Sappho Versus the Meaninglessness of Humanity

We are not nothing.

I declare
That later on,
Even in an age unlike our own,
Someone will remember who we are.

—Sappho

“This fragment survives on a potsherd.”

This was the opening line from the translator of a poetry collection by Sappho, an ancient Greek woman from Lesbos. Sappho was, and still is, a renowned poet, praised for her work by readers and writers contemporary to, after, and far far after, her life. Plato adored her work. The head librarian at the great library in Alexandria, Aristophanes of Byzantium, compiles 9 volumes of her work lovingly arranged by meter, and genre alongside one Aristarchus of Samothrace. Roman poets were influenced by her. Ovid creates the legend of her supposed suicide. Julian the Apostate, Rome’s last polytheistic emperor, cited one of her poems in his own work. She was often called the “tenth muse.” Sappho, in her time, would have performed with accompaniment of a lyre. She invented a type of lyre called a pectris, and you know what else she invented? The plectrum. What’s a plectrum? A pick. She invented guitar picks. Sappho wrote often of love, and womanhood. We get the word Sapphic–relating to a woman who loves women– from her name. And “lesbian” too, comes from Lesbos, her home island. Her hand reached through nearly 1,000 years of history before her career was near completely lost to time. The Forth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204 saw the destruction of much of her preserved work. We only have one full poem of hers. 90% or so of her work is gone.

Excavations at an ancient Greco-Egyptian refuse heap uncovered many papyrus with her fragments. “Much of this had served as cartonnage which filled the empty space in coffins,” writes Aaron Poochigian, “or had been waded up to stuff the insides of mummies. One fragment of Sappho” for example, “was recovered from a mummified crocodile.”¹ So, imagine my amazement at that line: This fragment survives on a potsherd. 

I recently saw a Tiktok of someone singing about how amazing it is that we’re pointless. That life has no meaning. I understand that what they meant was less about nihilism and more about how freeing it can be to lose the responsibilities of human existence. I see this tossed around a lot. “You’re unimportant, and so am I. In a world of billions, in a universe vast and endless, we are meaningless, and isn’t that wonderful?” It’s meant to be received positively. And for a period in my life some years ago now, I would have been more kindly receptive, and perhaps even comforted by that thought. Though I began to wonder why those I hear say this so much, care so deeply about current, and long term issues? Global warming, wars, injustice. Are we unimportant, why should we care? I hope to answer this in my own way.

The Greek classics always appealed to me. I’m currently re-educating myself so to speak on their importance. Delving into the world of Homer, Sappho, Aeschylus, Euripides and others. (I blame these wide arcs of interest on my love of interdisciplinary study.) I am immersed in the combat, the divine interventions, and the landscapes of The Iliad. I am entranced by Sappho’s lyricism. I have my interests piqued by Plato’s thoughts on love in his Symposium. As I look at my copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey it is hard not to be amazed by their thickness. Perhaps 150 pages are dedicated to notes and introductions, but the other 670? All verse, and all adventure. Homer was probably one of the first people to use the written language in this way. Scientists and researchers suggest that Homer wrote his works between the 760’s BCE and the 730’s BCE and the Greeks had begun using the Phonecian letters around 780-770 BCE.² (Before that they had no language for hundreds of years after the loss of Linear B, a language from the Minoan civilization of Crete). The very fact we have so many texts from well over 2,000 years ago astonishes me. We might think of these Greek stories as establishing works in the “western canon”--which is certainly true as Homer’s two tales were the backbone of education for centuries, and are still influential– but I find that their contribution to the cultural memory far more fitting. Memory, of course, is an apt term to use here. In the literal sense these epic poems and plays were recited from memory. The Muses were traditionally called on at the start of, and interspersed throughout, to help the orator remember the details of the story. For instance, the Iliad opens with “Rage– Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles… Begin Muse, when the two first broke and clashed / Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.”³ Throughout the epic, characters use memory as threat, and as an inspiration. From “blotting the Trojans out of memory” to being remembered by all as a coward, or having a grave erected on the beaches of Troy to be known as the man who was slain by Paris. But here, when I say cultural memory, I mean something a little different.

Hungarian Philosopher Agnes Heller wrote on this idea. She said that cultural memory is embodied in texts, such as religious works, poetry, sagas, and chronicles. Also, it is seen in “monuments, such as buildings or statues, or any material signs or memorabilia erected as reminders.” It is found in repeatable practices, linked to places, and connected to a place where something unique happened. In this very broad definition, we get an understanding of how large cultural memory is, and that the Greek classics fall easily in line. But the important thing about cultural memory is that, as she argues, it keeps alive the existence of the people who contribute to it. For example, Shakespeare is kept alive because he has added great, and widely read works to the collective cultural memory, and as long as his work is remembered and known, he exists. Heller points out that the Iliad and the Odyssey are the “basic texts” which keeps the memory of the Hellenic people alive, and through them, the Mycenaean people they represent as well. They exist because those works, and others, like Sappho’s fragments exist. A direct example of this can be seen in the Iliad. Homer writes that Odysseus is given a boar tusk helmet. Boar tusk helmets can be dated to 1150 BCE and prior. That’s 800 years out from Homer.⁴ They were only known in Mycenaean Greece through Cretan culture. On Crete, they made these boar tusk helmets. It could take between 40 and 50 boars to make a full helmet. Odysseus is given this helmet by Meriones, a Cretan himself, who tells Odysseus it had been passed down in his family. In the generations following Homer, the existence of the boar tusk helmet was kept alive simply by story telling. 

A boar’s tusk helmet.

It isn’t just Tiktok where these people post and speak about the meaningless of human existence. I went to my local coffee shop last week, and got into a rare conversation with a stranger. He had just moved to town, and so had I, so perhaps we could be coffee shop regulars together? A good cafe is nothing without enlightening conversation. We got to talking about history. Of course, I always manage to sneak it in. He said to me while adding a dash of sugar to his tea, “Humans haven’t really been around all that long if you think about it.” And I said, “I suppose. On the grand scheme of things.” And he replied with a little pithy remark I’ve heard far too many times, “If the planet's history was condensed to 24 hours, say it's currently midnight of that day, our human ancestors started walking the planet only two minutes ago. All of that before was space stuff and crazy science and the dinosaurs were like an hour ago!” And then came the universe. He continued, “If the universe was a week, we’d be the last micro second on Saturday.” I asked him why he thought of it that way, or why he liked to think of it that way. “If you apply it in those terms, you see that we aren’t really much special. We’re creatures, like any other, and we’ll have our micro-seconds in the sun before the next one. We’re meaningless.” And I admired the scientific poeticism of it, but I found myself dismayed. I didn’t agree. Technically, scientifically, I suppose I do. But as a human, living, breathing, thinking, writing, loving, hating etc. I completely disagreed. As someone who cares deeply about the past, historical, and cultural memory, I could never in good conscience agree to something like that. Is all of our collective past meaningless? Just because the universe is big? All the effort of humans in the past 200,000 years is boiled down to nothing in a coffee shop because you decided humanity’s existence was meaningless? 

I look back on ancient peoples and wonder what they would have said to this. They never even considered humanity’s purpose. They assumed we were the center of the universe. I don’t agree, of course, but even against the vastness of a universe perhaps filled with life, I would never say human existence is meaningless. 

Suddenly a thousand images rush into my head. Of our first ancestors stepping out along the high grass to hunt. Paint their hand-prints on cave walls. Clang rocks with tools to make music. Make weapons. Plant crops. Build houses. Create languages and writing systems. Formulate religions and folk beliefs. Spin stories so grand they’re called epics. Build massive walls, and structures barely decipherable. Discuss, write, create, paint, chisel, glue, sew, sing, love, and dance. How can I look down at my palms and see thousands of generations in them and say “this isn’t important”? How could I speak out with a voice, with a language, make sense of air and the way my mouth and tongue move, and say “there’s no point to this”? How could I laugh at a joke from 2,500 years ago because humans just decided to keep telling the story it came from for lifetime after lifetime and consider that “all of that is too small to mean anything”? I then conjure the thought of an arid hillside under which the foundations and refuse of an ancient city lie, unknown to us, from a people, and a civilization we have not considered save for a rare piece of pottery, a single old ceramic tablet from a forgotten king that suggests it is real. There are things we know that exist, but have nearly no evidence, and so we strive to know it. And then, there are the many histories, pasts, and peoples we know nothing about at all. 

The notion of saying how “young” humans are cosmically, is only beneficial in scientific and novel circumstances. Otherwise it is a dog whistle of nihilists and absurdists with half baked thoughts who want to tell you how unimportant you are, and oh, isn’t that great? You’ve no responsibilities as a human except the responsibilities you do have. Morality does not care how old humans are, neither does meaning. When we look back to ancient civilizations do we say “oh that was like last week”? No. We are in utter awe of ourselves. And isn’t that wonderful? Do we call these ancients unimportant? No. We struggle to learn them, endeavor to know them, and dare to find them. We obsess over our long past because it must mean something, and if it doesn’t, we discover that meaning. To know that we know nothing of some long gone peoples is both enthralling and heart breaking, all clasped together between our palms and held close to our chests. That we want to know anything at all, and be inspired by these ancient places and civilizations is a testament to our longevity. By saying we are unimportant cosmically, or even terrestrially is a depressive trap. It diminishes all we’ve ever done. If we are unimportant, why carry on? To exist for your goals? Your loves? Your passions? Isn’t that what we’ve always done?

Ah, now you see it?

And I am reminded of those Sappho lines I quoted far far above. She exists in footnotes, yes, and fragments, yes, and papyrus stuffed in dead crocodiles, yes, but she exists. Isn’t it lovely? Isn’t it lovely to have her here, even in pieces, and hear her words echoing out enchantingly from eons ago?

Live. It’s what humans do best.

1.  Aaron Poochigian “A Note on the Text and Translation” in Sappho, Stung With Love: Poems and Fragments (New York City: Penguin Random House, 2015) p. Xliv.

2. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130227183320.htm

https://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/viewtopic.php?t=607

3. Homer, The Iliad, as translated by Robert Fagles p. 77

4. https://sites.psu.edu/homericrepresentation/artifacts/boars-tusk-helmet/