17 pages • 34 minutes read
SapphoFragment 31
Fiction | Poem | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Love, Intimacy, and Jealousy
From this poem, readers learn that the experience of love can inspire both physical and emotional pain when a rival for one’s beloved appears on the scene. The poem’s speaker reveals her deep love for the object of her admiration when she describes her beloved in affectionate and complimentary terms. When the speaker hears her beloved’s voice, her heart beats more rapidly as her passion rises, indicating an intimate bond between the two.
The speaker also suggests that she knows her beloved well enough to know that the godlike man poses a threat to their connection; the speaker understands “as soon as I glance at you a moment” (Line 7) that her beloved likes the man, and the speaker’s feelings of fear and insecurity take hold. The speaker loses her ability to communicate altogether, dumbstruck by the jealousy she feels from loving her beloved so deeply.
The Inevitability of Death
At the start of “Fragment 31,” the speaker elevates her rival to the level of the immortal gods by perceiving him as equal to the gods. The speaker follows this comparison with a thorough discussion of her own corporeal self. By juxtaposing the man’s implied immortality with descriptions of her own human body, she calls attention to her suddenly inferior position in the eyes of her beloved, who appears to enjoy the attention from the man. Suddenly, as the speaker witnesses her beloved transform before her eyes into someone more important than even a man who is the gods’ equal, the speaker realizes that she, a mortal human, will, eventually and inevitably, die.
The speaker then points out a collection of specific body parts and the specific reaction to love and jealousy each body part experiences; by the last stanza, the individual parts unite into a body that “shakes” (Line 14) as the speaker realizes that death is nearer than she thought; this realization parallels her fear that, in life and in love, the speaker’s rival will win both the heart of her beloved and the ability to live forever.
Age and Aging
“Fragment 31” describes the physical body of the poem’s speaker in responding to an emotional crisis. The speaker’s awareness of her own deterioration in response to the trials of love suggests various external factors that expedite the aging process. Stress, for example, has long been acknowledged as an expediter of aging processes; after enduring the stressful experience of learning that she has a rival for her love object’s affection, the speaker of the poem compares her sense of weakness to that of old age and impending death.
The speaker details an inability to speak that endures for the rest of the poem, until the speaker feels death “is very near” (Line 16). This deterioration of the speaker’s physical and cognitive self may function as a metaphor for a kind of dementia whose etiology is love and erotic desire.
Aging is a transformative process, and throughout the sixteen lines of the poem, the speaker undergoes a bodily transformation as an expression of her inner turmoil. Sappho employs hyperbole and vivid imagery to communicate the drama of the transformation in this particular poem, from loving observer to jealous lover on the brink of death. Aging functions then as a metaphor for the speaker’s rapid decline, likening her love to an illness that prematurely ages her and brings her closer to death.
