Charlotte Baum

Claudia Ingram

English 217

1 October 2020

Caritas

Sappho is a writer of moments in time. She writes her poetry based on interactions with

people. Sometimes she looks back at a moment and elaborates on it; other times she, simply, uses

imagery to bring moments to life. Sappho explains her feelings of love and passion through

imagery and descriptive details. The writer of Caritas on the other hand, uses analogies and

metaphoric language to describe her love. This poet, Olga Broumas, writes about passion and

love, similar to but not exactly like Sappho. If we were to only look at Caritas, in comparison to

Sappho, the difference in authors would be evident because of the lack of lived experiences and

the type of figurative language used.

While Sappho may have not lived all of the experiences she explains in her poetry, there

is something about the way she can describe a situation and make it beautiful. In poem 42,

Sappho says, “...but remember (you know well) whom you leave shackled by love,” (42,

Sappho). The use of the word shackled here, makes this small line large. This unknown lover is

leaving and some of the final words Sappho uses to get her point across leave an image in the

reader’s head, like no other. Broumas uses slightly different figurative language to describe her

feelings. For example, Broumas explains, “Your breasts in their moonlit pallor, invade me,

lightly, like minor fugues,” (Broumas). There is a sense of imagery here, but Broumas uses

metaphors in a more literal sense than Sappho would. By literal I mean, Broumas says things

straight up. The description is obvious and the connection of the metaphor is clear. Sappho uses
imagery in a more whimsical and creative way. Much of what Sappho writes is interpretable in

various ways. Broumas wants you to know exactly what is going on in Caritas.

Particularly in Caritas, Broumas also describes this lady in a literal way: her breasts, her

thighs, her lips. When Sappho is describing the love of her life, she is not exactly explaining her

direct obsession. Sappo wrote, “Stars near the lovely moon, cover their own bright faces,” (24,

Sappho) (which also leaves the interpretation up to the reader). It is a comparison to the beauty

of someone she loves. In this poem, Sappho also adds that when her light is brightest, she reflects

on the Earth. It’s very vague but exact at the same time. The reader knows that Sappho thinks

highly of the woman’s beauty without literally saying it. Broumas literally states that her lover is

indifferent to her passion. Caritas means love of “humankind” which gives even more context to

the poem, making it seem even more transparent.

Caritas is a beautiful poem with a directed interpretation, where Sappho’s poetry has a

little bit more mystery to it. Sappho creates imagery that has nothing to do with a scenario, like

the moon metaphor, and connects them. It seems as though Broumas tries to write in a similar

way but ends up being too literal. The thing that threw me the most about Broumas’s poem was

the type of language use. She was more savvy with it and less artistic with her language use.
 Works Cited

Sappho, , Dudley Fitts, and Mary Barnard. Sappho. Berkeley: University of California Press,

1958. Print.