Sappho de Lesbos : Mythe poético-érotique chez Lamartine et Baudelaire

Sappho of Lesbos: the poetic-erotic myth of Lamartine and Baudelaire

Abstract

Historial character, having actually lived in Lesbos during Antiquity, the poet Sappho is a literary myth. The tragic journey of this transhistorical figure has fascinated several writers and painters. She is little known, even if her biographers agree that she was very prolific, in the same way as her contemporary Alcée. Only a few fragments remain of his fabulous production. Nicknamed by Plato "the tenth muse", Sappho inspired Baudelaire to write his pieces entitled "The Damned Women", and to Lamartine a long poem which relates her last moments before her suicidal jump from the Lefkada rock located in Greece. We remember that, among the poems which exposed the poet of Les Fleurs du mal to disgrace, there are eminently erotic texts which depict tribades prey to the burns of sapphism. In our two poets, Sappho embodies the fatal character of eroticism. With Baudelaire, the figure of Sappho  benefits from a fragmentary, even laconic treatment, in the sense that the pieces over which her shadow hovers are devoid of an exhaustive narrative. As for the romantic poet, hee specially emphasizes the suffering of the lesbian muse rejected by the ferryman Phaon with whom she fell in love. The author of Poetic Meditations deploys lyrical strategies in the revival of this myth. Whereas, the poet of “Fantastic Engraving” makes Sappho a figure confusingly associating eroticism and spirituality. In this article, the aim is to study, in Baudelaire and Lamartine, the occurrences of the Sapphic myth which symbolizes the mastery of poetic composition and the inevitability of eros.