Visions of Sappho: In Conversation with Nigel Spivey

Location

Saints Tekakwitha and Serra Hall, 200, Humanities Center

Free

Renowned as an extraordinary lyric poet in her own lifetime, Sappho of Lesbos has been a literary celebrity for more than 2,500 years. Her poetry – so far as it survives – seems charged with personal feelings and powerful self-expression. So, what did she look like? Or rather: What have her readers, over the centuries, wanted her to look like? Presenting fresh visual evidence, and reassessing some old iconic favorites, Nigel Spivey (senior lecturer in classics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge) considers the “portrait” of Sappho in its various symbolic forms: as an image of the female poet, an image of passion both tragic and fulfilled and, eventually, an image of female-to-female desire.