads to destruction.
And here Pygmalion, old sculptor of heathen times now passed, flames of frosted fires that cast the black light upon the shadows of a starless night. For in his scalding pit where once was heart, burns the curded kindling of perverse pleasures and impious passions. He toils at his foul forge, and there in the blistering bowels of Earth's volcanic throats, in the snarling jaws of his flaming furnace, there stands the lustful sculptor Pygmalion's greatest labour: there stands a woman. Though a sculpture, she effortlessly bleeds sensuality in every carved tendon, the polished pinnacle of a chiseled beauty. She poses with her fixed yearning gaze, her unmoving sinuous locks of hair and inert firmed breasts. And perhaps most remarkable of all, breath is drawn from those delicately crafted lips. For to Pygmalion's iniquitous delight, he has brought life upon his beloved ivory sculpted woman. Imprisoned in that hellish chasm of warm swelling nightmares and streams of wet lunar lust, she stands, to be admired and to be perpetually loved by her master. And neither shall confess the love is not real. For does that gentle rapping of her crimson ruby heart serve her to live, or for her to live to serve? Though Pygmalion's supposed love for his living sculpted woman may be purely the stuff of antiquity lore, its enlightening commentary of love itself is not. Many partners have constructed relationships around a cruel imbalance of power. Indeed, just as Pygmalion believed he loved his perfected, though enslaved ivory lady, so too has myriads of men mistaken an intricate misconception of love for what in actuality is no more than a sculptor admiring his sculpture. This somber reality of love was perhaps most astutely realized in Henrik's Ibsen N...
Can a simple emotion such as love be regarded as one of the greatest weapons to create or attain power? It’s a renowned fact that human beings are by nature designed to need, crave, and even require love as part of their survival mechanisms. It comes to no surprise that one of the first accounts of antique poetry maintains love and the craving for it as its main theme; thereby, reinforcing the deep importance that it upholds in the lives of many individuals. Sappho’s “Deathless Aphrodite” clearly epitomizes the suffering and bitterness that arises from an unrequited love. In Sappho’s case, which portrays the case of many, she constantly finds herself in loneliness and despair for though she tries repeatedly, she is only let down recurrently as no one reciprocates the love she gives. It is only the Greek goddess Aphrodite, who holds
This poem dramatizes the conflict between love and lust, particularly as this conflict relates to what the speaker seems to say about last night. In the poem “Last Night” by Sharon Olds, the narrator uses symbolism and sexual innuendo to reflect on her lust for her partner from the night before. The narrator refers to her night by stating, “Love? It was more like dragonflies in the sun, 100 degrees at noon.” (2, 3) She describes it as being not as great as she imagined it to be and not being love, but lust. Olds uses lust, sex and symbolism as the themes in the story about “Last night”.
Sappho, as seen in poem 16 when she states that Helen went sailing for Troy not for her children or parents, but for love, implies that love is of utmost importance, more so even than one’s family. Sappho attempts to portray love realistically; with both the joy and pain that love brings to one’s life. In poem 31, Sappho focuses on the sharp pain love is capable of bestowing on someone. Sappho first speaks bitterly about the man talking to the women she loves. After recounting the passion she feels for this women, Sappho then discusses how she feels as if her despair might kill her. The jealousy expressed in this poem is one of the many woeful consequences of
Sappho, born to an aristocratic family on the island of Lesbos around 640 BCE, is the earliest known female author to date. Though most of her work has been lost, her few remaining poems are very telling of the ancient society in which she lived (lecture slides). Much of the famous stories before Sappho had the sole focus of war and heroism, which clearly characterizes the importance of such ideals in Ancient Greece. Sappho’s lyric poetry, however, presents one of the first accounts to describe the Greek perception of love.
As the last speaker, and the most important one, Socrates connects his ideas with Diotima of Mantinea’s story of Love’s origin, nature and purpose. Different from the earlier five speakers who regard Love as an object and praise different sides of it, Socrates, referring to Diotima’s idea, considers Love as a pursuit of beauty gradually ranging from “physical beauty of people in general” (Symposium, Plato, 55) to the “true beauty” (55). The first five speeches bond with each other. Each of them mentions the opinions of the former in order to either support or against them. However, just like the elements of a beautiful picture, they fail to show us the integration of love.
Comparing and contrasting the kinds of love represented by Tellus and Endymion in Lyly’s comedy of errors, Edymion, and the love between Tamburlaine and Zenocrate in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine show similarities where passions drive lovers to capture suitors, but differ in one couple desiring the unattainable, and another taking action to attain. Love is presented in different ways, specifically in Lyly’s play the love is unattainable and unreal, as opposite in Marlowe’s play the love is attainable. Both, couples also have similarities when lovers are driven by their passions.
Love is the emotion of unstable properties. It can be mended by the holder to produce the sweetest of nectar but if done incorrectly can leave the most bitter aftertaste of regret. This line is formed between love and lust, which a male seemingly cannot distinguish from another. We are like minnows wondering in the depths of the unknown seeking for the light of an angel but we fall for ignorance being consumed by the angler fish, our assumptions. Scarred by these events, we still do not learn. “Siren Song” portrays a story about a siren bored of her own tricks and men all together. “Delilah” is about a heartbroken man regretting his decision of murder due to his hard-headedness. In the poem “Siren Song” by Margaret Atwood and the song “Delilah” by Tom Jones both use Plot, Point of
The purpose of this essay is to analyze and compare and contrast the two paired poems “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and “My Ex-Husband” by Gabriel Spera to find the similarities presented within the pairs. Despite the monumental time difference between “My Last Duchess” and “My Ex-Husband”, throughout both poems you will see that somebody is wronged by someone they thought was a respectable person and this all comes about by viewing a painting on the wall or picture on a shelf.
Looking at Poem 16, Sappho’s focus on the beginnings of the Trojan war and ultimately the epic of the Iliad is not about the rage of Achilles, the quarrelling between Agamemnon and Achilles, or Hector’s victory over Patroclus and Achilles’ subsequent retaliation, but rather it is about love. Sappho’s poem is about the love of Helen, and the power of love and how it is more important than that of any army, navy, parents or children.
During her time, Sappho was unique because her stories chose to focus on love while most other stories focused on wars. An example of this is shown as Sappho starts poem 16 with an optimistic approach to love as she argues that "some men say an army of horses…is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love". This personal approach on love's allure is much more relatable for an audience than war, as most people will experience these powerful emotions in their lifetime but not all will experience war directly. Sappho's even compares her own life experiences with that of Helen, who left her entire family for Paris of Troy. She states that the story "reminded me now of Anaktoria" but most importantly that she "would rather see her lovely step and the motion of light on her face than chariots of Lydians". Sappho says much more with this line than just of love's power, she is also alluding to the loss of someone she loved. This unusual first-person incorporation to a well-known part of history gives the audience an idea of just how painful love can be, as the idea of getting it back overcomes the excitement of war for
Love plays a significant role in the life of the average person. There are both positive and negative effects of love. Both the novel Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and the poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” by Anne Bradstreet have similar ideas and qualities. Although they are different, both pieces of literature tie to the common theme, love. The poems’ explanation of love helps to highlight the growth of Elizabeth’s love throughout the novel.
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is written in an entertaining and adventurous spirit, but serves a higher purpose by illustrating the century’s view of courtly love. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other pieces of literature written in the same century prevail to commemorate the coupling of breathtaking princesses with lionhearted knights after going through unimaginable adventures, but only a slight few examine the viability of such courtly love and the related dilemmas that always succeed. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that women desire most their husband’s love, Overall, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that the meaning of true love does not stay consistent, whether between singular or separate communities and remains timeless as the depictions of love from this 14th century tale still hold true today.