The ugliness of Sappho: On euphemistic treatment in Leopardi

Abstract

The ugliness of Sappho, despite the credibility it has enjoyed for centuries, has always been circumvented or attenuated in scholarly works, and even more so in literary recreations of the life and death of this celebrated muse. These strategies range from the portrait of Sappho as a beautiful woman to expressing her ugliness via euphemistic formulas: that which is resorted to most is the negation of the antonym (Sappho is not beautiful). Leopardi, with his Ultimo canto di Saffo, stands out among those who have explored this particular path in depth. Analysis of the most direct sources of this poem, as well as of some of its translations and imitations in Spanish, helps to see how in Leopardi euphemistic negation interweaves and fuses with suicidal negation, beautifying "nothingness" and suggesting readings at a second level, which simplify and run contrary to the logic of the discourse.