Tuesday 14 November 2017

Sing to me, o lyre

Today we have the last of a series of Sappho post, linked with singing once more. It is a quotation by Hermogenes, introduced in his work as «Ὅταν τὴν λύραν ἐροτᾷ ἡ Σαπφὼ καὶ ὅταν αὕτη ἀποκρίνεται, οἷον», «When Sappho speaks to the lyre and she answers, as in». The text and meter is uncertain. Bergk amends it into a major asclepiad Ἄγι, δῖα χελύνη, λέγε, φωνᾶσσα δὲ γίνεο. This involves a contraction φωνάεσσα -> φωνᾶσσα which isn't particularly convincing, and AFAIK the γί in γίνεο would be short whereas we need a long. Also, δῖα should be neuter plural, since the alpha is short, whereas feminine singular would have a long one. But oops, Wiktionary contradicts me on that one. Anyways, if anything, I'd amend it something like Edmonds, who gets glyconians as Ἄγι, δῖα χέλυννα, μοι φωνάεσσά τε γίνεο, though that "te" seems out of place. Campbell essentially keeps the starting point, which is «Ἄγε χέλυ δῖά μοι λέγε φωνάεσσα γένοιο», having the same ending as Bergk and keeping both the μοι and the δὴ which is in "unus cod" (one codex) which omits the μοι. I take the glyconian hypothesis and keep both δὴ and μοι, and since τε and δὲ are both out of place to my ears, I replace that with νυ. The translation comes from interpreting δῖα as neuter plural by the above-mentioned error.
This discussion must have been carried out between 16/8/10 and 30/8/10. Indeed, the corrected text first appears in SP3, a printout definitely from between 23/8 and 6/9, and probably from a file prepared on 30/8, and it is not in the file S5 which is from 16/8. In fact, discussing this fragment is what brought me to Campbell on 21/8/10.
The Latin is the simplest to tell the tale of: it appears as below in SP3, printed, so it must be from between 21/8 and 30/8.
The Italian is slightly more complicated. SP3 has it with "cantami" in place of "canta tu", which entails a repetition of "a me" in the -mi. The fix is only from SP5, a printout from between 2/12/10 and 21/12/10.
The English is the most complicated. It appears in SP3 in the SP3 version below, which I assume is a horrible attempt at rendering the acontextual γένοιο of the uncorrected text, with an annotation fixing l. 2 to «Please, some godly stuff start to sing», which repeats "please" and doesn't rhyme. The S6 version below is found in the 2/11/10, so now we have the rhyme, but the singing is lost. The fix for that, and thus the final version, only first appears in the 5/1/11 file, not being mentioned in any of the intermediate side-files between the 13/11/10 file following the 2/11 one, and the 5/1/11 file following the 13/11 one. I therefore assume it's a fix made during the Christmas holidays. The diary and/or Paracritical Note may tell me more about this, or even the poem notebook. In that case, I will come back to update this.
With all of that out of the way, let's get to the poem.


Ἄγε δὴ χέλυ δῖά μοι
φωνάεσσά ‹νυ› γ‹ίγ›ν‹ε›ο



O mi͜a lira, a me, orsù,
Cose dive ͜‹ora› canta tu.
Lȳră he͞i’ ăgĕ, dīvă tū
Ādcănēns mĭhĭ fīquĕ ‹nūnc›.
O my lyre, now please to me
Stuff divine if you now could sing.
O my lyre, ‹now› please to me
Some divine little melodỳ.
O my lyre, ‹now› please sing to me
Some divine little melodỳ.



References
Note: these are all the references I ever used for Sappho as of now. I may not have used all of these in the present post.

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