mdcclv · November 3, 2018 20:51 · mdcclv · Nov 4, 2018
diff --git a/gistfile1.txt b/gistfile1.txt
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 Eighty characters is of course the most ideal length for lines of text or code.
 The poetess compares an unreachable apple to some other item: probably a bride.
 One cannot miss sweetbitter irony that the source poem itself is lost, unknown.
 It is fair to argue against fetishizing the fragmentariness of Sappho's corpus.
 For eons, it has been impossible to hear the work as it was intended: what now?
 The way we know that 105a is an epithalamium is by its meter, one for weddings.
 But is that relevant when the work is just a cited fragment, from a grammarian?
 Already the scraps that come to us have been repurposed from their poetic plan.
 A poet who survives only from her quotations in other works: as lost as can be.
 Imagine trying to reconstitute James Baldwin's thought from his Wikiquote page.
 This is why 105a is the perfect Sappho fragment: on the unreachable remembered.
 The body of work that Sappho created is a whole, and it is sweet, it nourishes.
 It nourished generations, it was sung, and so well known it bore each allusion.
 Today we know not a note of its music: a lost entire other dimension to Sappho.
 We can glimpse the redness of the fruit, but we will never taste its sweetness.
 Sappho can reach us only with her words, not melodies, and so scarce the words.
 Over 2,600 years we have never forgotten but long we have been unable to reach.
	1234567891123456789212345678931234567894123456789512345678961234567897123456780
	Eighty characters is of course the most ideal length for lines of text or code.
	The poetess compares an unreachable apple to some other item: probably a bride.
	One cannot miss sweetbitter irony that the source poem itself is lost, unknown.
	It is fair to argue against fetishizing the fragmentariness of Sappho's corpus.
	For eons, it has been impossible to hear the work as it was intended: what now?
	The way we know that 105a is an epithalamium is by its meter, one for weddings.
	But is that relevant when the work is just a cited fragment, from a grammarian?
	Already the scraps that come to us have been repurposed from their poetic plan.
	A poet who survives only from her quotations in other works: as lost as can be.
	Imagine trying to reconstitute James Baldwin's thought from his Wikiquote page.
	This is why 105a is the perfect Sappho fragment: on the unreachable remembered.
	The body of work that Sappho created is a whole, and it is sweet, it nourishes.
	It nourished generations, it was sung, and so well known it bore each allusion.
	Today we know not a note of its music: a lost entire other dimension to Sappho.
	We can glimpse the redness of the fruit, but we will never taste its sweetness.
	Sappho can reach us only with her words, not melodies, and so scarce the words.
	Over 2,600 years we have never forgotten but long we have been unable to reach.