New York Times Bookreview
October 4, 1998
Nancy Freedman - SAPPHO: THE TENTH MUSE
By GLORIA ROHMANN

 

SAPPHO
By Nancy Freedman.
St. Martin's, $25.95.

Even during her lifetime, in the sixth century B.C., Sappho was the West's most famous woman poet. (Plato later called her ''the tenth muse.'') An aristocrat born on the Aegean island of Lesbos, she was sent into exile for conspiring against the tyrant Pittakos. After a fortunate marriage (and early widowhood), she returned to Lesbos in triumph and founded an academy for young women, to whom her lyric love poems may have been addressed. Many lurid details of her life, recounted in legends, have been mined by poets and moralists alike, although only a few of her verses survive. Nancy Freedman makes good use of these fragments to produce a credible approximation of a poet's creative process. She also leaves out few of the legends, placing Sappho squarely within the glittering and violent world of the ancient Greek Mediterranean. While some of the characters are thinly drawn, Freedman creates a vivid portrait of the book's central figure, who apparently achieved a degree of personal success and independence unknown to any other woman in her age -- and few in this.
 

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/bib/981004.rv115723.html

 

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