Grief and Beauty

In Sappho’s poem “To Her You Were Like A Visible Goddess,” the subject is a heartbroken woman who was as devoted to her lover as one would be to a goddess. The lost lover is the source of the woman’s happiness with her singing in the past. Sappho’s comparison of the mourning lover to the “rose-tipped moon [surpassing] all the stars after the sun has set” extends to the people around her. The lost love may be compared to the sun and the Lydian women to the stars; after the lover disappears, the beauty of the mourning lover becomes more apparent among the Lydian women, just as the moon becomes brighter than the surrounding stars in the absence of the sun’s light. This metaphor suggests that Sappho sees great beauty in grief for a loved one, as it is a kind of love in itself. Such beauty is reflected in that of the lover herself and in nature. Sappho presents an almost unnatural abundance of nature, with the description of how “bountiful dew pours down,” suggesting that the lover’s beauty is more godlike than human. The description of the lover as the “rose-tipped moon” lifts her to a divine level on par with the lost love that she so adores. The rose color represents the characteristic of passion in the lover, a quality that is also suggested by the use of alliteration with the “s” in the second and third stanzas, creating a soft, sensual sound. However, this passion makes the lover’s condition all the worse, with “her spirit wasted with yearning, heart consumed with pain.” For all her divine beauty, the lover suffers as any human would. Sappho shows that even such a goddess-like woman can be subject to pain and heartbreak, but grief can be beautiful.