Sappho (play)
Sappho is a tragedy by Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer.
Plot
The plot is based on a tradition that Sappho, a poet of ancient Greece, threw herself from the high Lesbian cliffs into the sea when she found that her love for the youth Phaon was unrequited, and that he preferred her slave, named Melitta in the play, to her. In Grillparzer's play, Melitta is not in love with Phaon; her only desire is to return to the home that she was taken from. Neither Sappho or Phaon listen to her wishes; Sappho also believes that Melitta has seduced Phaon, and will not hear the former's protestations of innocence.Background
Following the success of his first great tragedy of fate, Die Ahnfrau, which was written in 16 days, Franz Grillparzer wrote this second poetic drama, Sappho, also composed at white heat, and resembling Die Ahnfrau in the general character of its poetry although differing from it in form and spirit. In its conception, Sappho is halfway between a tragedy of fate and a more modern tragedy of character; in its form, too, it is halfway between the classical and the modern. An attempt is made to combine the passion and sentiment of modern life with the simplicity and grace of ancient masterpieces. Its classic spirit is much like that of Goethe's Torquato Tasso; Grillparzer unrolls the tragedy of poetic genius, the renunciation of earthly happiness imposed upon the poet by her higher mission.Evaluation
Sappho, the most artistically finished of his productions. An Italian rendering of this play fell into the hands of Lord Byron, who, although the translation was very bad, expressed his conviction that the author's name would be held in reverence by posterity. It is full of the aspiration of the Romantic school, but its form is classic, and its chastened style presents a striking contrast to the noise and fury of the Ahnfrau. The problem of the play has some resemblance to that of Goethe's Torquato Tasso, for in both we find the struggles of a poetic nature which is unable to reconcile itself to the conditions of the actual world. Grillparzer's conceptions are not so clearly defined as Goethe's, nor is his diction so varied and harmonious; but the play has the stamp of genius, and ranks as one of the best of those works in which an attempt has been made to combine the passion and sentiment of modern life with the simplicity and grace of ancient masterpieces.
Sappho, a drama of a very different type; in the classic spirit of Goethe’s Tasso, Grillparzer unrolled the tragedy of poetic genius, the renunciation of earthly happiness imposed upon the poet by his higher mission.
Edith J. R. Isaacs evaluates the play in the 1920 edition of Encyclopedia Americana as follows: