From Venus to Proserpine: Sappho's Last Song

Abstract

Leopardi had shown interest in the ancient Greek poetess at least from 1814 when he included the translation of one of her poems in a small epithalamial collection of 'Scherzi epigrammatici tradotti dal greco'. When compared to the translation of the same fragment from Sappho’s lyrics made by his contemporary Foscolo and, in the twentieth century, by, for example, Quasimodo and Pontani, Leopardi’s “scherzo” is a far more liberal and personal rendition of the four-line Sappho original. Leopardi admired the lyrist from Lesbos, of whose work - he lamented in his essay of 1816 'Della fama di Orazio presso gli antichi' - very little had survived.