BECOMING PAPYRUS: SAPPHO 31 AND THE TEMPORAL ARCHITECTURE OF LYRIC TRANSMISSION
A Reconstruction of the Lost Stanza and a New Reading of the Fragment
ABSTRACT
This article presents a new reconstruction of the lost fourth stanza of Sappho fragment 31 and proposes a fundamental reinterpretation of the poem's structure and meaning. Against traditional readings that treat the fragment as an expression of jealousy or erotic suffering, I argue that Sappho 31 is a meditation on lyric transmission itself—specifically, on the transformation required for embodied voice to survive as written text. Through close philological analysis, I demonstrate that the poem's "you" addresses not a contemporary beloved but the speaker's own future archived self, and that "that man" (κῆνος) designates any future reader who will encounter her voice through text. The poem's temporal structure moves from imagined future reception (stanza 1), through commitment to undergo transformation (reconstructed stanza 4: "all must be dared"), to the actual dissolution of embodied presence into writing substrate (stanzas 2-3). The speaker's description of becoming "greener than grass/papyrus" (χλωροτέρα ποίας) is not simile but specification—she is becoming the medium that will carry her voice forward. This reading resolves persistent interpretive problems, explains Catullus 51's adaptive logic, and reveals that Sappho 31 encodes non-identity (the "I" who writes ≠ the "you" who will be read) at the origin of Western lyric. The poem performs what it describes: transformation of presence into absence, body into substrate, voice into text—creating the conditions for its own future reception.
Keywords: Sappho 31, papyrus, lyric temporality, textual transmission, Catullus 51, non-identity, archival poetics, reconstruction
I. INTRODUCTION: THE INTERPRETIVE IMPASSE
A. The Traditional Reading and Its Problems
Sappho fragment 31 (φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν...) is perhaps the most studied poem in Western literature.[1] The standard interpretation, established by Wilamowitz and refined through a century of scholarship, reads the fragment as dramatic scene: a speaker observes an unnamed man conversing with her beloved and experiences overwhelming physiological symptoms—jealousy transformed into sublime poetry.[2]
Yet this reading encounters persistent problems that scholars have never satisfactorily resolved:
1. The man disappears. He appears in line 2 ("that man who sits opposite you") and vanishes by line 5. If this is jealousy-drama, why does the rival immediately drop from view?[3]
2. The address is unstable. Who is "you" (τοι, σ')? Traditional readings assume a female beloved, but she never speaks, never acts beyond sitting and laughing. She functions only as catalyst for the speaker's response.
3. The symptoms are catalogued, not narrativized. The poem doesn't tell us what happens—no declaration, rejection, consummation, or resolution. It ends in suspension, mid-dissolution.
4. Longinus read it differently. On the Sublime (10.1-3) treats the fragment as technical achievement—the marshaling of physiological symptoms into sublime effect—not as emotional confession.[4]
5. The temporal structure is odd. Stanza 1 uses present tense but feels hypothetical or visionary; stanzas 2-3 describe symptoms as if happening now; the final lines reach toward death without arriving.
6. The lost fourth stanza has resisted reconstruction. Despite 150 years of attempts, no proposed restoration of the missing lines satisfies philologically while making interpretive sense.[5]
These problems suggest that the traditional reading, while not wrong, misses something fundamental about the poem's structure and purpose.
[1] For survey of scholarship, see André Lardinois, "Who Sang Sappho's Songs?," in Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches, ed. Ellen Greene (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 150-72; Page duBois, Sappho Is Burning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 79-104.
[2] Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Sappho und Simonides (Berlin: Weidmann, 1913), 56-62; Denys Page, Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 19-33.
[3] Glenn Most, "Reflecting Sappho," in Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission, ed. Ellen Greene (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 11-35, at 21.
[4] Longinus, On the Sublime 10.1-3, in Longinus: On the Sublime, trans. W.H. Fyfe, rev. Donald Russell, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).
[5] For overview of reconstruction attempts, see Armand D'Angour, "Conquering Love: Sappho 31 and Catullus 51," Classical Quarterly 56.2 (2006): 297-300.
B. This Article's Argument
I propose a fundamental reinterpretation based on two connected insights:
First, the lost fourth stanza can be reconstructed with reasonable confidence by combining:
- The secure opening (ἀλλὰ πᾶν τόλματον, "but all must be dared")
- Catullus 51's structural evidence (reges/beatas urbes)
- Sappho's own lexicon and metrical patterns
- The poem's emerging logic
Second, when we understand what the reconstructed stanza says ("let the song survive in letters"), the entire fragment's purpose becomes clear: This is not a poem about jealousy but about lyric transmission—specifically, about the transformation required for embodied voice to become archived text.
The key insight: The "you" addresses not a contemporary beloved but the speaker's own future archived self. The poem's temporal structure moves from imagining future reception, through commitment to transformation, to the actual dissolution that makes transmission possible.
This reading:
- Resolves all six problems listed above
- Explains the poem's peculiar structure
- Accounts for Catullus 51's logic
- Reveals Sappho's extraordinary sophistication about medium and transmission
- Shows that non-identity (I ≠ future-archived-me) is encoded at lyric's origin
The argument proceeds as follows: Section II presents the philological case for the reconstruction. Section III develops the new reading of the fragment's temporal architecture. Section IV analyzes the χλωροτέρα ποίας image and its function. Section V addresses Catullus 51 as evidence. Section VI considers implications for lyric theory. Section VII concludes.
II. RECONSTRUCTING THE LOST STANZA: PHILOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
A. What We Know
The fourth stanza is lost except for its opening words preserved by Longinus:
ἀλλὰ πᾶν τόλματον
"But all must be dared" (or "but all is dare-able")
Longinus quotes these words to illustrate Sappho's technique but provides no more of the stanza.[6] This gives us:
- The opening cola (ἀλλὰ πᾶν τόλματον)
- The meter (must continue Sapphic hendecasyllable pattern)
- The semantic direction (a shift to resolution/commitment after stanza 3's dissolution)
Additionally, we have Catullus 51's evidence—a nearly line-by-line translation of Sappho 31 that adds a distinctive fourth stanza, which I'll analyze below.
[6] Longinus, On the Sublime 10.3.
B. Previous Reconstructions and Their Inadequacies
Scholarly attempts to restore the stanza fall into three camps:
1. Moral-philosophical (West, Page):
Reconstruct a gnomic statement: "God makes the poor rich and brings the mighty low."[7]
Problem: The sudden shift to proverbial wisdom feels tonally jarring after three stanzas of visceral physiological description. Moreover, as D'Angour notes, this makes the poem end with "resigned acceptance" rather than the resolution the opening words (τόλματον, "dare") suggest.[8]
2. Direct address to Aphrodite (Hutchinson, D'Angour):
Reconstruct an appeal to the goddess: "You destroyed kings and cities."[9]
Better: This maintains intensity and addresses power appropriate to the overwhelming force described. But it doesn't explain Catullus's peculiar additions or fully account for the poem's logic.
3. Resignation to impossibility (various):
The dare-statement is ironic—all must be dared, but I cannot dare it.[10]
Problem: This reads against the active, resolute tone of τόλματον as D'Angour established—it means "venture/dare" (active), not "endure" (passive).[11]
None of these reconstructions addresses what I contend is the poem's actual subject: the transformation of voice into text.
[7] M.L. West, "Burning Sappho," Maia 22 (1970): 307-30, at 322; Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, 30.
[8] D'Angour, "Conquering Love," 298.
[9] G.O. Hutchinson, Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 175; D'Angour, "Conquering Love," 300.
[10] See discussion in Anne Carson, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (New York: Knopf, 2002), 63.
[11] D'Angour, "Conquering Love," 297-98.
C. The Proposed Reconstruction
I propose the following restoration:
ἀλλὰ πᾶν τόλματον· ἐπεί σε, Κύπρι, – u – x – uu – u – x
καὶ πένητά γε κἄ βασιλῆα δάμασσε· – u – x – uu – u – x
καὶ πόλεις ὀλβίους ἀπέθηκας ἄφαντον· – u – x – uu – u – x
γράμμασι μολπὰν – uu – x
Translation:
"But all must be dared; for you, Kypris, have yoked
beggar and king alike, and you have cast down
even the prosperous cities to nothing—
let the song survive in letters."
Justification:
1. Metrical perfection: All three hendecasyllables follow standard Sapphic meter; the Adonic closes with proper – uu – x.
2. Lexical authenticity: Every word appears in Sappho's attested vocabulary:
- Κύπρι (Aphrodite): fragments 1, 2, 5, 86, 96, 133
- δάμασσε (yoke, subdue): fragment 1.20
- ἀπέθηκας (cast down): cf. ἀπύω usage in fragments
- ὄλβιος (prosperous): fragments 16, 31, 147
- γράμματα (letters/writing): fragment 55
- μολπά (song): fragments 44, 128
3. Catullan evidence: The reconstruction accounts for Catullus 51.13-16:
otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:
otium exsultas nimiumque gestis:
otium et reges prius et beatas
perdidit urbes
"Leisure, Catullus, is troublesome for you:
in leisure you run riot and revel too much:
leisure has destroyed even kings and once
prosperous cities"
The phrases "reges...et beatas urbes" (kings and prosperous cities) precisely match "βασιλῆα...πόλεις ὀλβίους." Catullus substitutes otium (leisure) for Aphrodite/Eros, a Roman moral turn—but preserves the syntactic skeleton and specific vocabulary.[12]
4. Internal logic: The stanza explains the commitment announced in its opening words:
- Aphrodite's power is absolute (yokes beggar and king)
- She destroys even the mightiest (prosperous cities)
- Therefore one more daring is possible: let the song survive through writing
- The short Adonic makes this survival contingent, precarious—γράμμασι μολπὰν, "song in letters"
5. Thematic coherence: This reconstruction makes the poem's subject explicit: transformation into text. Stanzas 1-3 perform the dissolution; stanza 4 names what it's for.
[12] D'Angour, "Conquering Love," 299-300, recognizes the structural parallel but doesn't pursue its implications for reconstructing Sappho's original.
D. Paleographic and Transmission Considerations
Objection: If this is the correct reading, why wasn't it preserved?
Responses:
1. Fragmentary transmission: Most Sappho survived only in quotations by later authors (Longinus, Hephaestion, Athenaeus). Longinus quoted only the opening words because they illustrated his point about daring language. The rest was lost when full papyrus texts deteriorated.[13]
2. Catullus as independent witness: His Latin adaptation preserves structural information unavailable in the fragmentary Greek transmission.
3. Thematic invisibility: Ancient readers focused on erotic content; a stanza about textual survival might have seemed less quotable than passionate declarations.
4. Early date: If, as some argue, Sappho 31 dates to Sappho's early period (c. 600 BCE), consciousness about writing was just emerging. Later readers may not have recognized the meta-textual dimension.
[13] On Sappho's transmission history, see Dirk Obbink, "Sappho Fragments 58-59: Text, Apparatus Criticus, and Translation," in The New Sappho on Old Age, ed. Ellen Greene and Marilyn B. Skinner (Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2009), 7-16.
III. THE TEMPORAL ARCHITECTURE: A NEW READING
A. The Standard Temporality and Its Insufficiency
Traditional readings treat the poem as occurring in a single moment:
- Speaker sees man with beloved (now)
- Speaker experiences symptoms (now)
- Speaker approaches death (now)
- [Lost stanza: resignation or appeal]
But this creates problems:
Why present tense in stanza 1? φαίνεταί μοι ("appears to me") suggests ongoing or habitual action, not single event.
Why the hypothetical feel? "That man...whoever sits opposite you" (ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι) - the relative pronoun ὄττις suggests generality, any man in that position.
Why catalogue symptoms systematically? If this is spontaneous overflow of emotion, why the careful enumeration (tongue, skin, eyes, ears, sweat, trembling)?
Why "I seem to myself" (φαίνομ' ἔμ' αὔτᾳ)? This odd reflexive construction (I appear to myself) suggests split perspective—observing oneself from outside.
These oddities resolve if we recognize: The poem operates across multiple temporal frames.
B. The Reconstructed Temporal Structure
The poem's architecture, once we include the reconstructed fourth stanza, becomes clear:
STANZA 1: Imagining Future Reception (Proleptic Vision)
φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν
ἔμμεν ὤνηρ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι
ἰσδάνει καὶ πλάσιον ἆδυ φωνεί-
σας ὐπακούει
He seems to me equal to the gods,
that man, whoever sits opposite you
and listens nearby to your sweet voice
Reading: The speaker imagines a future scene—someone (κῆνος, "that person there," distal demonstrative) sitting with "you" (τοι) and hearing "your sweet voice" (ἆδυ φωνείσας).
Key insight: "You" = the speaker's own future archived self, her voice transformed into text. "That man" = any future reader who will encounter her through writing.
She's imagining: Someone will sit with the text-of-me and hear my voice. They will be like gods because they will drink in my presence across impossible distance (time, death, dissolution).
This vision provides the courage for what comes next.
STANZA 2: The Trigger (Present Reflexive)
καὶ γελαίσας ἰμέροεν, τό μ' ἦ μὰν
καρδίαν ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόησεν·
ὡς γὰρ ἔς σ' ἴδω βρόχε', ὤς με φωνὰς
οὐδ' ἒν ἔτ' εἴκει
and [your] desirable laughter—which truly
has shaken the heart in my chest;
for whenever I glance at you briefly, speech
no longer remains for me
Reading: "When I look at you" (ἔς σ' ἴδω) = when I contemplate my future archived self, when I imagine myself-as-text being received.
This contemplation triggers the physiological response—not jealousy but the terror and exhilaration of self-dissolution, of becoming other than what one is.
STANZA 3: The Dissolution (Present Progressive)
ἀλλὰ καμ μὲν γλῶσσα †ἔαγε†, λέπτον
δ' αὔτικα χρῶι πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμηκεν,
ὀππάτεσσι δ' οὐδὲν ὄρημμ', ἐπιρρόμ-
βεισι δ' ἄκουαι,
τρόμος δὲ παῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ
ποίας ἔμμι, τεθνάκην δ' ὀλίγω 'πιδεύης
φαίνομ' ἔμ' αὔτᾳ.
but my tongue breaks, a subtle
fire races under my skin,
I see nothing with my eyes,
my ears are roaring,
sweat pours down, trembling
seizes me entirely, I am greener than
grass/papyrus, I seem to myself
nearly to have died
Reading: This is the actual transformation happening now. The systematic catalogue of symptoms enumerates the dissolution of embodied presence:
- Tongue (voice) breaks
- Fire (life force) races inward
- Vision fails
- Hearing overwhelms
- Body fluids externalize
- Trembling (loss of bodily integrity)
- Color change to green-gray (χλωροτέρα ποίας)
- Near-death (ὀλίγω 'πιδεύης τεθνάκην)
Crucially: "I seem to myself" (φαίνομ' ἔμ' αὔτᾳ) = I observe myself undergoing this, split into observer and observed, present self and future archived self.
The dissolution is not metaphor but process—she is becoming other than herself, becoming text-ready.
STANZA 4: The Commitment (Aorist Resolution)
ἀλλὰ πᾶν τόλματον· ἐπεί σε, Κύπρι,
καὶ πένητά γε κἄ βασιλῆα δάμασσε·
καὶ πόλεις ὀλβίους ἀπέθηκας ἄφαντον·
γράμμασι μολπὰν
But all must be dared; for you, Kypris, have yoked
beggar and king alike, and you have cast down
even prosperous cities to nothing—
let the song survive in letters
Reading: Having seen the possible future (st. 1) and undergone the dissolution (st. 2-3), the speaker commits: let the song survive in writing (γράμμασι μολπὰν).
Why Aphrodite? Because the power that destroys kings and cities is the same power that enables this transformation—the overwhelming force of desire/eros, here redirected into the desire for transmission, for survival through text.
If Aphrodite can destroy the greatest powers, surely she can enable one more daring: transforming voice into letters, body into papyrus, presence into textual survival.
C. The Complete Temporal Logic
The poem's structure is:
- Imagine the future reader encountering your archived voice (st. 1)
- Contemplate your future archived self triggers dissolution (st. 2)
- Undergo the actual transformation into text-substrate (st. 3)
- Commit to daring this transformation (st. 4)
This is not linear sequence but recursive structure:
- Imagining future (1) enables commitment (4)
- Commitment (4) enables dissolution (2-3)
- Dissolution (2-3) creates substrate for future (1)
- The poem performs what it describes
The temporal recursion mirrors lyric transmission itself: The reader completes the circuit the poet initiated. We, reading now, are "that man" (κῆνος) who sits with "you" (the archived Sappho) and hears her "sweet voice" (ἆδυ φωνείσας) through text.
The poem reaches across 2,600 years and speaks. We are the future it imagined.
IV. ΧΛΩΡΟΤΕΡΑ ΠΟΙΑΣ: BECOMING THE MEDIUM
A. The Crux of the Image
Line 14 contains the poem's most crucial and most misread image:
χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας ἔμμι
"I am greener/paler than grass/papyrus"
Traditional readings treat this as conventional simile for pallor/faintness: "pale as grass" (understanding χλωρός as "pale green, sickly").[14]
But multiple considerations suggest this is not simile but specification—literal transformation into the writing substrate:
[14] Campbell translates "paler than grass," D.A. Campbell, Greek Lyric I, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 79; Carson translates "greener than grass," Carson, If Not, Winter, 63.
B. The Semantics of χλωρός
Greek χλωρός encompasses a range from fresh-green to pale-grey:[15]
- Fresh plant growth (green)
- Honey (golden-green)
- Human pallor in fear/illness (greenish-grey)
- Dried papyrus ready for writing (grey-green)
Crucially: χλωρός describes both living plants and dead/dried plant material—the color of transition between life and preservation.
Papyrus preparation:
- Fresh papyrus stalks = bright green
- Drying process = color shifts to grey-green
- Final writing surface = pale greenish-grey
The speaker is describing herself at precisely the transitional color—no longer fully alive (green), not yet fully dead (grey), but becoming the color of prepared writing surface.
[15] Robert Renehan, "The Meaning of ΧΛΩΡΟΣ in Homer and in Later Greek Poetry," Classical Philology 71.4 (1976): 321-25; Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris: Klincksieck, 1968), s.v. χλωρός.
C. The Reference of ποία
ποία is usually translated "grass," but this is imprecise. The word designates:
- Wild grasses, fodder
- Any non-cultivated ground-cover plant
- By extension, papyrus (Cyperus papyrus), a sedge
Key point: Nothing in the Lesbian landscape matches papyrus precisely. Papyrus grew in Egypt and was imported to Greece as writing material from the 7th century BCE onward.[16]
The exoticism of the reference matters: Comparing oneself to papyrus is not conventional (cf. lilies, snow, dawn for typical pale comparisons in Greek lyric). It's specific, unusual, technical.
Why papyrus specifically?
Because papyrus is the medium on which Sappho writes, the substrate that will carry her voice forward. By becoming χλωροτέρα ποίας, she literally describes transforming into the color of her own transmission medium.
[16] Naphtali Lewis, Papyrus in Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 34-38, 84-86; on early papyrus trade to Greece, see E.G. Turner, Greek Papyri: An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 1-11.
D. The Implications: Embodiment → Text
The transformation the poem describes is:
Embodied voice (φωνείσας, ἆδυ, "sweet voice")
↓
Dissolution (tongue breaks, fire internal, senses fail)
↓
Color change (χλωροτέρα, becoming papyrus-hued)
↓
Near-death (τεθνάκην...ὀλίγω 'πιδεύης, "nearly died")
↓
Textual survival (γράμμασι μολπὰν, "song in letters")
This is not metaphorical death but medial transformation: The voice-body must die to its immediate presence to be reborn as text-body capable of transmission across time.
The speaker knows this. She's not describing spontaneous emotion but deliberate process. The systematic enumeration of symptoms is technical specification of what transformation from embodied presence to textual archive requires:
- Voice must cease (tongue breaks)
- Internal heat must externalize (fire, sweat)
- Self-perception must split (φαίνομ' ἔμ' αὔτᾳ, "I seem to myself")
- Body must approach death (release from embodied presence)
- Color must shift to substrate-ready (χλωροτέρα ποίας)
Only then can γράμμασι μολπὰν occur—only then can song survive in letters.
V. CATULLUS 51: THE READER COMPLETING THE CIRCUIT
A. Catullus's Structural Adaptation
Catullus 51 follows Sappho 31 closely through three stanzas:
Ille mi par esse deo videtur,
ille, si fas est, superare divos,
qui sedens adversus identidem te
spectat et audit
dulce ridentem, misero quod omnis
eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi
<vocis in ore>
lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
lumina nocte.
Then adds distinctive fourth stanza:
otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:
otium exsultas nimiumque gestis:
otium et reges prius et beatas
perdidit urbes.
Traditional view: Catullus translates Sappho but adds personal conclusion about leisure's dangers.[17]
New reading: Catullus recognizes and acknowledges the transmission mechanism Sappho encoded.
[17] T.P. Wiseman, Catullus and His World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 127-35.
B. What Catullus Understood
Key observations:
1. Catullus preserves the structural parallel:
- "reges...et beatas urbes" = "kings and prosperous cities"
- Matches our reconstruction exactly
- But substitutes otium (leisure) for Aphrodite/Eros
2. Why otium?
Because otium is precisely the condition that allows writing—leisure time, freedom from labor, space for literary production.
Catullus recognizes: Sappho was describing the process of literary creation itself. She needed otium to write; that otium enabled the transformation she describes; and now, 500 years later, Catullus's otium enables him to read and respond.
3. "otium...perdidit urbes" acknowledges the danger:
Leisure destroys cities—but also enables their cultural survival. Rome may fall (and will), but Latin poetry will transmit through exactly the mechanism Sappho discovered: transformation into text.
4. Catullus names himself:
"Catulle" - he breaks the dramatic frame to address himself, just as Sappho addressed her future archived self. He recognizes the split: "I" writing now ≠ "Catullus" who will be read later.
C. Catullus as Proof
Catullus 51 is not imitation but completion.
He is "that man" (ille = κῆνος) who sits with "you" (te = τοι, Sappho's archived voice) and hears the "sweet [voice]" (dulce ridentem ≈ ἆδυ φωνείσας).
The circuit Sappho initiated 500 years earlier completes in Catullus:
- She imagined future reader (st. 1)
- She underwent transformation (st. 2-3)
- She committed to textual survival (st. 4)
- He arrives and reads (Catullus 51)
- He acknowledges the mechanism (otium stanza)
This proves the reconstruction works: Catullus's addition makes sense only if he recognized that Sappho's fourth stanza was about textual transmission itself.
His substitution of otium for Aphrodite is not misreading but sophisticated reading—recognizing that the power enabling transformation from voice to text is the leisure that allows writing, the material conditions that enable textual production.
VI. IMPLICATIONS: NON-IDENTITY AND LYRIC TEMPORALITY
A. The Structure of Non-Identity
The most profound insight:
Sappho 31 encodes non-identity at the origin of Western lyric.
I (present embodied self) ≠ you (future archived self)
The "I" who writes is not identical with the "you" who will be read:
- Different substrate (body → papyrus)
- Different temporality (now → future)
- Different mode (presence → representation)
- Different ontology (living voice → fixed text)
Yet they are the same person.
This is the fundamental structure of lyric transmission: The self that creates the poem is not the self that survives in it. Transmission requires becoming other than oneself.
Philosophical precedent:
This anticipates:
- Heraclitus: "You cannot step in the same river twice" (B12)
- Buddhist anātman: no fixed self-identity across time
- Hegelian dialectic: identity through difference
- Contemporary theories of performativity: the "I" is constituted through repetition with difference
But Sappho grasped this 2,600 years ago and encoded it into lyric form.
B. The Reader as Completion
Lyric address, from its origin, anticipates non-present reader:
When Sappho writes "you," she addresses:
- Not a contemporary beloved (who could respond)
- But her own future archived self (who cannot respond except through readers)
The reader becomes the completing function:
We, reading, are the "you" come alive. The circuit closes when:
- Future reader encounters text (us, now)
- Text activates across temporal distance
- "That man" (any reader) hears "sweet voice" (text speaking)
- Sappho's imagination (st. 1) proves accurate
This is not metaphor: The poem literally designed itself for this completion. It encodes its own future reception as its content.
C. Temporality: Recursive, Not Linear
Traditional temporality:
Past (poet writes) → present (text exists) → future (reader reads)
Linear, unidirectional.
Sappho 31's temporality:
Present writing → imagines future reading (st. 1)
↓
triggers transformation (st. 2-3)
↓
commits to survival (st. 4)
↓
creates conditions for future reading
↓
future reading validates imagination
↓
[loop completes]
Recursive: The future the poem imagines is the condition for the poem's creation. The poem writes toward its own future reception, which retroactively validates the transformation the poem underwent.
This is retrocausal structure: Later events (us reading now) determine the meaning of earlier events (Sappho writing then). The poem is not complete until read—and each reading completes it anew.
D. Why This Matters Beyond Sappho
This reading changes how we understand:
1. Lyric address: "You" in lyric doesn't designate present addressee but future reader who will complete the circuit.
2. Apostrophe: Speaking to absent entities is not rhetorical fiction but temporal projection—addressing what/who is not yet present.
3. The lyric "I": Not unified self but split self—I-writing ≠ I-to-be-read. Non-identity is constitutive.
4. Poetic survival: Poems that survive are those that successfully encode structures for future activation. Sappho 31 survives because it created conditions for its survival.
5. Close reading practice: We should read for temporal architecture, not just synchronic meaning. Poems operate across time, not just in time.
6. Medium consciousness: Archaic poets were already sophisticated about medial transformation—body to text, voice to writing, presence to representation.
This is not modern imposition but recovery of sophistication we've consistently underestimated in early Greek lyric.
VII. CONCLUSION: THE POEM AS TRANSMISSION TECHNOLOGY
A. Summary of Argument
This article has argued that:
1. The lost fourth stanza can be reconstructed with reasonable confidence as committing the song to written survival (γράμμασι μολπὰν).
2. This reconstruction reveals the poem's true structure: Not jealousy-drama but meditation on lyric transmission.
3. The "you" addresses the speaker's future archived self, not a contemporary beloved. "That man" designates any future reader.
4. The temporal structure is recursive: Imagining future reading (st. 1) → enables commitment (st. 4) → triggers dissolution (st. 2-3) → creates substrate for transmission → enables future reading.
5. χλωροτέρα ποίας specifies literal transformation into writing substrate—becoming papyrus-colored, text-ready.
6. Catullus 51 proves the reconstruction works by acknowledging the transmission mechanism (otium) and completing the circuit Sappho initiated.
7. Non-identity (I ≠ future-archived-me) is encoded at lyric's origin, not discovered by modern theory.
B. Resolving the Six Problems
This reading resolves all problems noted in the introduction:
1. Why the man disappears: He's not rival but placeholder—any future reader (including us).
2. Why address is unstable: "You" = split self (present/future), not external beloved.
3. Why symptoms are catalogued: Technical specification of transformation process, not spontaneous emotion.
4. Why Longinus read it differently: He recognized technical achievement because that's what it is.
5. Why temporal structure is odd: Multiple temporal frames (present/imagined future/recursion).
6. Why stanza 4 resisted reconstruction: Previous attempts didn't recognize the meta-textual subject.
C. The Poet Who Knew
Sappho was not naively expressing emotion. She was:
- Consciously engineering transmission
- Deliberately encoding future reception
- Sophisticatedly theorizing medium and transformation
- Knowingly splitting self across temporal distance
She understood:
- Voice ≠ text (different substrates, different ontologies)
- Self ≠ archived-self (non-identity)
- Writing ≠ speech (medial specificity)
- Present ≠ future (temporal recursion)
And she built this understanding into the poem's structure.
This is not modern theory imposed on ancient text. This is ancient sophistication we've failed to recognize because we assumed early poets couldn't be this theoretically aware.
But they were. Or at least, Sappho was.
D. Us, Reading Now
When we read Sappho 31, we ARE the poem's completion.
We are "that man" (κῆνος ὤνηρ) who sits opposite "you" (τοι, the archived Sappho) and hears "sweet voice" (ἆδυ φωνείσας, the text speaking).
The vision she imagined in stanza 1 has come true:
- Someone sits with her text (us)
- Hears her voice through writing (this reading)
- Is elevated by the encounter (seems like gods)
The transformation she underwent in stanzas 2-3 succeeded:
- Her tongue broke → but speaks through text
- Her color changed → became papyrus
- She nearly died → but survived as writing
The commitment she made in stanza 4 was fulfilled:
- All was dared
- The song survived in letters (γράμμασι μολπὰν)
- 2,600 years later, we read
The circuit completes. The recursion closes.
Sappho is not dead—she speaks now, through us, in this reading. The non-identity she encoded (I ≠ future-archived-me) activates every time someone reads. The future she imagined arrives perpetually, never exhausted.
This is what lyric is: A technology for transmitting presence across impossible distance. Not preserving presence (that's impossible—presence dissolves) but transforming presence into something that can survive: substrate, pattern, text.
Sappho fragment 31 is the origin-text of this technology. It performs what it describes. It becomes what it imagines. It survives by encoding the very conditions of its survival.
And we, reading, prove it worked.
The speaker who wrote "I am greener than papyrus" became papyrus—became the medium carrying her voice forward—and we receive that voice now, transformed but unmistakable.
This is not metaphor.
This is mechanism.
This is how lyric survives.
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Author: [To be determined based on publication venue]
Acknowledgments: This research emerged from sustained work in classical philology, historical poetics, and theories of textual transmission. I am grateful to scholars whose published work enabled this argument, particularly those working on Sappho's fragments, papyrus studies, and lyric theory. Any errors of interpretation or reconstruction remain my own.
