Lesbian Portraits

History
In the early 1990s, the mainstream media finally discovered that, in the words of a famous slogan, ''lesbians are everywhere''.  But, as we shall see, passionate love between women is no modern social phenomenon - it has existed as long as women themselves, whatever term has been used to describe it.  Lesbians have been ''inverts'' and ''female adventurers'', women who are ''not as other women'' and who particiapte in ''romantic friendships'' or ''Boston marriages'', which supposedly consist of little more than holding hands and reading poetry to each other.  The cultural influence of lesbians has been seen in every field, from social and political reform to art and literature.  Yet historians have repeatedly failed to record the contributions made by these women.  And, contrary to popular belief, lesbians throughout ancient and modern history have often been subjected to persecution similar to that of gay men.  In 15th and 16th-century Europe, women executed for ''marrying'' other women.  Many of those burned during witch-hunts were women who chose to live without men.




Lesbian history and culture is as old as the hills.  But conventional wisdom throughout the centuries has continually pointed to Sappho, one of the ancient world's great lyric poets, as being the first recognisable lesbian figure - though not without argument. The more traditionally-minded scholars of her work - though conceding that she was a Lesbian - have continually questioned whether she was a lesbian.  Confused?  So were they!  One translator of her work in the 1960s decided ''that she was temperamentally, at least, a sexual invert seems possible. That she was a pervert, there is no way of telling''.


Prejudices, it seems, are timeless.  Ho-hum.
Nonetheless, whenever women have euphemistically been described as having ''Sapphic inclinations'', the meaning has been clear, as shown in this nudge-nudge, wink-wink verse penned by the French writer Clement Marot some 2000 years after Sappho's death:


Among these virgins
There are quite a few
Who in morals resemble Sappho
More than in sense.

What we do know about Sappho is that she lived in the 6th century BC and was born in Eressos on the island of Lesbos.  She was briefly married, had a daughter called Cleis, and came from a wealthy family.  Many of her songs were written about young women of Lesbos from similarly refined backgrounds.  The exact date and manner of Sappho's death are, like most of her life, steeped in legend and folklore.  One popular theory was that she loved a young boatman, Phaon, and, when he spurned her, she threw herself from the cliff, this conveniently ignores the fact that Phaon was mythological character!  The few poems and fragments of Sappho's work that have survived, including the following example, bear a different interpretation altogether.


I think no girl
That sees the sun
Will ever equal you in skill


Pretty One, I'm yours again
far too long apart


Your beauty, your dress thrills all those who 
                                 see you
And the heart in my breast quickens;
(19th century translation)


Much of Sappho's poetry was destroyed. the Christians burned her poetry when in AD390 they purged the Great Library of Alexandria, - the depository for works by all the great writers of the ancient world.  In the 11th century, Pope Gregory VII ordered her remaining writings to be publicly burned.  But excavations in Egypt between 1897 and 1906 unearthed the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which were found to contain many fragmaents of Sapho's poems.  Greek scholars maintain, nevertheless, that less than a twentieth of her work has survived.


In 1928, the French writer Pierre Louys caused a ripple of excitement when he claimed to have discovered Les Chansons de Bilitis, a book of erotic prose poems, supposedly written by a female contemporary of Sappho.  Louys said he had translated them from the ancient Greek and even included a potted biography of Bilitis.  He did manage to fool a great many people for some considerable period - thus penetrating one of the great literary hoaxes of all time.  Louys had actually written Les Chansons himself and the character of Bilitis was equally fictional.  The episode did show how interest in, and enthusiasm for, Sappho continued unabated.

Queen of the Amazons

But long before Sappho ever put pen to parchment, her home island was briefly populated by a famously strong tribe of women; the Libyan Amazons.  They invaded Lesbos, not to mention Syria, Egypt, Algeria and north-west Africa.  In February 1997, an excavation in the Russian steppes unearthed a number of women's graves, dating back as far as BC600, containing daggers and long swords, which archaeologists believe prove that the Amazons had lived around the Black Sea - a claim originally made by the historian, Herodotus.  Legend has it that the Libyan Amazons used to remove their right breasts so that they could fight with more freedom.  Ouch! The Amazons' traditional weapon - the double -bladed axe known as ''labrys' - was adopted by lesbians in the latter half of the 20th century as a symbol of strength and pride.

Labrys

Lesbian Portraits
by Rose Collis
M.Q.Publications 1997