If Not Winter Sappho Analysis

The poetry that Catullus wrote shows that he was a sentimental, romantic man. In Catullus poems he expresses his love towards Lesbia and his preciseness of getting Lesbia to love him back. After being rejected by Lesbia it deeply hurts him since he shows her so much affection but only speaks ill of him. Catullus is very passionate and is obsessed with kissing, in “Catullus 16” he speaks of getting thousands and thousands of kisses from his lover. Even though he is passionate and sentimental, he is no pansy. In “Catullus 51” he is very vulgar in that poem responding to those that think he’s too sentimental and has a hatred toward Julius Caesar.

Aristophanes and Sappho share parallels when speaking about the importance of erotic love. They both describe love as powerful, and speak about the influence it has on our happiness. Furthermore, Aristophanes and Sappho highlight how natural love is and that it should be sought after because of the happiness associated with being in a relationship. One could argue that Aristophanes and Sappho’s shared similar ideologies when it comes to sexuality. Sappho promotes homosexuality through her love of women, while through his speech Aristophanes identifies it as being a form of natural love.

In Sappho’s fragment 130 we see can see love and desire has took a hold on Sappho. A feeling that can be described as either pleasant or even painful yet she has a hard time fighting off the overcoming feeling. What’s interesting is

Alice Hoffman 's powerful story takes place during such a hard time; the Spanish Inquisition in which our protagonist, Estrella de Madrigal faces an arduous decision between her best friend and the Spaniards.“Estrella de Madrigal thought she knew herself: daughter, granddaughter, dearest friend. But the truth is rare in this cruel, unforgiving century in Spain.” In the novel “Incantation,” Alice Hoffman has developed a meaningful yet a ubiquitous theme of how the infamous jealousy can destroy a person in many forms uses the literary devices such as simile and personification.

Dreams can be an escape from reality, but dreamers must guard themselves against becoming trapped in that fantasy. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is the tragic love story of two lovers who are fated to doom. Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech explores the idea of how dreams can be deceiving which relates to Romeo and Juliet’s deceptive love for one another. By examining Shakespeare’s use of diction and imagery, the motif of dreams becomes evident.

Another influential factor expressed in Sappho’s writing was her sexuality. Disregarding the fact that she was married to a man for a brief period of time, Sappho found a great interest in women (Poetry Foundation). As an illustration, the poem “In My Eyes He Matches the Gods” is enthusiastic towards Sappho’s sexuality. This poem is about a women Sappho sees sitting across the room and with a man. Sappho is envious of said man and states it does not matter who the man is with this women, any guy would be like the gods getting to be with her, hence the name of the poem. This poem appeals well to the senses of the reader as for it goes into a plethora of detail surrounding how this woman makes Sappho feel. For example she states “then all at

can be a great thing, especially since ignoring a romantic partner’s flaws can lead to a happier relationship. However, in A Midsummer Night 's Dream, Shakespeare takes his characters’ love to an irrational extent - so much so, that a prevalent theme of the play is the foolishness and folly of love.

Out of a library once I read “ There are people who want a relationship like Romeo and Juliet’s without knowing that lasted three days and caused six deads!”

The first instance which supports the notion that a lapse of communication is responsible for the unsuccessful nature of heterosexual relationships is the case of Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia’s relationship. Both start the play preoccupied with their own concerns, Orsino is worried about finding love, specifically with Olivia, meanwhile she is busy mourning the death of her brother by refusing to marry anyone for seven years. However, it is Orsino’s obsession with seeking love and how he goes about pursuing Olivia that best exemplifies the problematic nature of a male and female’s relationship. Orsino opened the play by saying of love, “Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken and so die” (1.1.1-3), essentially saying that he so badly craves the feeling being in love gives him, that he would like in so great a quantity that it would end his life. His hunger for love becomes even more

The speeches within the Symposium and Phaedrus are aimed towards praising ‘Love’ or ‘Erôs’, this covers sexual attraction and gratification between both men and women and men and teenage boys, but the focus of the speeches here is on the latter, whether the relationship was sexual or not. The speeches of the Symposium are given as part of a competition of who can “give as good a speech in praise of Love as he is capable of giving” (Plato, 1997, pp. 462, §117c). This essay will refer to ‘Erôs’ throughout interchangeably with ‘Love’, as Erôs is the Greek God of Love, or of passionate desire.

In John Collier’s ironic short story “The Chaser,” the reader learns that obsessions can cause tragedy. Alan Austen goes to a run-down potions store at night looking for a special love potion to get his love to reciprocate his feelings. The seller in the middle of making a potion says he has just the thing. Austen asks about the potion in the seller’s hand to which is to be explained as a “glove-cleaner,” potion worth five thousand dollars while the love potion is only one dollar. However, the love potion makes the victim highly obsessed with the user. Thus, through the use of dramatic irony the reader knows Alan will return to purchase the poison to kill his love because she will be too obsessed with him. In the poem “Porphyria’s Lover,” by

This poem revolves around two major symbols. These symbols are fire and ice. Fire is used as a symbol of desire. Desire is a strong feeling of wanting to have something. Desire can also be associated with greed. In lines three and four, “From what I 've tasted of desire/ I hold with those who favor fire.”, the emotions that the speaker evokes gives the idea that he has experienced desire. This connects the symbol of fire to human behavior with the word “tasted”, meaning the speaker makes a personal connection to the recollection of when he experienced desire.

The language in Plato’s symposium and the expression of Sappho’s poetry are similar in that they both deal with homoerotic love. Sappho, the only ancient Greek female author whose work survived, talks from the female point of observation, where as Plato’s work concentrates on the idea of love among males. In spite of the fact that both of their points of view are comparative in courses, for example, their thoughts of physical fascination and want, Plato’s work creates a better understanding of the nature of love then Sappho’s ideas. This understanding will be shown with three arguments and counter- arguments in order to demonstrate the dominance of Plato over Sappho. It will than be concluded with an overview of the main idea and a recap of the three arguments made for Plato.

We are unable to accomplish this quest. We try to postpone everything. The animals and flowers accomplish it, they become. They are able to endure the change. Either we do not try or we do not want to wait. We have no patience. What is needed is patience, to first learn to wait. Malte believes that greatness only comes when we suffer, endure, and wait. We have to accomplish everything else before we reach Him. It is only Him who practices restraint in order to let us grow, and understand, and become capable of love. Nobody understood Sappho in her time but she did not get distracted. She knew what she wanted to do. She did not stir from her path. She longed until the longing became the quest. It was perhaps not the man she loved but the one who might have been equal to her love that she lamented (Rilke 155). Malte wants young girls to aspire for such a love where they will not long for satisfaction but for their love to remain unrequited because only then they will not feel limited. The journey

“What does it matter that my love could not keep her” he is worrying about the shattered night when she is not with him. “This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her” Here, the writer seemed to him that someone is singing in a distance. His brain stopped missing her but his soul didn’t.