February 2012
44 posts
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“From our love
I want neither
The sweetness of honey
Nor the sting of the...”
– Fragment 146, Sappho.
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“When he dances, he is more beautiful than all the flowers of the seven autumn...”
– Nijo Yoshimoto speaking of Zeami Motokiyo, beloved of the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. Under the shogun’s patronage, he went on to revitalize the Noh style of all-male theatre in Japan, which has been now been performed for more than 600 years.
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“For your honor I am jealous
This parallel gives me great pain
Caesar, just...”
– The Abbé Saint-Pavin to General Condé, 17th century. When he worried his troops would be overcome by a flood, a fellow general remarked, “Our lives are safe, for we are sodomites: we can only perish by fire.”
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“… Deep into the wave you raced,
Leaping from white horses,
Whirling the...”
– Distaff. Erinna mourns the death of Baucis, one of Sappho’s students.
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“Bitter rain in my courtyard
In the decline of Autumn,
I only have vague poetic...”
– Wu Tsao, Taoist priestess (19th Century)
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“A story dating from the era of the Warring States tells of Pan Zheng, a scholar...”
– Homosexuality & Civilization, Louis Crompton
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“It was deep April, and the morn
Shakespeare was born;
The world was on us,...”
– Michael Field (Katherine Bradley & Edith Cooper)
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“Like the sweet apple that reddens
At the end of the bough
Left by the...”
– Fragment 105, Sappho. Written to a maiden.
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“What shall I send my sweet today,
When all the woods attune in love?
And I...”
– A Valentine, Mathilda Betham-Edwards (c. 1863)
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“You glow like a perfumed lamp
In the gathering shadows.
We play wine games...”
– For the Courtesan Ch’ing Lin. Wu Tsao, 19th century.
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In Renaissance France, bisexuals were said to be au poil et a la plume, or “after fur and feathers”, like versatile hunters.
-Homosexuality & Civilization, Louis Crompton
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“I called to you
Filled your mouth with plenty
Girls, fine gifts
Lovesong, the...”
– Fragment 58, Sappho.
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“We are not the first mortals to see beauty in what is beautiful. No, even...”
– Theocritus, 300 BCE.
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“If Achilles loved Patroclus, if Orestes loved Pylades, if Aristogiton loved...”
– Anacharsis Cloots, 1791.
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“More than twelve thousand men and boys came to the attention of the Officers of...”
– Homosexuality & Civilization, Louis Crompton. For the anon who requested something from Renaissance Italy.
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“If I should be allowed to go so far as kissing
Your sweet eyes, Juventius,
I...”
– Catullus (84-54 BCE).
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Signal Boost! - Asks & Requests
Since the amount of followers have doubled since this post was last made, it seemed time to make the rounds again.
Asks: The askbox is open for both questions and requests. Requests can be by era, artist, or even just a general theme. The current content of this Tumblr is chosen by whim out of several archives and texts, so feel free to express what you would like to see.
Submissions: Not...
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“Sweet mother, I the web
Can weave no more;
Keen yearning for my love
Subdues...”
– Fragment 102, Sappho.
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“Nisus guarded a gate - a man-at-arms
With a fighting heart
Euryalus was his...”
– The Aeneid, Book V. Virgil, 70-19 BCE.
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“O Phileros, why a torch that we need not?
Just as we are we’ll go, our...”
– Valerius Aedituus, 102 BCE.
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“Whatever it may be your lad asks of you,
Do not refuse. Love gains by what love...”
– Tibullus, 1st century BCE.
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“Peer of the gods is that man, who
Face to face, sits listening
To your sweet...”
– Fragment 31, Sappho. Of all her works, this ‘ode’ is the most imitated and celebrated.
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“O Sappho, sweetest support of young love
And surely now residing with the Muses...”
– Dioscorides, 3rd century.
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“The second anecdote tells of another ruler of Wei, this time a king of the third...”
– Duan xiu pian (Records of the Cut Sleeve). Male favorites were henceforth often referred to as Long Yangs.
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“Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal
Like those champions devoted...”
– Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius (The Tyrannicides). Edgar Allen Poe, 1827.
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“The Moon is down,
The Pleiades. Midnight,
The hours flow on,
I lie, alone.”
– Fragment 34, Sappho.
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“Some say an army on horseback, some an army on foot
and some say a fleet of...”
– Fragment 16, Sappho.
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“They reproached me too: why did I,
Speaking in the ways of young men,
Write to...”
– Archbishop Baudri of Borgueil, 1089. He rebuffed a scholar’s assertions that his relationships with women and other men were inappropriate with this poem.
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“The third and most famous story involved not a duke or a king but an emperor,...”
– Duan xiu pian (Records Of The Cut Sleeve). For nearly two thousand years in Chinese literature, homosexual love was referred to as “the cut sleeve”.
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“Over deep cushions, drenched with drowsy scents
Where fading lamplight shed its...”
– Delphine and Hippolyta. Charles Baudelaire, 1868.
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January 2012
42 posts
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“Her soul a deep-wave pearl
Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries;
A face...”
– To a girl. ‘Michael Field’ (Katherine Bradley & Edith Cooper), 1889.
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“Pain penetrates
Me drop
by drop”
– Fragment 37, Sappho. Original spacing intact.
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On misrepresentation.
“In [1800s] France, Jean-Francois Boissonade read the Greek of Sappho’s first fragment and knew what it said: ‘I didn’t want to write if he flees; I didn’t dare write if she flees. I decided to use if one flees, which reproduces ambiguity…’ And at about the same time Allier de Hauteroche’s Notice sur la courtisane Sapho (1822) returned to the idea of...
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“Percussion, salt and honey,
A quivering in the thighs;
He shakes me all over...”
– Fragment 130, Sappho.
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“His work stool (as if it were a horse)
Carries him proudly (as if he were a...”
– To a tailor, Anonymous, 13th Century Córdoba.