Butterfly Effect - ressourcesfeministes

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1 unstopped mouths. This title was suggested by the phrase “stopped mouths” used
by Page duBois in Sappho is Burning, p. 37. She writes, “… the ellipses [of Sappho]
in the published archaic fragments, [recall] stopped mouths, messages gone
astray, the utter failure of communication across a distance of centuries, provoke
discomfort." The late twentieth century has seen lesbians unstop our mouths, dig
for history and intercept the messages gone astray.
2 gymnasium. The setting of a gymnasium arose from reading Olga Broumas and
T. Begley’s Sappho's Gymnasium (1994). Broumas and Begley write in their Proem:
“Gymn: nude, trained, exposed, athletic, flexible, practice./Gymnasteon:
imperative: tears unbecoming.” Gymnasium also means school, and in Ancient
Greece it often included a sacred grove. That women used a gymnasium is not
outside the realms of possibility since the Herean Games, games for sportswomen,
pre-dated the Olympic Games, taking place around 1000 BC and earlier.
3 Sappho. Saphon, Sappho, Sapho, Sappho, Sapphô, Psappha. Joan deJean uses the
above list as an indication of the process of naming. In my own life I first
encountered Sapho as a schoolgirl. As a lesbian in the early 1970s I noticed that
Sappho was more usual, and later when I studied Ancient Greek Psappha
became my word of choice. More recently in thinking through the derivations of
words, I suggest that Sappho is related to the Sanskrit Saraswati (goddess of
writing), and to the French word, savoir, to know. See India Sutra, this collection,
p. 171. I have used Sappho throughout this poem in the interests of familiarity.
See Joan deJean’s Fictions of Sappho 1546-1937 (1989), p. 1. The question of
Sappho’s sexuality has been in constant dispute since antiquity, but whatever the
case, Sappho has had an undeniable imaginative force for lesbians in Western
culture.
4 topmost bough. Sappho Fragment 105a. See Page duBois, pp. 31-54, Sappho is
Burning; also see Judy Grahn’s The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic
Tradition (1985). Judy Grahn begins her book with a translation of this fragment
from David A. Campbell's literal translation in his Greek Lyric Vol. 1 (1982), p. 131.
The fragment reads: “As the sweet apple reddens on the bough-top, on the top of
the topmost bough; the apple gatherers have forgotten it – no, they have not
forgotten it entirely, but they could not reach it.”
5 ritual. For more information see Giti Thadani, Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient
and Modern India (1986), p. 108. Among the tribals of India women become
sahiyas, lifelong companions. They drink rice from each other's glass, share a
mango and reciprocally wash one another's feet.
6 silkworkers. See Janice Raymond’s A Passion for Friends (1986), pp. 113-147; also
Agnes Smedley, “Silk Workers”; for a fictional treatment see Gail Tsukiyama,
Women of the Silk (1993). The Chinese silkworkers formed “Sister Societies” and
worked together in silk factories. Janice Raymond writes about them as
“marriage resisters”. Their relationships were committed and maintained beyond
the confines of Confucian (and Communist) family life.