Sappho's Leap by Erica Jong Read Free Book Online

I felt like Persephone transported to the Land of the Dead to be the bride of Hades. I wept until I soaked my bed with tears. I thought of Alcaeus somewhere far away, banished for his treachery.
    Then I slept and Aphrodite spoke to me in a dream.
    She was dressed as a bride herself and was singing the epithalamium I’d written.
    Raise high the roof beams! she sang, smiling wickedly. The groom comes like Ares….
    I cried and cried inconsolably even in the dream.
    â€œ Don’t cry, my little Sappho ,” she said, like a loving mother calming an infant. “ A husband is merely a means of transport between childhood and womanhood. If it is love you want, passion you want, that always happens outside the bridal bed…. The bridal bed is where you sleep, but you will find your lovers everywhere — on beaches, in palaces, in apple groves, olive groves, under the shining moon…. It will be full for you — full of lovers, full of love, full of inspiration !”
    â€œBut I only want Alcaeus!”
    â€œHe is not the only man on earth. Come, now, Sappho—I have had many men—Ares, Adonis, so many others—I have forgotten their names, women too. Life is meant for pleasure. There is more to life than your first man….Your life is just beginning, not ending. It will be rich and full…lucky bride! You will be free and full of life!” Then she drifted off and I slept like the tired child I was.
    I have only had one husband, so I have to judge all husbands by him. The truth is he was not an evil man. He was only weak and common and a drunk. He believed that a wife should stay indoors and tend to the looms and the slaves and the larder—except on religious holidays. If you wonder why women were so damned religious in those days, know that the festivals were the only times we got out of the house! I figured pretty quickly that my songs in honor of Aphrodite were my tickets to freedom. Once I grew famous enough to have my presence demanded at festivals, weddings, distant rituals to foreign gods, Cercylas could not hold me back. He was clever enough to know that my renown reflected glory on him. Besides, I left him alone with his dearest love—the wine he drank and drank until he fell headfirst into a delirium.

3
Walking Through the Fire
Do I still long for my virginity?
    â€”S APPHO
    I F MARRIAGE WAS DEATH, then Syracuse was reincarnation: a city without peer in the greater Greek world, a city of festivals and temples, of wealthy aristocrats, wretched slaves, mean hovels, and shining palaces.
    Syracuse stood on the eastern coast of the isle of Trinacria, where Odysseus blinded the savage cyclops and incurred the everlasting wrath of Poseidon. With that one sharp stick in the eye of Polyphemus, Odysseus nearly doomed himself to eternal wandering. But fortune found him again and he was able to return to Ithaca and find his family still alive and waiting. Even his ancient dog Argos waited until Odysseus returned home before he expired with old age. Maybe the gods would take pity on me as they had on Odysseus. I could only pray for that as I sailed far from home to beautiful Syracuse.
    Syracuse was founded by the Corinthians, who worshiped Artemis. It was in Syracuse that virgin Artemis changed Arethusa into a rushing stream of water so that she could escape the advances of Alpheus, the lecherous river god. Arethusa’s spring still gushed into a fountain here, and a famous temple to Artemis had stood in Syracuse from the beginnings of time. A temple of Athena faced the Great Harbor, while a Temple of Apollo faced the Little Harbor. There were also two huge amphitheaters on the mainland, beyond the agora.
    The oldest sections of the city jutted out into the dark blue sea on a peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land. The major palaces were here. Cercylas established our house in the very center of this quarter. We also had a farm in the countryside that